Grain Handling Equipment
The United States has some of the strictest environmental and governmental regulations placed on agriculture in the world, often making U.S. commodities more expensive than competitors’. Still, Oklahoma-based Plains Grains Inc. works hard to market U.S. wheat for producers, ensuring a high-quality product for buyers willing to pay more for a U.S. product.
Odds are that if you haven’t already purchased at least one new grain bin for next fall, you’ve shopped and priced. And if you haven’t shopped and priced, you have at least thought about if you should add to your grain handling system before the 2010 harvest.
One of the favorite products picked by Farm Progress editors at fall farm shows was GSI’s Binspector. Experts say it could revolutionize grain monitoring in storage.
Perhaps your grain moving equipment is tired or outdated. Companies constantly come up with new ways for you to invest in making it easier and faster to move grain.
Seeing is believing. The only thing better than following the journey of the dummy in these pictures would be viewing it in person.
Companies continue scrambling to provide big operators more size and volume at harvesting. The new products at the fall farm shows were proof positive that companies are looking for ways to help farmers get grain into the elevator or storage faster.
In 2008, just one year before the harvest that lasted through Christmas, Effingham, Ill., farmer Gary Wachtel boosted his wet holding capacity and installed a new tower dryer.
What would grain experts like to see you do to reduce grain storage issues?
This year when Jeff Phillips harvested replicated plots, he didn’t have to line up someone with a weigh wagon. And because the plots were only 100 feet long, he was wary of relying on just using the weight recorded by the yield monitor on the combine. Instead, he was able to get accurate weights from a grain cart that the combine dumped into before corn was dumped out of the cart into another wagon or truck and taken to storage.
Maybe all you need to make your grain handling system work better for you is a better-designed, drive-over unloading hopper. Or maybe you’re looking for ways to handle your grain mor efficiently.
Coming off a tough season for storing grain, you will likely pay close attention to grain in the bin this year. Taking good care of grain never goes out of style.
Did your grain storage system do everything you wanted this fall? Could you keep the combine running? Did you have enough wet storage capacity? Are your bins set up with aeration fans to allow you to dump hot and cool in a bin? Is your system sized right for your operation?
At a small booth in the next-to-last row of the outdoor exhibits at this year’s 3i Show in Dodge City, a relatively new company, AYGlobal, conducted perhaps the quietest North American launch of a new product ever.
The farmer on the phone wasn’t sure where to start. After limping through last fall, he wanted to upgrade his grain handling capacity. But should he trade dryers or add more wet holding capacity?
Out of sight, out of mind — that worked for grain drying for the better part of the past decade in many areas. Suddenly, out-of-date, worn-out and just plain inefficient grain dryers stick out like a sore thumb. That’s because one of the toughest harvest seasons in 35 years made every quirk, crack and shortcoming of your dryer painfully obvious last fall. As a result, phones are ringing off the hook in any business that sells grain dryers.
Four years ago Jack Maloney, Brownsburg, and his son, Peter, and other helpers were working on their grain leg. Their mission was to switch from handling corn to binning soybeans.
Multitudes of wheat growers, especially in West and North Texas, depend upon custom harvesters from Midwest states to dip down into Texas and harvest their wheat each spring.
Gary Porter farms about as far north as you can possibly farm and still be in the state of Missouri. The Mercer County farmer likes to get his corn harvest under way in September on an early schedule that would be more typical for a corn grower in the southern part of the state.
Gary Porter anticipates a swift and smooth harvest of his 2011 corn crop. The modern grain handling system, installed on his farm in north Missouri in 2010, has given him the extra confidence to make that prediction.
About $6,000 of more than $9,000 raised by the Randolph Southern FFA and Randolph County supporters went to buy tubes everyone hopes never get used. Yet farmers and rescue personnel are glad they’re there, just in case.
With harvest winding down, your job of managing grain is just beginning. Job No. 1 should be to core each bin. Coring refers to pulling out one or more loads from the center of the bin.
The first chore was getting corn in the bin. Widespread pockets of mold, frosted corn and plain wet corn made harvest challenging for many, and a nightmare for some.