CAFRE evaluations grain drying prices

Grain drying has not been a problem for many cereal farmers up thus far. Nonetheless, these circumstances may change over the times forward as growers push to complete off the spring barley harvest.

Met Éireann is now predicting that low strain close to Eire will deliver showers and longer spells of rain all through the weekend. Rain is probably going, which will likely be heavy at occasions in some areas.

The Faculty of Agriculture, Meals and Rural Enterprise (CAFRE) in Northern Eire has just lately reviewed the prices of drying grain.

These steps have been taken within the wake of fast-rising vitality prices.

CAFRE evaluate

Based on the evaluate work undertaken, it takes roughly 3L of gasoline to dry 1t of grain by 1%. Oil fired dryers are barely much less environment friendly and oil is presently costlier than gasoline.

With present oil worth on common £1.00/L (€1.17), this implies a value of £3.00 (€3.51) per 1% to dry grain.

Sometimes spring barley can come off the mix at 20% moisture. So it is going to value £15.00 (€17.55) to dry the grain all the way down to a 15% storage moisture stage.

That is purely the drying value and doesn’t contemplate the price of driving the dryer or the price of getting grain into and away from the dryer.

Value of drying grain

So, it’s clear that drying grain – if required at any stage – will likely be a big value this yr.

The load loss related to drying grain also needs to be taken into consideration.

Within the instance above, drying 1t of grain from 20% to fifteen% moisture, removes 58kg of water, leaving 942kg of grain. So, if grain is value £260/t (€305) that equates to a drop in worth of roughly £15.

Probably the most correct solution to assess prices is to look again at gas utilization and drying information from final yr, together with the price of driving the dryer and dealing with prices, as every system will likely be barely totally different.

Different decisions for storing grain are moist storage choices, utilizing both alkaline therapies, similar to urea-based merchandise or acid therapies similar to propionic acid.

Whereas these therapies might restrict the markets, when you intend to promote grain, they’re helpful in case you are feeding your personal grain or promoting farm to farm. Additionally they present some advantages when it comes to feed worth and don’t cut back the burden of moist grain. 

Nonetheless, alkaline merchandise have additionally risen in worth consistent with urea fertilisers, whereas propionic acid has roughly doubled in worth within the final two years because of provide shortages.