Residue Management

While older machines may have enough power and throughput to utilize larger headers (35-40+ ft), most, if not all, were not designed to throw residue across a 40-foot swath.
We see in the image below that this machine was not able to spread the residue across the full header width, resulting in strips throughout the field. Refer to the agronomic effects section to understand the importance of even residue coverage.

Key takeaway: Before purchasing a new header, ensure your residue distribution system can cover the entire swath under various conditions.

In the image below we can see the issues that arise when we have areas with a build up of residue.
- In the red boxes we have plants missing and in the yellow boxes we see that the plants had delayed emergence. You do not have to look very far to find data that correlates delayed emergence directly to lost yield potential!

Below we have a progression that shows how much tillage can help any residue spread problems we created when harvesting.
We see some large spots of excess residue the week after harvest.
We than tried to fix that issue with a vertical tillage, we clearly see that it helped but did not resolve the issue.
Lastly we followed this a few weeks after the following year crop was planted.
Believe it or not we could visibly see a difference in plant grow stage based on residue spread issues from the prior year.

Key take away is that tillage may help improve the effects of poor residue spread, but can never fully resolve the issue!!

We looked into how material size and tillage practice can effect the following years crop some of the observations were very obvious.
We implemented 4 different types of residue size and spread width
- Fine Cut Narrow Spread
- Fine Cut Wide Spread
- Long Cut Narrow Spread
- Long Cut Wide Spread
Additionally we used 3 different tillage practices to see if we could fix any issues with a certain tillage practice
- Conventional Tillage
- Vertical Tillage
- No Tillage
Early on we saw variations in emergence and overall growth stage for many reasons, variance can be seen in the image below.
- Moisture
- Soil Temp
- Seed Bed Quality

Later on closer to tassel we saw from drone imagery a very obvious variance in time of tassel.
This can cause many issues in the pollination period if not all plants are ready to pollinate at the same time!!
- See Image below

The graph below shows the economic change that was observed through the different residue spreads.

Is going to be one of the most common culprits to causing uneven distribution of residue
- In the video below we can see how much the wind affects the residue spread when harvesting perpendicular to the wind.

To fix this problem we have a couple options
- Adjusting your spreader to over compensate for the wind
- Harvest in a different direction, if possible to harvest directly with or into the wind.
In extreme cases we can see our field end up like this when wind is not acted upon.
- Wind direction is red arrow.

When we see green stem of beans have moisture in the morning we will want to change our game plan to spread that residue properly.
These conditions will have the tendency to want to not shred into fine pieces
This means we may need to adjust the chopper to be more aggressive to create a finer residue spread
- Overall, if a desired residue spread cannot be achieved with a particular variety, consider harvesting a different field and returning later.

When combining with a draper head that slides on the ground it is subject to plugging/ dragging residue that its going over.
- This will commonly happen when we have wet conditions.
Why does this matter?
- Every time we have to stop to unplug the head, we create an uneven residue spread, commonly a pile of residue as seen in the image below. As we know from the agronomic effects section, this residue mat will greatly affect the following year’s crop.

If we do not have the option of moving fields to avoid start and stops we can lift the header slightly up off the ground.
- This will commonly leave a few pods on the very bottom of the plant, however the affects of stopping very often across your field will be much larger than leaving a couple pods behind in the long term.

Equipment Considerations