Here’s a harvest management dilemma for you. You have a nice-looking crop on rented land, 10 miles from the home farm, with two combines, one grain cart and only three men to do everything. What’s your next move?
To Humboldt, Saskatchewan, producer Reg Puetz, that’s an easy one. He’d pack the grain into 9.3 mil polyethylene bags and leave it in the field until manpower, equipment and available time allow him to pick it up. Puetz is an early adopter of a grain bagging system that promises to keep grain in good condition in the field for up to two years.
Puetz, who’s bagged canola, wheat, barley and oats over the past three harvests, sees a good fit for his operation.
“We have lots of rented land, and you just can’t justify the cost of grain bins for all that rented land because you don’t know if you’re going to be farming that land from one year to the next,” he says. “I think that the interest on the grain bins alone would pay for the bagging.”
Based on his experience, Puetz is a believer in the system’s ability to maintain the grade of the grain stored and keep it beetle-free. He’s bagged malt barley as high as 16 to 17 percent moisture. Periodic re-checks with the maltsters always came back positive. For Puetz, the extraction process is relatively straightforward. He moves grain from bag to truck at about the same pace as operating a 10-inch auger, if not faster.
Puetz bought his grain bagging system from Craig Yeager with Grain Bags Canada in Lake Lenore, Saskatchewan. While the idea of environmentally stable field storage might be new in North America, this technology has been a long time coming.
“In Argentina in the past there was no real infrastructure for hauling grain,” says Yeager. “The grain bag took what had been exclusively cattle land and made it into grain land. They store more grain in bags than we produce in all of Canada. You fly over that part of Argentina and it’s nothing but grain bags as far as the eye can see.”
Yeager’s basic package sells for $48,000. That gets you a unit that moves grain into the bag, an extractor that gets grain out of the bag plus a supply of 9.3 mil (0.36 inches) three-layer polyethylene bags. Each bag can hold up to 12,000 bushels of grain. For smaller volumes, simply cut as needed and seal the bag shut. The sealing and the thickness of the bag, Yeager explains, allow the grain to maintain quality over time.
“The plastic will actually deflect heat,” he says, “so the grain will be cool and moisture will stay the same. Once the bag is sealed, the grain will consume the oxygen in the bag within 24 hours. Since insects need oxygen to survive, you don’t get bugs in the grain.”
For Yeager’s growing list of customers – 250 of them in 2008 alone – the key selling points are cost savings, convenience and flexibility. It might be some time before plastic grain bags carpet North America’s grain-growing regions, but given the high cost of fuel, equipment and storage, this retailer expects to stay busy.
Grain bags – Questions to ask
To Grant McLean, it’s not difficult to see why growers would take a shine to grain bagging. “The real advantages are for larger producers, especially farmers who don’t have storage,” says McLean, cropping management specialist with Saskatchewan’s Ministry of Agriculture. “It can improve field efficiency in that you’re not trucking grain long distances.”
As part of their due diligence on grain bag systems, McLean recommends that producers satisfy themselves on several issues.
1. Durability of plastic. The quality of the polyethylene is obviously key. While grain bags have a track record in places like Argentina and Australia, standing up to North American conditions could be a different proposition. How well, for example, can the plastic resist the efforts of a hungry deer? If you happen to lay the bag on a rough patch of ground, could it tear open?
2. Insurance. Check with your insurance provider to determine precisely how claims of loss would be treated, compared to permanent grain storage.
3. Disposal. Can bags be recycled once used, and if so, where?
4. Grain condition. “To me, one of the unknowns is where the moisture in the grain goes,” says McLean. “I don’t know anybody who’s done research on that. What can happen with hot spots in the grain over periods of time? I’d think that most producers would look at grain bags for relatively short-term storage: three months, four months, maybe up to six months.”
For more information, and a slide show of how bagging and extraction work, visit www.grainbagsystem.com.
