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Profit Planners: Avoid overreacting to one or two long, tough seasons.

March 9, 2020

3 Min Read
grain bin setup on farm
SEEK LONG-TERM SOLUTION: Make sure a short-term, knee-jerk reaction to a challenging year doesn’t shipwreck future plans for your grain handling facility.

Our 20-year-old dryer was a bottleneck last fall. Corn was over 20% moisture. Is it time to trade dryers? New or used? I wanted to do a major grain bin overhaul and upgrade dryers all at once, but I don’t think the lender will agree. A dependable dryer that is a size bigger would work short term. What do you think?

The Profit Planners panel includes David Erickson, farmer, Altona, Ill.; Mark Evans, Purdue University Extension educator, Putnam County, Ind.; Jim Luzar, retired Extension educator and landowner, Greencastle, Ind.; and Steve Myers, farm manager, Busey Ag Resources, LeRoy, Ill.

Erickson: A larger grain dryer, or perhaps more wet corn holding capacity, could help solve your harvest bottleneck. You are right to consider a used dryer, but make sure you know what you’re getting.

Another possible approach is to dry using full heat, with corn coming out of the dryer hot, and then cooling it down with the final 2% moisture removal in the storage bin. You must have a fan system that will do it. Larger fans are cheaper than a new dryer.

Evans: It would not be prudent to make dryer-changing decisions based on 2019. Unless this has been an ongoing issue, hang tight. If a good option presents itself, you could make a move at a better time when you have a better position. Don’t force the issue now. Realize that 2020 most likely will not be a repeat of 2019.

Luzar: Your short-term challenges with your dryer system require a long-term evaluation. 2019 corn harvest pressured many growers with older, less-efficient dryer systems.

Start your analysis by reviewing cropping plans for the next few years: A new dryer is a 20-year decision.

How will corn acres change in coming years? What is typical moisture removal for corn harvested? What type of drying system will be most useful for the operation?

Having a long-run plan will allow you to better evaluate options. Explore different drying technologies to determine what technology will make sense for your grain system. Visit with friends who’ve installed new dryers and see how they like their new setup. Spend some time and thought about how you will dry corn for the next 20 years!

I doubt that your dryer is worth much at 20 years old. Seeking a trade may limit your deals. It’s depreciated out. Sell it and keep purchase options more open. New or used? Used may work if someone is updating a good used dryer because of outgrowing drying capacity.

A solid discussion with your lender sounds in order. If the new grain system and dryer are plans that require an improved farm outlook, try to mitigate drying bottlenecks for this fall. In summary, the short-term challenge of 2019 requires a long-range perspective.

Myers: Is it a bottleneck every year or a one-time occurrence due to a late-maturing crop? Knowing that you have bigger plans, can you tough it out longer as you wait to build what you really desire? If deemed to be a “can’t wait” scenario, use a partial budget to compare new versus used. That budget compares the added costs and reduced returns against the added returns and reduced costs for each choice.

Lastly, you may consider a dryer you purchase today as temporary fix that could be resold if plans change.

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