How to get potatoes from flooded land

Because of the heavy rain of the last weeks dutch farmers had big problems to get their potatoes from the land. Potato diggers are usually big and heavy and their wheels would sink in the weak saturated soil.


A farmer talks about his wed potatoes.

Why using large machines at all?
In former times upscaling made the farmer more productive. He could harvest bigger areas in the same time. But in combination with automation technology of today (GPS, smartphones) downscaling is increasing in several branches. So why not in farming?

So, here we have a simple innovation setting:

1. Rain makes the ground weak and therefore the harvest of potatoes difficult if not impossible.
2. If potatoes stay under water for more than two days they are worthless because of rotting.
3. Wed potatoes must be dried before storing to prevent rotting.
4. Potatoes usually grow in clay grounds which permeability is very low (water cannot flow trough it).

The solution can be on several strategy levels:

1. Avoid dependency
1. on the result: eat rice in stead of potatoes, or eat spagetti, or make potatoes resistant against water boarding.
2. on the proces: use something that doesn't need dry ground, e.g. light weight vehicles, flying or hovering vehicles, cableway etcetera.
2. Attack the attacker: make that rainwater doesn't harm anymore e.g. increase permeability, draining capacity or let the rain fall somewhere else etcetera.
3. Remake a disadvantage into an advantage: let the attacker work for you (this one requires creativity): i.e. use the weakness of the soil, or let the rain form a shallow lake and use a boat
4. Of course there are more strategies. As an exercise you can add some if you like.

The first two strategies are more or less straight engineering approaches. And a bit dull. Of course finding the best solution requires still some creativity but you'll get a reasonable solution with only your engineering skills.

I prefer the third strategy. Turning the whole problem upside down is most satisfactory. The solutions coming from this approach are often unexpected and interesting. But if you need the agreement of the users it is best normally not to go to far aside of the meanstream. SIT (systematic inventive thinking) is a good approach for this level of innovation. You will see that the final concept ogf this blog goes also a bit back to normal.

How do we make an advantage from the rain or the saturated ground? Saturated ground means a weak ground. So the potato plants can be pulled out with much less effort as in dry grounds. So why not pulling them out with a machine standing on a solid base on the side of a potato field.

Yes, pulling out would be new but it should be tested before it get accepted. For now I go on with a more traditional digger.

Okay, how do we perform this practically?

Imagine a potato field with the size of 100 m. x 100 m with potato rows. Lets place on both sides, so at the ends of the rows, a tractor with a winch and between those two winches a cable of 100 meter parallel to the potato rows so that the tractors can pull the cable to and fro.

A potato sled (catcher and collector) is connected to the cable. Since the sliding resistance of wed clay is low and since wheels tend to sink in wed clay, a sort of sled is used for suspension.

The picture below shows an example of a concept solution of the potato catcher. A next step would be making some calculations, a drawing and a prototype and have some tests on a potato field.

The potato sled.

The sled in a configuration with two tractors.

Two tractors with a winch each (not visible) on both sides of a potato field, in between potato plants and the potato sled connected to a cable. The conveyor-belt is driven by a wheel rolling over the ground.

What has the farmer to do?

When the potatoes must be harvested during heavy rains each tractor is placed on one side of the field. The cable is connected to the winches of both tractors and the potato sled is connected at one side of the cable. The sled is pulled by the winch of the other tractor over the field harvesting the potatoes of one row. Arrived at the other tractor the potato box of the sled is loaded on a trailer and another box is placed on the sled. The tractors move a bit to the next row and the sled is going the other way.

Voila.