[Scene opens with a shot of mature soybeans with the text "Field Notes" and the Soy Masters badge overlaid on top. Light guitar and drum music plays throughout in the background. The text "Measuring Harvest Loss" appears on screen. The scene changes to a shot of Bryce in a room beside a lamp.]
BRYCE: I'm Bryce Rampton, soybean product development agronomist for Western Canada. It's always so funny... we spend so much time all year getting the crop in, making sure we're establishing a good stand, controlling weeds, controlling other pests throughout the season, managing different weather events, and then we get to harvest and we're in such a hurry to get everything done that we're not really paying attention to what we're leaving behind.
[Scene switches to an image of harvested soybeans with very noticeable loss.]
BRYCE: So harvest loss is a big issue.
[Scene switches back to Bryce.]
BRYCE: I think a lot of the times we don't always know what our harvest loss is.
[Scene switches to a closeup shot of pods that have shattered with beans on the ground.]
BRYCE: A big part of managing that loss is, first, understanding just how much we are losing.
[Scene switches back to Bryce.]
BRYCE: So really the first step in assessing harvest loss is to get out of the combine.
[Scene shows an image of a combine in the field.]
BRYCE: There's a lot of different things you can use to understand the area and we're measuring area to get an idea what your loss is.
[Scene switches back to Bryce.]
BRYCE: Harvest squares are a 12x12 square or 1 foot square.
[Scene shows an image of a mature soybean field ready for harvest.]
BRYCE: There's 43,560 square feet in an acre, as we know.
[Scene switches back to Bryce.]
BRYCE: So really you can use any size that you want as long as you know the internal area that your square represents. Ten square feet is a really common one as well. And actually the bigger the square, the better information you are going to get out of that.
[Text shows on the screen beside Bryce's head. It says "Using a 1 foot square, if you have 4 beans @ 3,000 seeds/lb it equates to approximately 1 bu/ac loss".]
BRYCE: So it's good to take your square, so one foot squared, if we have four beans in that one foot square at about 3,000 seeds per pound, it's usually about one bushel per acre loss. So it's good to take your square (I like to go behind the combine first) and just put it down.
[Scene shows a photo of harvesting in progress. Then it goes back to Bryce.]
BRYCE: And if you put it down and you're in that 1-1.3% or under 3% total bushels per acre, you're usually doing pretty pretty good as an overall standard.
[Scene shows a close-up of mature soybean pods.]
BRYCE: So from there we can say, "Oh if that's still too high, you're looking to get better." Or maybe you're well above that. We really want to find out where that loss is coming from. So the first step is to go in front of the combine.
[Scene switches back to Bryce.]
BRYCE: So when you're doing this, it's always good
to combine in a representative area of
the field as you're going, and then stop
the combine, lift up the head, and then
back up 10-15 feet.
[Scene shows a photo of harvesting in progress.]
BRYCE: So that you have unharvested area ahead of you, you have a cut area in front that went through the header already, and then you have your harvested area behind you.
[Scene switches back to Bryce.]
BRYCE: So it's good to take your square, go into that unharvested crop ahead, put down your square in a few areas across the swath width of your combine, and get what your pre-harvest loss is.
[Scene quickly shows an image of seeds on the ground and an image of a tape measure showing pods left low to the ground within 6 inches.]
BRYCE: So whatever loss would happen from shatter or pod drop beforehand - before we even got the combine to that area.
[Scene switches back to Bryce.]
BRYCE: So the next step is to go where your header already traveled but not where we had spread trash beyond the combine. So let's just understand what our header loss was or that gathering loss. So go a few different areas along there, so now we have our gathering loss. And then do the same behind the combine.
[Scene shows a combine going through a field during sunrise.]
BRYCE: Just to understand at what point are we making that loss or where are we having that loss.
[Scene changes to a white screen with the Soy Masters badge. The guitar and drum music gets louder.]