Fast shifts in temperatures have led to
some tricky stored grain management decisions in the USA's North Dakota region, according to experts, writes Mikkel Pates for the Grand Forks Herald.
“The answer was yes, because we were
running temperatures consistently above-normal,” Hellevang says. “I normally
recommend we start air drying when we have average temperatures, about 40
degrees,” meaning daytime temperatures consistently in the 50s, even though
evening temperatures might dip into the 20s.
Read more HERE.
Ken Hellevang, North Dakota State
University Extension Service agricultural engineer and specialist in grain
storage, says the recent temperatures in the 70s brought in a lot of calls from
farmers, wondering whether they should turn the fans on to dry grain in bins.
Some grain on the top of bins and
particularly along south walls warmed up, but farmers can’t leave the grain
warm. After the outside temperatures drop, farmers need to run aeration fans to
cool the grain again to avoid spoilage.
“The goal should be to keep the grain
between 30 and 40 degrees as we go into spring and early summer,” says
Hellevang, who spoke March 19 at the Western Corn Belt Precision Ag Conference
in Sioux Falls, S.D., sponsored by South Dakota State University in Brookings.
Hellevang says he has gotten calls from
farmers who put corn into grain bins at 17 to 19 percent moisture.
“At that moisture content, it’s still too
wet to safely store corn at the warmer temperatures,” he says. “Keeping the
corn cool is very important.”
One of the only Extension Service grain
storage specialists for several states around, Hellevang says the storage
situation this year is similar across the region.
“Even as you went farther east in the Corn
Belt, we were seeing some of the same conditions,” he says. “I got some calls
out of Iowa, and farther east, seeing similar numbers.”
Read more HERE.
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