Down the memory lane... the Beet harvester
The Nisap Beet harvester were developed in the late fifties. The first model had slowly rotating carriers, ensuring a perfect cleaning of the beets. The Danish Agricultural Cooperative Machine Purchase (Dansk Landbrugs Andels Maskinindkøb) wrote in a magazine:
”Nisap. During a couple of years The Danish Agricultural Cooperative Machine Purchase has checked the development and tests of the Nisap Beet harvester and found out that it manages very well even under very difficult conditions, both in moist and weed-filled land.
The Nisap Beet harvester is a two-row harvester with loading lift. It is provided with fork iron and an inclined rotating cleaning grid. Above this, you find a carrier with three arms, which rotate slower than the cleaning grid. This principle has several advantages:
An effective beet cleaning; weeds and stone are sorted out, and the machine is suitable for picking up swedes.”
Ideas for improvements came up all the time, and Nisap therefore only manufactured 50-100 units of this model. The next models were a light model with cleaning grid and an extra-large model with two cleaning grids respectively.
The latter was sold to machine contractors and large farms. It was said to be the best in the market. However, as the price was high, it did not sell very well. More advanced machines with container for picking up the beets were required. This would mean a serious development work, which the expected sale could not justify. The production stopped in 1970.
In 2015, Logitrans bought a Beet harvester, which had been in use until a few years earlier. You meet this Beet harvester in the Logitrans Museum!