I don't Understand why we need to shovel dirt onto the conveyor

[King Nothing]

you still need a grinder or sometthing to wash the dirt, so why not put a chunk on it and let the grinder do the work? i really dont understand people's Thinking sometimes

[Namari944]

the harvester? one conveyor taking dirt chunks put onto it with a shovel leading to a harvester works wonderfully. i've just been harvesting ore and selling it and i've made a few thousand coins in a short time and im fairly early game. im loving that you can shovel directly onto the conveyor belt.

[King Nothing]

You can Put a Chunk Directly on the harvestor.

[Namari944]

well that might be a nice addition, but you can;t shovel a chunk directly into one. so you'd have to put the dirt into a bucket, dump it out, then manually put it into the harvester as is. not into that.

[Goobs]

I would assume the design is because people usually don't put their harvesters neat The Good Dirt™, they put them on the surface near water. And The Good Dirt™ is a pain to transport by hand.

[[VF] November]

I used a Goliath Drill to dig a hole from the ceiling into my mine, then ran a pipe down it to power my harvester on bedrock layer. I shovel onto conveyors that feed my harvester. Eventually, I'll make another shaft with vertical conveyors to send the resources to my sorter.

I'm in Dreck's Quarry and just made 40k in ~2 hours yesterday, some of which was sorting out accidental pipe pasta.

[grandmaMax]

This feature was added to bridge a gap in the early game: When a player owns a harvester / conveyors but does not own a ram drill.
Hope that clears things up :)