BRANDON – An innovation in grain handling does not involve steel or concrete. It uses big plastic bags.
Small bags are nine feet wide, 200 feet long and hold 8,000 bushels. The larger bags are the same width, but 250 feet long. They hold 10,260 bu.
Each bag is packed with grain by a machine designed for that purpose. The bags can sit for years if required, but cannot be transported. When it comes time to move the grain, another specialized machine unloads the bag into a semi-trailer or grain cart.
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The disposable bags cost about eight cents per bu. Machinery and energy costs for loading and unloading add to the cost.
Each bag is made of three layers of polyethylene, with a thickness of 9.3 mil. (One mil is 1/1000 th of an inch.)
The outer two layers block ultraviolet rays, while the inside layer is black to keep sunlight off the grain.
The bags are designed to stretch up to 10 percent during filling to ensure a solid pack and prevent bursting.
According to the manufacturers, the filled bags are sealed airtight, which eliminates the need for chemicals in the stored grain.
Equipment needed to load or extract grain from the bags is manufactured by two companies in Argentina: Mainero and Akron.
Aaron Yeager is the Canadian dealer. Last summer, he imported both brands of grain bag systems and began selling them from his 4,700 acre farm at Lake Lenore, Sask.
“The idea for storing grain in plastic bags goes back to the 1990s when countries like Argentina and Australia started growing grain on millions of acres that had always been used exclusively for grazing livestock,” he said. “The land went into grain production almost overnight.”
Five crops in three years
Yeager said Argentina quickly went into a high production rotation that continuously gives farmers five crops every three years. They needed a new grain handling system to keep up with the massive flow of grain and they needed it immediately so conventional concrete and steel systems were low on the priority list.
“Their problem was that many of these regions had no history of grain production like we have in Western Canada. They had no on-farm infrastructure for handling grain. No bins. No local elevators. No railway designed to haul grain. So they needed some kind of system and they needed it quick,” said Yeager.
He said devising a way to stuff grain into bags was relatively easy for both companies.
Yeager importd both the Mainero 2230 bagger and the Akron 9250 bagger.
He said both versions can fill up to 12,000 bu. per hour and can handle wheat, corn, beans, canola and most other crops grown in Canada.
Both brands of bagger sell for $18,000.
Where the Mainero and Akron brands differ is how the grain is extracted.
Yeager likened the Akron E180T extractor to a toothpaste tube roller. It rolls the bag up from one end and pulls it out the other end. It has a 16 inch auger, and can fill a super B from the bag in about 20 minutes.
The Akron extractor sells for $25,000.
“The Mainero 2330 extractor is more like a bin sweep. It has a 10-inch spike auger lead that follows the contour of the ground inside the bag. It can fill a super B from the bag in about 25 minutes. We sell the 2330 for $22,000.”
Yeager said either extractor can serve several farms because it’s only needed when shipping grain.
“But you need the filler all through harvest, so it’s hard to share that machine. Our average so far is we sell one extractor for every two fillers. We’ve sold about 60 extractors and about 120 fillers since last summer. “
Yeager said most prairie farmers he’s sold to have bought the 8,000 bu. bag.
Each bag costs $610 and weighs 270 pounds when empty.
The bags are chemically engineered to be recycled and cannot be reused for grain storage. In other countries where they have been in use since the 1990s, the used bags are converted into garbage bags. Yeager said the same will likely happen in Canada.
The bags are guaranteed by the manufacturer to provide safe storage for 18 months.
“That’s their written guarantee. But the company feels that in our climate and our location, a bag should be good for three or four years because we don’t have the UV and high temperature problems.”
Yeager said although the concept is similar to silage bags, the plastic compound in the grain storage bags is designed specifically for grain.
Because the floor of the bag is made of the same plastic, users must be sure that each bag rests on a smooth, level surface with no sharp edges and on a site that’s high and dry.
Pests, such as rats and mice are not an issue for grain in the bags, according to Yeager.
“When the bags are sealed airtight, there’s no oxygen to support animal life. A grain kernel in storage is a living entity. It consumes all available oxygen in the bag and replaces it with CO2 gas. Once that happens, nothing lives in there. Any insect or rodent that may have been loaded into the bag will die.”
A bag can be opened, partially unloaded and then sealed airtight again.
Yeager said allowable moisture is another frequently asked question.
“For cereals, anything at 17 percent moisture or drier is not a problem. If the moisture is higher than 17 percent, there’s a chance it might go into fermentation. It’s not a certainty, but it might very well happen.”
He said on his farm they bagged grain at 23 percent and got away with it, but were lucky probably because the grain was only stored through the cold months of October to January.
“I wouldn’t recommend anything above 17 percent moisture,” he said.
“There’s not a lot of research yet on canola, so we recommend 10 percent, just to be on the safe side.”
The need for a low-cost, versatile grain handling system like this is obvious for regions of Argentina and Australia where large tracts of land have been converted to grain.
But on the Canadian Prairies, with a long history of grain handling infrastructure, why would farmers be interested?
“Because producers are continuing to invest heavily in steel grain bins that sit empty most years.”
Yeager said it does not make good economic sense to invest in grain bins to accommodate the high yields farmers experience only periodically. It’s smarter to keep the investment low for surge capacity, he added.
“When we first thought about doing this as a sideline business, we figured we might sell five or six units a year. We sold 30 units in the first year. The need for this is obviously greater than we had figured.”
Yeager has a complete bagging system set up at the Farm Progress Show, which runs in Regina from June 20-22. He had hoped to run continuous demonstrations of the bagger and the extractor.
For more information, contact Aaron Yeager at 306-368-2266 or visit www.grainbagsystem.com.
