 Jackson County, AL | Ours keep the combine moving as the most important thing, as getting it out is the most profitable part about grain farming. After that our money is made on the difference between harvest basis and post-harvest basis. We are in a grain-deficient area where we can't grow enough to support the chicken feed mills in the area. It can go from .25-.30 over down to .10-.20 under between mid-August and mid-November. By now we can get $5.00 for corn delivered to our easiest outlet to haul to where 3 loads/day is easy. Highest I can remember was $1.35 over in July a few years back. We put up two 30k bushel bins in 2014 at about $2/bu all in figuring on a 4 year payback at $.50/yr. Did better than expected and got the $2 in about 2.5 years so by year 3 they were making us money. Don't know of a year they didn't since but this is the first time we've filled one with beans. They're about half our total storage so we have made mistakes on other bins, just not with corn. We never finished cleaning the '23 crop out of some older, smaller bins in summer '24. Most we just ran till we were ready for the sweep, then filled them again in '24. That wasn't exactly great marketing on our part but we did it and can't undo it. All in all bins are a no-brainer here. We'd have to have a bagger if we didn't have them as hauling it all out of the field would be a no-go for finishing a crop in the same year its planted. |