As this year’s harvest from hell staggers to a close, farmers in the northern grain belt are struggling to cope with high volumes of low quality, hard-to-handle grain that nobody wants to buy.
Piles of wheat and barley dot the landscape, exposed to the elements, while a lack of grain shipping has resulted in plugged elevators and a growing sense of frustration.
“I’ve never seen so much doom and gloom around here,” said Terry Hoda, who farms at Meath Park, northeast of Prince Albert, Sask.
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Hoda had just spent the morning on the phone, trying unsuccessfully to sell some canola.
Much of his wheat is piled on the wet ground, potentially losing quality, while some 7,000 bushels of wet canola sit in flat-bottomed bins, at risk of heating.
“I’m turning it every two or three days, moving it from one bin to another,” he said, adding one buyer advised him to mix his 15 percent moisture canola with the nine percent he took off early to end up with a 12 percent crop.
“I’ve never been faced with that choice before.”
Jim Metherell, a farmer from Lashburn, Sask., said he hopes grain movement picks up soon so he can move his grain into the elevator for drying.
He has an old batch dryer but said it would be a daunting task to run such large volumes of wheat through it.
“Especially with the way the price of propane is, I don’t see us doing much of that unless we really have to,” he said.
Bert Sutherland, who sells grain storage and drying equipment said he hears that attitude from a lot of producers.
“There is some concern and some interest in finding storage for the grain, but more often than not they’re saying ‘let’s just put it in a pile. It’s not worth that much so why spend the money,’ ” said Sutherland of Skyway Grain Systems Inc. “And I guess I can understand and agree with that.”
Commodities analyst Larry Weber said while farmers may not have much choice other than to store their grain outside, it’s definitely not a good situation.
“A lot of the wheat that went on the ground was No. 3 or 4 (CWRS),” he said. “The longer it’s out there, the greater the chance it’s going to downgrade.”
Norm Woodbeck, manager of quality assurance standards for the Canadian Grain Commission, said producers must be vigilant about protecting the quality of grain stored on the ground.
“Grain is not meant to sit outside,” he said.
“It’s a living organism and with the right temperature and moisture, it will start to ferment and there is very, very little tolerance for that kind of damage.”
Grain stored outside is also susceptible to damage from insects, rodents, birds and large animals. The grading system provides zero tolerance for deer, elk, antelope and moose excreta.
Trent Meyer of Behlen Industries said properly constructed temporary storage, consisting of a grain ring and secure covers, and located on high ground, can be effective.
“It’s certainly better than a 30-or 40-year-old galvanized bin with a leaky floor, or a rotting wood floor,” he said, adding there has been a marked increase in demand for ring systems this fall.
Information on grain drying is available on the CGC’s website. Here are key points to remember when drying wheat:
- Keep a close eye on the temperature, which for wheat should not exceed 60 C.
- Don’t overdry. Stop drying when moisture levels reach 14.5 percent. Additional moisture is lost during cooling.
- For wheat over 20 percent moisture, dry slowly. Don’t try to reduce moisture by more than six percentage points in one pass through the dryer. Reduce the drying temperature by 10 degrees for the last quarter of the process.
