Grain Storage and Handling Webinar on 04/22/2020
1. Monitoring and Preventing Storage Issues
- Stored grain management techniques to prevent quality loss and enable flowable grain
- Steps to take when filling your bin
- Fall-Winter aeration strategies to keep grain in condition
- Monitoring tools and what the data mean
- Addressing warm and wet weather spells in the winter to spring time
- Warning signs that your grain is going out of condition
- Stored grain management practices to ensure quality
- What you should have done before you binned the grain
- What you can do to ensure grain remains flowable in storage
- How to monitor grain in storage
- Aeration recommendations to suppress insect pests and mold through the summer
- Insect pest thresholds to consider fumigation
- Grain sample conditions for you to consider selling
- Grain Storage Best Management Practices
Online Resource: Difficult Harvest Creates Grain Storage Hazards
Safety and Grain Quality Management from NGFA on Vimeo.
2. Treatment and Drying Solutions
- Drying inadequately dried grain binned in the fall
- Management strategies to prevent wet grain from going out of condition in fall-winter storage
- When can I begin to dry
- What methods can I use to dry
- Monitoring techniques to ensure wet grain doesn’t go out of condition in bin
- Natural air drying
- Drying inadequately dried grain binned in the fall
Online Resource: NDSU Extension Explains Natural-air Drying Concepts, Busts Myths
3. Identifying and Mitigating Safety
Issues
- Decision tree of how to safely unload a jammed bin
- Steps to take before your unload a bin
- Signs that might indicate you will have difficulty unloading your bin
- Quality assessment
- CO2
- Whom to contact when you have a problem getting grain out of your bin
- Supervisor
- Steps to take before you enter your bin
- The first option is to avoid entry if possible.For commercial operations it is important to follow SOP (standard operating procedures) for confined space and lock out /tag out. Each operation may have specialized SOPs because of their equipment, staff, and location. Safety entering the bin is possible but first it is important to de-energize unloading and loading equipment. In other words, you need to isolate this bin so nothing is allowed to move in or out. (Lock out/tag out). The next step is have the ability to extract the person entering the bin and have continuous communication. Some SOPs also have notification of local rescue/fire personal of the potential hazardous activity that will be undertaken.For most farming operations there might not a written procedure but using the same protocols for confined spaces and lock out/tag out will be the best option avoiding entrapment conditions.
- How to safely get grain flowing again from a bin
- Different bin configurations and blockage issues create procedures for safely getting the grain to flow again.The best course of action is to try to resolve the non-flowing condition from outside the bin whenever possible.
Make sure you have reviewed and are following the standard operation procedures (SOP) for these conditions.
Regardless of location, whenever you are in non-flowing grain condition, it is paramount for everyone to reset their priority from getting the grain out of the bin to keeping everyone safe. I cannot stress enough that the personal goals of everyone involved must change to safety as the first priority!
- Different bin configurations and blockage issues create procedures for safely getting the grain to flow again.The best course of action is to try to resolve the non-flowing condition from outside the bin whenever possible.
- How to safely remove crusted grain from bin walls
- Primary method is to remove crusted grain as it is exposed during the unloading process. Also refer back to entering the bin safely advice.Do not unload the entire bin and then tackle the crusted grain on the bin walls. This way creates a condition that is much more dangerous because of the volume of grain that could separated from the wall without warning and the person is position below grain mass attached to the wall.
Online Resource: Make Safety Your First Priority When Emptying Grain Bins
2019 US Ag Confined Space Related Injuries and Fatalities
Visit Purdue’s Website with additional information about Ag Confined Spaces
OSHA’s Website for Grain Handling https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/grainhandling/
Impacts due to COVID-19
This section covers areas as they relate to Monitoring and Preventing Storage Issues. Use the following questions to provide your insight into this area, use the question prompts to give additional information that will help your stakeholders with storage issues.
How COVID-19 will impact grain handling?
The NGFA’s “Safety Tips” series is published periodically as part of the Association’s continued commitment to safety in the workplace. These documents are designed to provide more information on certain types of hazards and suggested ways to protect employees through safety best practices.
Online Resource: National Grain and Feed Association Safety Tips: COVID-19
Recent News from Texas A&M AgriLife:
Grain market volatility surrounding COVID-19 causes uncertainty
SILO: Edge of the Real World follows Adam Fox, a young farmer, and Clay Althoff, a senior in high school, in Rising Sun, Indiana. After a grain entrapment shocks their small community, both of them grapple with the risks and rewards of a farmer’s life.
SILO: Short Documentary from Blood Orange Pictures on Vimeo.