This is something that i’ve noticed in my job as an industrial farmer.

When growing chickpeas we use an special implement to cut the chickpea plant at a certain stage of growth to accelerate the drying process. By doing this you stop the natural cycle of the plant and thus the grain does not develop as much as it would by just letting it complete it’s cycle. But the grain dries much faster and is ready to be harvested earlier.

So why do we do this? It’s because the grain prices are better the sooner you harvest, so you make more profit by using more fuel to cut the plant and losing production. So every grower is racing others to harvest as soon as possible (some even start planting much earlier than the ideal date) and losing a lot of actual grain production by doing so.

So in summary; we use an extra implement, use extra fuel (imagine the amount of fuel used in tens of thousands of hectares…) AND get less yields because the market incentivizes us to do it.

EDIT: Forgot to say that by not accelerating the harvest process, you risk that grain buyers bins reach their max capacity and no one buys your grain!