Prepare your combine harvester and farm machinery for harvest

Now is the perfect time for farmers to service their combine harvester – or harvesters – ahead of the harvest period. It may come as a surprise to some, but instances of this type of farm machinery being destroyed by fire are not uncommon.

An accumulation of last year’s chaff and dust in combines or balers can mean that such machinery is particularly vulnerable to ignite when it is started up for the first time or to overheating during extended use.If warm and dry conditions prevail before and during harvest time then the machinery is even more susceptible to fire as the debris will be tinder dry.

Serious fire claims can extend to well over £100,000 each and while this will be covered by most insurance policies, it is a major inconvenience which no farmer wants to be without a combine harvester at a time when they need to get on with the bringing crops in.

The combine harvester is a complex piece of machinery and regular maintenance checks should be conducted prior to and during use.

Many farmers rely on traditional property insurance to cover their combinable crops, however, following a combine harvester fire any hired-in machinery can be very difficult to source at harvest time and also is generally expensive.

One way to provide cover for this is to insure the combinable crops under a ‘business interruption’ type of insurance. If set up correctly, the insurance would not only pay for any loss of profit from the crop itself lost in a fire, but also the hire charges or contractor charges to complete the rest of the harvest.