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Here’s a harvest management dilemma for you. You have a nice-looking crop on rented land, 10 miles from the home farm, with two combines, one grain cart and only three men to do everything. What’s your next move?
To Humboldt, Saskatchewan, producer Reg Puetz, that’s an easy one. He’d pack the grain into 9.3 mil polyethylene bags and leave it in the field until manpower, equipment and available time allow him to pick it up. Puetz is an early adopter of a grain bagging system that promises to keep grain in good condition in the field for up to two years.
Puetz, who’s bagged canola, wheat, barley and oats over the past three harvests, sees a good fit for his operation.
“We have lots of rented land, and you just can’t justify the cost of grain bins for all that rented land because you don’t know if you’re going to be farming that land from one year to the next,” he says. “I think that the interest on the grain bins alone would pay for the bagging.”
Based on his experience, Puetz is a believer in the system’s ability to maintain the grade of the grain stored and keep it beetle-free. He’s bagged malt barley as high as 16 to 17 percent moisture. Periodic re-checks with the maltsters always came back positive. For Puetz, the extraction process is relatively straightforward. He moves grain from bag to truck at about the same pace as operating a 10-inch auger, if not faster.
Puetz bought his grain bagging system from Craig Yeager with Grain Bags Canada in Lake Lenore, Saskatchewan. While the idea of environmentally stable field storage might be new in North America, this technology has been a long time coming.
“In Argentina in the past there was no real infrastructure for hauling grain,” says Yeager. “The grain bag took what had been exclusively cattle land and made it into grain land. They store more grain in bags than we produce in all of Canada. You fly over that part of Argentina and it’s nothing but grain bags as far as the eye can see.”
Yeager’s basic package sells for $48,000. That gets you a unit that moves grain into the bag, an extractor that gets grain out of the bag plus a supply of 9.3 mil (0.36 inches) three-layer polyethylene bags. Each bag can hold up to 12,000 bushels of grain. For smaller volumes, simply cut as needed and seal the bag shut. The sealing and the thickness of the bag, Yeager explains, allow the grain to maintain quality over time.
“The plastic will actually deflect heat,” he says, “so the grain will be cool and moisture will stay the same. Once the bag is sealed, the grain will consume the oxygen in the bag within 24 hours. Since insects need oxygen to survive, you don’t get bugs in the grain.”
For Yeager’s growing list of customers – 250 of them in 2008 alone – the key selling points are cost savings, convenience and flexibility. It might be some time before plastic grain bags carpet North America’s grain-growing regions, but given the high cost of fuel, equipment and storage, this retailer expects to stay busy.
Grain bags – Questions to ask
To Grant McLean, it’s not difficult to see why growers would take a shine to grain bagging. “The real advantages are for larger producers, especially farmers who don’t have storage,” says McLean, cropping management specialist with Saskatchewan’s Ministry of Agriculture. “It can improve field efficiency in that you’re not trucking grain long distances.”
As part of their due diligence on grain bag systems, McLean recommends that producers satisfy themselves on several issues.
1. Durability of plastic. The quality of the polyethylene is obviously key. While grain bags have a track record in places like Argentina and Australia, standing up to North American conditions could be a different proposition. How well, for example, can the plastic resist the efforts of a hungry deer? If you happen to lay the bag on a rough patch of ground, could it tear open?
2. Insurance. Check with your insurance provider to determine precisely how claims of loss would be treated, compared to permanent grain storage.
3. Disposal. Can bags be recycled once used, and if so, where?
4. Grain condition. “To me, one of the unknowns is where the moisture in the grain goes,” says McLean. “I don’t know anybody who’s done research on that. What can happen with hot spots in the grain over periods of time? I’d think that most producers would look at grain bags for relatively short-term storage: three months, four months, maybe up to six months.”
For more information, and a slide show of how bagging and extraction work, visit www.grainbagsystem.com.
Back to Top Back to Table of ContentsWrite a comment
- Required fields are marked with *.