A late season investment to maximise profits

by Rodie Jelleberg, Dryer Division Head at Superior Grain Equipment

Late planting seasons present many challenges. The old saying goes, "time is money," and that couldn’t be more on the money when it comes to a late harvest.  Racing the weather and not being able to get crops off is stressful enough but having them spoil due to improper storage and conditioning is worse yet.

So how does one get some peace of mind when it comes to harvest time?  One way is to install a grain dryer into your system.
 

Grain dryers benefit your operation in many ways.  Most importantly you have the option of being able to get into the field sooner, which works two-fold:

1) You're getting the jump on harvest.  Starting earlier gives you the ability to get all the crop off before the bad weather sets in and possibly prevents you from getting the last few fields off until spring. It’s heartbreaking to see all that hard work you put in during the season hindered by an early snowstorm that makes it impossible to get the remainder of the crop off.

2) You're lessening your field loss.  Research has shown that when it comes to corn harvest specifically, taking the crop off at 23-26 percent moisture is ideal.  Field loss increases significantly as you take the crop off below 23 percent.

In-bin or on-bin drying systems have limitations when it comes to the amount of moisture you can take out of the grain when it is sitting in storage.  Typically, 18-19 percent is the highest moisture that you can safely be able to condition down in a bin.  That’s if you have enough time and ideal drying days to be able to use natural air drying in the bin.

Despite the clear advantages of dryers, we still receive lots of questions from producers and would like to take time to address them, along with a few common misconceptions:

Producer: "Grain dryers are too expensive."
Superior: We hear this all the time.  Granted grain dryers are a higher ticket item but they’re an investment.  What is the cost of your field loss if you’re waiting to harvest until the corn is at 19 percent in the field?  What is it costing you in lost profits when the last fields you’re harvesting are already dried down to 12-13 percent?

What is the cost of drying at the elevator?  You’d be surprised how quickly a dryer investment pays off when you look at even small amounts of grain being run through your system.  If you had 100,000 bushels of grain to dry and you needed to take five points off and the elevator charges a nickel-per-point-per-bushel, your drying costs would be US $25,000.  If you could dry it yourself at a nickel-per-bushel-per-five-point-removal, your drying costs are only $5,000.  You just saved yourself $20,000.

Read more HERE.

 

The Global Miller
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