Driving Down the Cost of Harvesting

Alberta farmer Tom Eppinga says he’s always been a numbers guy.

“I really look at my cost per acre. I’m always looking at the numbers and how I can control them,” he explains. “And I’m a long-term thinker.”

With the aid of his wife Karen and their four daughters, Tom operates Triple T4D Farms, located about 20 minutes north of Edmonton. It’s good land in central Alberta with deep black soils. 

Tom initially operated a 120-cow dairy and a small grain farm. He grew the grain side of the farm and, in 2007, sold the dairy and concentrated on grain farming and exports.  

Today, he actively farms with his second oldest daughter, Amy. “She’s a full-time farmer, doing the books, with shares in the company and, with her husband, she’s well on her way to taking things over,” Toms says.

Triple T4D Farms manages about 10,000 acres of canola, wheat, oats and malt barley and grows 2,000 acres of alfalfa for export hay to the Far East. The alfalfa is in a four-year rotation. When Tom plows under a plot of alfalfa, he’s now planting that land for an emerging niche-market crop: gluten-free oats.

Short harvest window
Despite investing in the latest seeding, spraying and harvesting technology, Triple T4D Farms still faced challenges in completing within the short window of time allowed by Alberta weather.  

“On our farm, we have the best equipment available,” Tom says. “We’re able to organize in the winter, plan the crop and execute planting and managing it. But at harvest, for the amount of crop we can seed with the technology we have, we just don’t have enough time to get the crop off.  We were really struggling with trying to harvest it by adding more combines and more men. It has been a bit of a problem.”

Triple T4D Farms runs five combines and two grain carts. As harvest approached in the summer of 2023, the farm faced a serious, unplanned issue that needed to be resolved quickly. A critical labor shortage developed that required out-of-the-box thinking.

“Twenty years ago, we had one main guy,” Tom relayed. “Now, my wife sometimes cooks for 13 to 16 people at harvest time. Farm labor: that’s a huge, huge issue.”

In July, one of his cart operators left for a hip operation. Another’s wife had fallen ill and needed him at home to look after her. Then a third worker unexpectedly wasn’t available.

Tom considered his options. He settled on renting a bright yellow-and-black sign that he placed on his lawn beside the highway into Edmonton. 

“I got this big sign about July 20 and rented it for two months. I put a cheesy saying on it like, ‘If you think you have talent and want to join a harvest team, call me. We need three guys.’”

Nothing happened in the first week or the second and third weeks. Then, he says, “Come mid-August, all of  a sudden, that sign brought me three wonderful workers in a few days.”

A game-changing combine
With labor issues during harvest a significant concern, Tom says he knew they would have to find a solution. 

In November 2023, he traveled with his dealer to Agritechnica, the large ag trade show in Hanover, Germany, to get a firsthand look at the unveiling of New Holland’s newest, high-capacity combine: the CR11. It’s ideal for grain farmers like Tom who have short harvest windows and lots of acreage to harvest.

The CR11 has undergone a complete redesign. The combine’s revised driveline has been simplified, with approximately 25% fewer drive components and the elimination of all drive chains. The combine also has a larger capacity grain tank and faster unloading capacity that will help drive down the total cost of harvesting and increase farmers’ bottom-line profitability.

The 775-horsepower Twin Rotor® combine has a 567-bushel (20,000 liters) grain tank and a six-bushels (210 liters) per second unload rate, significantly increasing productivity. The higher capacity grain tank matches the machine’s increased capacity and can be unloaded in under two minutes.

“My initial reaction was ʻWOW! What an amazing piece of engineering!’” Tom says. “I loved the fact that they thought outside the box and simplified it. Where does a piece of equipment become simpler AND more efficient? It’s usually the other way around, so I was really impressed with the new technology and the simplicity of the machine. 

“The automated straw-management system looks exciting. The bigger grain tank and the unloading capacity load the grain carts faster. The ability for it to run long hours is also impressive for us. All those things are important on our farm. That’s what we needed.”

From 5 combines to 3
“With the CR11, we’re hoping to run with three combines and one grain cart and do the same amount of work, so we’d eliminate the need for a grain cart and a combine or two,” Tom explains. “We’re excited about seeing how it’s going to fit on our farm.”

Being a stickler for cost per acre, Tom knows how much each piece of equipment costs and what it saves in terms of time, labor and operational expenses.

“That’s why I’m a New Holland guy, and that’s how I’ve been able to grow the farm,” Tom says. “We’ve always had a New Holland combine since 1994 and never looked back. When I do the cost per acre and the cost of ownership, New Holland always comes in at No. 1. 

“I love crunching numbers, and whether it’s my New Holland 4WDs, my New Holland combines or my New Holland sprayers, my cost per acre is always the best when I do the numbers with those pieces of equipment,” he continues. “Other people might argue with me, but the numbers are the numbers.

“With the CR11, we hope it will help us reduce our labor force, be more efficient and accomplish more acres per hour. That is our main objective, and we’re really banking on the CR11 doing that for us. We have high hopes.”