Poplar Headers/Farming Simulator 17
A Poplar Header is a type of Forage Header in Farming Simulator 17. Its purpose is to harvest Poplars and manufacture Wood Chips. This is the only tool in the game capable of working with Poplars, and is the only thing you can do with your Poplar crops.
A Poplar Header works the same way as most other harvester/forage headers in the game, except it processes different materials. Poplars are turned into Wood Chips, which can be sold at the local Sawmill for a profit. The quantity of Wood Chips produced from a single hectare of Poplars is immense, larger than any yield from any other crop. This requires using very large containers (and possibly several of them) when harvesting your poplar fields.
The base game only offers a single Poplar Header model, the New Holland 130FB. This header is very narrow, and imposes a very low Work Speed limit, which means that the poplar harvest takes a very long time. As mentioned above, there is no other way to process Poplars - although there are other ways to create Wood Chips (via Forestry).
List of Poplar Headers
Farming Simulator 17 offers only one model Poplar Header. Also, there is no other tool in the game that can do the same job a Poplar Header can do.
| Name | Price | Maint. cost per day |
Working Width (m) |
Max Work Speed (km/h) |
Power Consumption (hp) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| New Holland 130FB | 25,000 | 60 | 2.0 | 8 | 68 |
Cutting Poplars
- Main article: Poplars (Farming Simulator 17)
Poplars are a new type of crop introduced in Farming Simulator 17. These are small trees planted in rows on a field, like any other crop. When they're ripe, they can be harvested with a Poplar Header - and only with a Poplar Header. The resulting material from this harvest is Wood Chips, a material previously only acquired from chopping up Trees.
An unplowed, unfertilized hectare of Poplars produces a massive amount of Wood Chips - somewhere around 110,000 liters. At an average price of about $300 per 1000 liters, this amounts to $33,000 per hectare of Poplars you cut - a very hefty profit compared to any other crop. As with all other crops, this is doubled if you properly plow and fertilize the field. Furthermore, a field can be planted with twice the density of Poplars as normal, doubling the yield from the harvest yet again. Thus, a single hectare of Poplars can potentially produce 440,000 liters of Wood Chips, for a profit of around $132,000.
Due to the massive yields involved, it is smart to use a very large container for this job. Using a smaller container means it has to be emptied or replaced very often. This can complicate the issues explained below.
Unfortunately, the massive profits from Poplar Harvesting are not without caveats. For starters, planting Poplars takes a long time due to the very slow working speed of the Tree Planter machine (the Damcon PL-75). Then, once the poplars have finished growing, the New Holland 130FB Poplar Header is also very slow.
However the real problem is with the header's 3D model itself: When the 130FB is lowered to the ground to cut the Poplars, its front teeth will constantly dig into the ground, causing the Forage Harvester to veer off in strange directions, and confusing Hired Workers altogether. Thus, the Poplar Harvest must be done manually in order to prevent catastrophic errors, and even manual driving with this tool is very frustrating.
One solution that seems to help is to avoid towing a Container behind the harvester itself - instead using a secondary vehicle to tow a container next to the harvester as it works the field. This changes the center of mass on the vehicle, making it less likely for the problem to occur. Of course, this requires you to manually drive that second vehicle to keep up with the harvester at all times.
Another solution is to get a modded Poplar Harvester model that does not cause this problem.
Of course, as explained above, the rewards for doing the harvest - even when taking this problem into account - might actually be worth all of the hassle.