Grainswest - Spring 2019

Spring 2019 grainswest.com 23 15,000 bushels. His final storage bins can hold 84,000 bushels in addition to his grain bagging, which is anywhere from 50,000 to 90,000 bushels. So far, it’s a good system at his 2,500-acre farm. “We need about three of those four dry bins every day,” he said, adding they combine anywhere from 8,000 to 12,000 bushels under favourable conditions. “Once you get a dry bin full it takes a good eight hours to cool to a safe temperature [under 20°C] with an aeration fan. With four dry bins we will have two full and cooled by next morning. The third bin that we dried grain into through the night won’t be cool enough yet. So, by having four dry bins we can leave that third bin cool the next night so we don’t have any storage issues caused by warm grain. Having extra dry bins gives you that flexibility to get the grain cooled and in good condition.” He operates single-phase power on a 25-Kilovolt-Amp (kVA) transformer and has never had an outage, even when running his dryer, which pulls 75 amps and powers four aeration fans. “The only thing I didn’t try to do was some welding,” he said with a laugh. “Never yet have we been limited with our current power capacity.” Between last August and November, Keller’s total power bill was $2,107. Of that, $1,335 was directly related to his dryer and aeration fans. His utility costs of power and natural gas to dry his grain tallied 5.6 cents per bushel, four cents to natural gas and 1.6 cents in power. The previous two years his total was four cents per bushel, but the cost of doing business has increased. Overall, it requires one penny per bushel, per point of moisture in the drying process. In addition, Keller must also account for the carbon tax, which he says adds $1/acre onto his drying costs. His August 2018 gas bill was $4.537 per giga joule, of which gas was $1.10, transportation was $1.92 and $1.517 was the carbon tax. In September, his gas costs rose another 10 cents. While his sentiments towards the carbon tax are not as sharp as others, he does wish the province would recognize his own contribution to sequestering carbon. “I’d be happy to pay carbon tax—no problem doing it—if zero-till farmers like myself actually got paid fair market value for the carbon we sequester in the ground,” he said. “That could turn into, by calculations I’ve done, a $30 to 50 per acre revenue stream for us. I can understand why the government wouldn’t jump at that.” Keller, like others, custom dries grain, charging $75 per hour plus gas, which fluctuates between $5 and $7, depending on outside temperature, crop type and its moisture content. He often sees grain that’s tougher than normal, too. “Some guys don’t have options when they’re taking off wheat over 20 per cent, canola over 15 per cent; elevators aren’t ones to deal with that,” he said. “There’s not a lot of wear and tear on our system and I know our costs. It’s worth my time to do it.” Despite knowing his business costs, Keller cannot get his head around three-phase setups operating off a generator set (gen-set). “[Some farmers] are probably spending four to five times more on power than what I am,” he said, adding that his fuel cost is $7.20 per hour while others hover around $30 per hour in diesel. “From what I know about costs for fuel, you really better pencil that out better,” he said. “Guys say gen-sets on three- phase is better and all components are cheaper. You’re trying to save a few thousand now, but what are your costs long- term? I don’t think it’s always that well thought-out.” Keller recommends a thorough analysis of the farmyard to determine the best physical setup for the system. He kicks himself due to his tight laneway, which his dryer directly butts up against. “It’s handy for pulling in when you’re loading, but that’s about it,” he said. He also recommends looking for areas where you can eliminate manual labour. Keller said there are two types of farmers out there: ones who own a dryer, plan on using it and do use it annually and those who own a dryer and only use it if absolutely necessary. The latter simply befuddle him. “Those guys are typically on the low-tech side and they typically have to babysit it 24/7 and you can understand why,” he conceded. “You have to get some sleep sometime.” Further south, just off The Queen Elizabeth 2 Highway near Innisfail, Scott and Wade McAllister focus on malting barley at Antler Valley Farm. They manage 4,000 acres, including 1,450 of malt barley, their prize crop. They don’t wait for favourable skies to begin harvesting these days, either. They straight cut their barley in mid-to- late August and immediately begin drying. They recently upgraded their setup, too. In the past, the brothers were able to dry down 275 bushels per hour. However, that was when the farm was one-quarter the size it is today. They recently sold their old GSI dryer to a farmer near Kindersley, SK., purchasing a new setup from the same company. The big difference? The old system typically handled 275 bu/hr, while the new dryer is capable of handling anywhere from 1,000 to 1,300 bu/hr. Their new stack dryer setup carried a cost in the mid-six figures, which includes the dryer itself, two legs, three bins, concrete pads for everything to rest on as well as electrical wiring and a diesel-power gen-set. They saved additional money by taking care of what manual labour they could ahead of time. They chose a stack dryer because it’s easier on malt barley as plenum temperatures don’t run as high, keeping the germination intact. Their old dryer was short and single-tier, which means it took longer to dry grain due to the dryer’s size, but did maintain a consistent temperature throughout. The new stack dryer setup is taller and longer, and since hot air rises, the grain can be dried using a lower temperature. The three-burner setup can handle any combination of hot and cold, depending on what crop they’re drying as well as what the outside temperature is and how many points of moisture they plan to remove from the grain.