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Area corn dried, stored and screened at CHS
Published Thursday, December 4, 2008
When driving west of Fergus Falls along Highway 210, as a person approaches the CHS complex at French, one sees a huge pile of corn off in the distance. That stockpile amounts to 1.5 million bushels.
“The test weight is a little lighter this year, compared to previous years,” said Rich Cole, grain merchandizer for CHS, “by about two pounds per bushel.”
It’s been busy in recent weeks at CHS, with delivery of corn, grain drying, storing and screening at the complex between Fergus Falls and Foxhome.
“The drying process here at CHS made corn a little more brittle,” Cole said. “We’ll screen out much of the broken corn.”
Starting in mid-December, corn deliveries will commence to the ethanol plant northwest of Fergus Falls. Those deliveries, said Cole, will continue through January 2009. CHS started the corn stockpiling about mid-November.
The good news this fall was that corn is in good shape. The bad news, for many farmers, was the high moisture content of their corn.
CHS can dry 7,000 bushels of corn per hour, based on five (percentage) points, according to Troy Hoff, terminal manager. The facility at French — formerly known as Cenex Harvest States Cooperatives — has a massive corn dryer at its facility west of Fergus Falls and down the road from the municipal airport. CHS uses a continuous-flow tower dryer system of operations.
Minnesota farmers, including those in Otter Tail County, nearly wrapped up harvest this past week. Minimal amounts of precipitation across the state allowed harvest progress of corn to move towards completion.
“The freeze of standing water allowed for many farmers to get into their fields and complete the corn harvest here in Otter Tail County,” said Extension Educator Doug Holen.
Freezing temperatures throughout the state, however, have continued to hinder some farmers’ ability to till the soil and apply fertilizer.
“This time of year farmers try to not only till the soil but also put in some fertilizer. This allows for two less steps in spring 2009,” Holen said.
The average temperature for the week was 26.6 degrees, 3.3 degrees above normal. Statewide topsoil moisture supplies as of Friday, Nov. 28, were one percent very short, six percent short, 77 percent adequate and 16 percent surplus.
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