Grain drying becomes issue for farmers

Like many area farmers these days, Vaughn Gross-Rhode is looking for drier times.

Soggy weather has delayed the harvest for grain producers like Gross-Rhode, who farms northwest of North Bend. It’s also affecting the moisture content -- something that could prove costly for farmers.

Rain and high humidity has kept corn and soybeans from drying to the percentage accepted by grain elevators. As a result, grain producers must look at mechanically drying grain on the farm or paying the fees for the elevator to do so.

“We’ve been cutting beans and putting them in a bin and trying to run the fans to try and dry them down so we can haul them to town,” Gross-Rhode said.

But as of Monday, Gross-Rhode was only half done harvesting his soybeans.

And that’s not to mention the corn.

“We’ve not started corn, because it’s just too wet to put it in a bin and run air. It wouldn’t dry down in this type of weather,” he said.

Corn needs to be dried to 15 percent moisture content for long-term storage and soybeans to 13 percent, said Tom Dorn, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln extension educator.

There’s another concern regarding soybeans.

“At this point in the year, there’s an increasing chance that we could have a snowstorm,” Dorn said, adding a wet snow could push the beans flat on the ground.

Farmers then could lose most of that crop.

So grain producers are combining what they can, even with the wet soil and wet crops, and thus harvesting well above the normal moisture content just to get it in the bin, Dorn said.

There are other concerns.

“Some folks don’t have enough drying bins to move their harvest ahead very quickly. That’s why they’re contacting me. They’re wanting to know what options they have. So I’m helping people make those decisions — whether it’s partially filling a bin so the grain can dry more quickly or looking at adding additional heat to the air that’s going into the grain with a burner,” Dorn said.

Some producers may not even be able to dry their corn — and perhaps even their soybeans — to a safe moisture content before really cold weather sets in. If farmers can’t get their grain dry enough, they’ll have to figure out how to keep it cold to prevent spoilage, he said.

Dorn recommends running aeration on the beans, selecting a day when the temperature will be at about 30 degrees Fahrenheit. He advises keeping the temperature uniform throughout the bin.

Farmers should climb up to the access hatch on the bin roof shortly after they start the fan. They then should lean into the hatch where they can feel and smell the air coming out.

“If there’s an odor in the air that would be an indication that there’s a hot spot somewhere in the bin,” he said.

That hot spot would be an indication of spoilage.

Farmers who detect either an odor or heat coming out they need to continue to aerate the grain for at least 24 hours — more if it’s a small fan — to cool the grain back down to ambient temperature.

“The goal is to find a day when it’s around 30 degrees and get the grain temperature back to 30 degrees,” Dorn said. “There’s two things you have control over when you have a grain bin on the farm — one is to dry the grain to a safe moisture content and the other is to manage the temperature of the grain by running the fan when air temperature is conducive to cooling the grain with the goal of keeping the grain at 30 degrees for as long as possible.”

Ideally, Gross-Rhode said, farmers would like to see their grain dry naturally.

But that might not happen so much this year.

“It might be as year that we have to pay for the drying charges,” Gross-Rhode said. “You don’t dictate anything to Mother Nature.”

Farmers wanting more information on grain drying may call Dorn at the UNL in Lancaster County Extension Office at (402) 441-7180. Dorn also has written three articles that estimate the time to dry grain under various weather conditions for a university Web site that posts farm-related information. The address is: http://cropwatch.unl.edu.