To keep grain in good condition, keep bins clean. Then, store the best and sell the rest.

Harvest isn't completely finished until the crop is successfully sold, said Bill Casady, extension agricultural engineer, University of Missouri. "Get rid of poor quality grain first-it's the hardest to keep in storage," Casady added. "My motto is: store the best and sell the rest."

Safe grain storage starts with a clean bin. A sanitary bin, Casady would say.

"Sanitation begins with cleaning and ends with cleaning," he said. "Not only bins and grain handling equipment, but the area around the bin site. Keep it free of spilled grain, weeds and other vegetation. Piles of old grain attract insects and also act as inoculants for molds and fungi; they are there and ready to start spoiling grain."

"We put clean, dry grain in clean, dry bins and try to cool it down as quickly as possible," said Vernon Egbert, who manages 130,000 bushels of grain storage on his farm near McCune, in southeastern Kansas. "When we empty a bin, we clean it thoroughly.

"My bins have semi-false perforated floors, so they are a little hard to clean. But we sweep them out well and spray the inside of the bin with Reldan [Chlorpyrifos-methyl]. I like to keep a bin open for a few days after we spray, to let it dry and air out."

After this season, Egbert may need to find another product to make residual surface treatment of his grain bins.

"Both Reldan and methoxychlor are being phased out," said Jason Paris, MFA crop protection products manager. "Both need to be off dealers' shelves by the end of 2005. That won't leave much labeled for bin disinfecting."

Tempo (Cyfluthrin) is still labeled for grain-bin disinfecting, but Tempo is a restricted-use pesticide, to be applied only by pest control operators and commercial applicators.

Sanitation is doubly important with temporary or emergency storage. Converted machine sheds and other structures pressed into service as grain storage invariably need cleaning and often need modifications to safely hold grain. "Such structures often are less secure from birds and rodents, too," said Casady.

 "Now is the time to get bins ready for receiving new-crop grain," he added. "Likewise, after harvest starts, it's good housekeeping to clean combines, trucks and grain handling components at the end of the day or whenever a job is completed, to help eliminate forgotten piles of grain that can make a home for pests."

Grain quality rarely improves in storage, noted Casady. Even in the best of storage, the goal is simply to preserve the original quality of grain as well as possible.

"A watched bin doesn't spoil. Spoilage in a bin can result in all of the grain being discounted, and that can add up to real money," said Bill Casady. "With corn priced at $2 per bushel, a 10-percent dock on 8,000 bushels amounts to $1,600 you don't get to put in your pocket."

You can find more on the subject on the web, at www.ipm.missouri.edu/ipcm.

A word about wet wheat

If you're planning a second crop after wheat harvest, you may want to take a look at combining wheat at higher-than-normal moisture and bin-drying the crop, using natural air. Harvesting wheat early can shave a few days off getting that second crop in the ground.

"But harvesting high-moisture wheat can be tricky," said Bill Casady. "For one thing, you're harvesting in hot weather, so you can't cool the crop as well or as quickly with natural air. Also, high-moisture wheat is harder to thresh; you'll need more aggressive combine settings: faster cylinder speeds and closer concave clearances. But that can result in more damaged wheat, which will not store well and can complicate drying."

"We do a lot of double-cropping soybeans and sunflowers after wheat, so we often cut wheat a little wet," said Mel Gerber, Morgan County, Mo. "But we don't harvest wheat above 22 percent moisture very often, although we are set up to dry wheat. We've tried combining wheat wetter than 22 percent, but we won't do that again. Wheat wetter than that takes extra caution and very careful handling. One problem is, we have trouble with the wheat getting too dry."

"It's easy to over-dry wheat, and when you over-dry grain, you are giving away money," agreed Bill Casady. "Also, wheat dries more unevenly in a bin than larger-seeded grains. Airflow is more restricted, so you'll need to dry wheat in relatively shallow layers."

High-moisture wheat must be dried quicklyÑwithin about a week of harvestÑto prevent spoilage. And, as Gerber said, about 22 percent moisture is about the top limit that can be successfully air dried.

"But wheat as wet as 22 percent can be dried in a layer about 3.5 feet deep, using natural air at airflow rates of about 6 cubic feet per bushel (cfm/bu)," added Casady. "Layer depths can be increased by about a foot for each point of moisture below 22 percent." (See the table below)

"Handling high-moisture wheat is a challenge," admitted Casady. "But from I-70 north, there are only about 102 days between normal wheat harvest and the first killing frost. By harvesting wheat early and using artificial drying, you can add a week or 10 days to the growing season for the second crop."