Harvest is well underway at the Stine® Seed Farm in Adel, Iowa. This year’s crop includes roughly 10,500 acres of corn — 1,850 acres of which are seed corn and 8,650 acres of field corn — and 10,100 acres of soybeans.
Our farm team is working around the clock to bring in this year’s crop, backed by one major advantage: the equipment. In harvest innovation, no one does it quite like Stine. Our custom-built equipment is designed to move fast and cleanly through fields, especially during seed corn harvest.
“One thing I’ve learned at Stine is the value of innovation,” says Steve Luther, Stine Seed Farm manager. “Whether it’s the equipment or the way we produce seed corn and soybeans, we’re always innovating. Every day brings something new — how we think, what we create and what we set out to do. That inspires me and the people I work with. No two days are exactly the same; we’re always creating and building something new.”
But that equipment doesn’t just show up ready to run. The groundwork starts long before harvest ever begins.
Planning for a Stine Seed Farm harvest
Harvest preparation on the Stine Seed Farm begins as soon as the previous harvest ends. For example, planning for the 2026 harvest began after fall tillage and the first post-harvest anhydrous application in fall 2025.
“Harvest timelines are mapped before planting even happens, and we base them on hybrid and variety maturity,” says Luther. “Being proactive helps us maintain a season-ahead approach, leading to a more efficient harvest.”
This year’s harvest began Aug. 18 and is set to wrap up in another six to 10 days.
“From start to finish, harvest on the farm takes roughly 10-12 weeks,” notes Luther. “We have a strong team that works tirelessly to get the acres out in a timely manner, and we also have innovative equipment that helps speed up the process.”
This is especially true for seed corn harvest, with equipment you won’t see on any other farm or in any factory.
Our one-of-a-kind equipment
“The Stine FieldMax Seed Corn Harvesting System was built and produced on our own farm,” says Luther. “There are only four machines like it in the entire world, and they’re all right here on our farm in Adel.
The Stine FieldMax Seed Corn Harvesting System started as a John Deere 7700 combine in 1996 and has evolved over time to meet the need for more horsepower and greater crop-handling capacity. It later transitioned to a John Deere 8820 platform before we settled on the John Deere 9860, which has served as the base for all four FieldMax combines on the farm since 2016.
From there, the Stine Seed Farm team has engineered the custom-built combine to be more efficient and reliable. Specifically, features added to the equipment through the years have allowed for:
Increased throughput and faster ground speed.
“As we made these machines longer and wider, we had the ability to move more volume through these machines, which brought up ground speed,” says Luther. “The earlier versions of these machines were 1 mph machines, and today, these machines are 2.5 to 3 mph. With four of them, we can get across ground very quickly with 30-foot heads.”
Each FieldMax harvester can complete approximately 40 to 45 acres per day.
A higher-quality crop.
“It’s husked right there in the field,” notes Luther. “It’s moved once from the machine to the boxes that sit on our dryers. At that point, it goes into our sheller when it’s dried and then right to the bagger. It’s a three-step process, and because of that, that gives the grower a better product and less damaged grain. … It is proven over the years that we have better germplasm because of it.”
Better harvestability.
“The leveling systems on these machines are built into the rear axle and run off a leveling device that allows the equipment to stay level and keep the beds evenly filled,” says Luther. “Keeping the machines level keeps the husking beds full front to back, and the rear end of the machine stays level with the ground as we move through different terrains like hills and valleys.”
The equipment also has a specialized hydraulic system that allows for more control over corn head speed — both forward and in reverse — which Luther notes is gentler on the crop during the picking process.
How does it work?
From the time the seed corn is picked by the corn head, the ears move efficiently through the Stine FieldMax Seed Corn Harvesting System.
To start, ears travel from the feeder house to the back of the machine, where they're diverted onto the split bed, then distributed onto the shakers and the husking bed. Once husked, ears move through cross belts and up an upright belt to the top of the machine for sorting. Here, the team checks for off-type or unhusked ears, and any unhusked ears go back down the husking belt for another pass. From there, ears move to the front belt and onto a side conveyor leading to the seed drying boxes, which have aerated floors. The boxes are then brought back to the farm to our dryer stations.
Each drying station holds four boxes, or about 125 bushels of wet ear corn per box, with one large fan per station. It takes roughly two to three days to dry, and we use small-batch drying, which means high air volume and low heat to better preserve grain and yield quality.
From the dryer, the grain is then shelled and bagged.
“The entire process matters because it minimizes handling, reduces waste, increases harvest efficiency and preserves grain quality,” says Luther. “These machines are very large, and they’re very capturing. They work in an entirely different way, and in the end, we’ve really got a machine that’s very efficient and very reliable.”
How the season is shaping up
As harvest progresses on the farm, there’s a lot to be proud of, both from an equipment standpoint and in terms of product performance.
“As of today, we are very pleased with what we have harvested both in our seed corn and early field corn,” notes Luther. “We’re seeing good yields and very good plant health.”
These strong outcomes are no doubt the result of careful planning, timely execution and innovation in action — a process that gets fine-tuned each year we complete a harvest on the Stine Seed Farm.
To learn more about harvest on the Stine Seed Farm and our custom FieldMax harvester, view this video or contact your local Stine sales representative.