It's a warm fall morning that followed enough rain to make fields slimy and prone to deep tractor-tire ruts, but a bright yellow behemoth of a machine is having no trouble gliding across a sugarbeet field near Priam, Minn.
At a steady pace, the Ropa Tiger V8-4 sugarbeet harvester sliced off the green leaves and gently shook soil away from the sugarbeets. It then moved them to a whirring cylinder inside the self-propelled machine, removing even more dirt before beets were shuttled to the 28-ton capacity hopper tank on top of the machine.
When the large-capacity tank became full, a tractor with an equally large-capacity Big Bear brand beet cart sidled alongside and the beets were transferred. As the Ropa kept harvesting more beets, the tractor and cart went to the end of the field to fill a waiting semi.
The two-person team that worked this field earlier this month during a demonstration of the German-made Ropa sugarbeet harvester represents half the workforce and half the equipment needed compared to conventional sugarbeet harvesting, said Alex Everson, owner of Ace Ag Inc. of Murdock, who is now a certified service mechanic for Ropa.
It also represents a slow, but growing trend in sugarbeet harvesting in Minnesota.
Ropa beet harvesters are in 40 countries, but there are only five in Minnesota, with three of them in west central Minnesota, including Raymond, Bird Island and Hector.
Source: www.inforum.com