“It’s massive, isn’t it?” asks Eric Bell of Columbus, Neb., turning from a Case IH AF11 as it cut through rows of corn at this year’s Husker Harvest Days in Grand Island.

Bell, who owns his own construction business, started attending the annual farm show about 13 years ago, just after his oldest son, Jaxon, was born. On this trip to the show, Bell and sons Jaxon and Carson watch the field demonstrations and take in the equipment displays on the show grounds.

“We are looking for construction equipment and skid steers,” Bell says. “It is a good place to see all of the new technology coming out.”

Driven by a 775-horsepower engine and a 567-bushel grain tank, Case IH’s flagship harvester is a sight to behold. It was one of about a dozen combines and headers alongside 30 other pieces of machinery rolling through Grand Island’s fields. Over the three show days, they drew a crowd of about 130,000 people. The crowd also enjoyed demonstrations on beef handling, horse gentling, stock dog management, haying, grain handling, tillage and harvesting.

Taking it in

Enjoying the shade of a golf cart nearby, Gen Jelken, a “semi-retired” corn and soybean grower who farms south of Hildreth, says he comes to the show “to see equipment that I can’t afford. This is too big for me, but I come to look.” 

While industry-leading combines might not be a fit for every farm, there was something for everyone among the more than 480 exhibitors situated on the Hall County site’s sprawling 90 or so acres. In just one of the three Diversified Industries buildings, innovative products on display included Shark Wheel Agriculture's bidirectional, modular tire. The airless pivot tires have about 30 modular steel plates encased with rubber that flex to fit the landscape. Their unique, bidirectional design pushes soil to the center, which reduces rutting. And each module can be easily replaced.

“It’s a pretty neat idea,” says Greg Heine, a soybean and corn farmer from Waco, Neb., who was browsing the booth. “The dealer rep says they do a really good job.”

Not everyone was there to make a purchase. Many, like Hildreth, browse booths and peruse apparatus for ideas. Kansas farmer Josh Gall intentionally “came back this year to see the latest from New Holland.”

Finding opportunities

In the nearby Nebraska cornfield, Cecil Sunkwa-Mills stood a long way from home. He is on a mission to help his fellow farmers in Ghana.

“My country has a lot of fertile land and lots of water resource, but we’re very climate dependent,” the chair of the Ghana-Nebraska Agribusiness Growth and Trade Relations Chamber explains. “So, productivity is really, really low. We actually need to scale, increase production, and then also enhance processing.”

For that, he is attending Husker Harvest Days to find opportunities. “We looked at quite a number of irrigation systems,” Sunkwa-Mills says. “We’re looking at the methodologies you have here and how we can start those for farmers in Ghana.”

Brad and Nathan Schepler from Wilcox, Neb., returned to Husker Harvest Days after a hiatus of a few years. “I’ve been looking for a lawnmower,” Brad Schepler says, “and at tillage equipment and combines.” Nathan, his son, estimates that it’s been more than a decade since he last came to Husker Harvest Days, and he also was looking for the same equipment as his father. Their visit to this year’s event was a success. 

“I got some good information from a lot of different places,” Schepler says.

Next year, Husker Harvest Days will take place Sept. 9-11 in Grand Island, Neb.