Prairie harvest: past to present

October 13, 2025

key points from this story:

• Modern combines use advanced technology
• Prairie farming began just over a century ago
• Threshing shows highlight historical methods
• Farms have grown larger over time
• Equipment now costs over $1 million
• Agriculture still drives local economies

When one looks at the modern machinery of a Canadian Prairie harvest it seems almost like something out of a Robert A. Heinlein, or Isaac Asimov novel I might have read as a youth in the late 1960s or into the 1970s. The computer technology for recording yields on the fly, the technology that allows the combine operator – if it’s not self-driving – to take control of grain carts, the global positioning tech involved, it seems more starship than grain harvest. Such thoughts ran through this writer’s head when I was out taking photos of the Health Foundation’s Farming for Health harvest at Yorkton. But maybe even more amazing is that agriculture has already been ready to adopt new technology through the years. Really in the grand passage of time farming on the Prairies really started a mere ‘blink’ ago – remember Saskatchewan only came into existence as a province in 1905 – and at that time agriculture was still very much horse-powered – horses pulling the plows and binders and sheaf wagons.