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BY GRIFFIN J. ELLIOT
and evenly distribute airflow. He did note
that the trend is gradually shrinking as
farms get larger and the practice becomes
more costly and time consuming.
Though most Canadian farms don’t
have the equipment to clean grain prior to
drying, and trucking it away for cleaning
is cost-prohibitive, Jian suggested the pro-
cess is not completely impractical. Though
cleaning will not influence airflow in
high-temperature drying where grain
depth is just a few centimetres, it will sig-
nificantly influence the airflow resistance
during in-bin drying or aeration where
grain depth is more than a few metres.
“I believe, if we get support, we can in-
troduce new technologies that are already
successful in other countries. We’ll do
studies here to apply the technologies
to our environment.” For example, Jian
suggested quick, low-cost drying could
benefit farmers harvesting late-season
canola. “That’s the technology we should
focus on,” he said.
Particularly beneficial in the barley
malting process, grain drying can save
time and increase profitability. Wade
McAllister of Antler Valley Farm has been
using a GSI dryer for roughly 10 years and
said it has paid for itself and then some.
“To make good malt quality here in
central Alberta, you have to try and get it
off the field as quickly as possible when it’s
ready to go. With our wet seasons during
harvest, every time you get a rain on a
crop, that will start to lower the grade
pretty quick.”
McAllister said that using the grain dry-
er is like having a third combine. “After
a rainstorm, as soon as that crop is able
to go through the combine, you can start
going at a higher moisture and just run it
through the dryer,” he said. “If you have a
dryer going, at least your combines can be
harvesting.
“We start taking it around 17 or 18 per
cent moisture, and we’ll bring it home and
run it through the grain dryer. We’ve got
to bring it down to 13.5, so that’s quite a
bit of time in the dryer. And when you’re
running a grain dryer on malt, you can’t
use high temperatures, so right around
that 49
°
to 52
°
C temperature. You don’t
want to get the grain any hotter than on
an average harvest day, which is 30
°
to
31
°
C max.”
McAllister estimated that only 25 per
cent of grain farmers in his area are using
similar technologies.
“Malt today is $5.00 to $5.50 a bushel,
and feed is $3.00 to $3.50. Two dollars a
bushel on 150,000 bushels—that’s quite a
bit of money, so it doesn’t take long to pay
for itself if you can save that grade.”
McAllister can’t imagine running his
farm without drying equipment. “We’ve
used it every year. Last year, the way the
harvest went, we ran about 200,000
bushels through it. But we finished last
year and a lot of guys weren’t able to say
that. I definitely think it’s because we own
a dryer.”
Photo:Fuji Jian
The University of Manitoba’s CanadianWheat Board Centre for Grain Storage is the sight of ongoing collaborative research involving the institution’s Department of
Biosystems Engineering.
Fall
2017
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