Farming Simulator 22: Harvesting FS 22 guide, tips

On this page you'll learn about harvesting crops in Farming Simulator 22: what to harvest with, what kinds of harvesters are available and how to unload the harvester.

• Combine harvester headers
• Using the harvester
• Straw / Straw mowing
• Emptying the harvester
• Unloading the harvester

Combine harvester headers

Harvesters, as the name indicates, are used for harvesting. Most often you should be using standard harvesters with appropriate headers, that is, grain platforms attached to the front of the vehicle. There are separate headers aimed for corn, sunflowers, canola and other grains. Harvesting sugar cane, beets and potatoes requires a completely different combine, therefore most farmers start by growing grain in order to get a variety of crops with only a single machine.

You can transport headers on a special trailer - it's dirt cheap, and by using it you'll avoid traffic problems if you want to deliver your header from the store to your farm.

You don't have to use dedicated headers. They vary in size depending on the harvester's model and power. As a rule, if your field is flat you can buy a slightly better model and still maintain power efficiency with a bigger work area.

Using the harvester

You can observe the machine's capacity in the lower-right corner - if it fills up, you won't be able to work until you empty it.

To start harvesting with a combine harvester you need to:

1. unfold it,
2. lower the header,
3. turn on the harvester.

Now you can drive to the field. Don't harvest when it's raining - much of the yield will be destroyed.

Straw / Straw mowing

Grains (wheat, rye, barley, oat) generate straw. If you intend to use it (as padding for cows and pigs) turn off their cutting - they'll be scattered behind the machine, ready to be collected. Otherwise, it is better to turn the cutting on - they'll be evenly scattered across the field. Thanks to this, there's no risk of other machines working in the field stopping or turning after hitting a pile of straw.

Straw can be sold, so it's worth collecting even if you don't have a use for it. You can collect it with a forage wagon or create hay bales.

Emptying the harvester

Once the harvester fills up, you can extend the pipe to move its contents into a trailer. Drive underneath the extended pipe and the contents will start pouring out automatically (if there's an employee operating the harvester, otherwise you'll need to enter it yourself). When moving crops you must remember of two settings which are enabled by default (they can both be disabled in the settings):

1. Overloading - in FS22 it's possible to overload the trailer: pouring too much material into it wastes it.
2. Destroying crops - when moving a tractor with a trailer attached towards the harvester, make sure you've equipped it with narrow tires - otherwise you'll destroy your own crops by driving over them.

You can also empty the harvester directly into the silo.

1. It's convenient if the capacity of the trailer you use to store the crops during fieldwork is equal or several times bigger than the harvester's capacity.
2. If you don't harvest your plants in time, they will wither. This turns them completely useless, forcing you to plant the field all over again, starting with cultivation / plowing.
3. You shouldn't harvest in the rain. It significantly reduces the harvest - you may still be forced to do so though if the weather doesn't change in the last month.

Unlike in FS19, trailers can't be attached to harvesters to increase their capacity.

Unloading the harvester

Some trailers or semi-trailers can be extremely bulky, difficult to drive in a field or too high to the harvester's pipe to reach overboard. Therefore it's worth using smaller trailers and taking the cargo to your storage area. The second option is connecting several small trailers to each other. The third option are auger wagons. Thanks to them you can collect the payload from a harvester and unload it into, for example, a larger trailer standing on a nearby road.