It normally takes about three or four months for crops to mature. The cutting and gathering of the matured food crop are called harvesting. In large fields, wheat and paddy crops are cut by a motorized machine called a harvester.

After harvesting the crop, the next step is threshing. The process of beating out the grains from the harvested crop plants is called threshing. It is done by beating with a flail or by the action of a threshing machine.

The process of separating grain or heavier component from lighter component i.e. chaff with the help of wind is called winnowing. In this process, a mixture of grain and chaff is dropped from a height so that the wind blows away the lighter chaff and forms a heap at some distance away. Threshing (beating out the grains from the harvested crop plants) is the step in the chaff-removal process that comes before winnowing.