Farming Podcast | Grain System Expansion Strategies | XtremeAg

00:00:00 Is it time to build or expand your grain setup? That's what we're talking about, the economics, the demand for storage, increased yields, government grants, 00:00:08 new programs, what you can do to have more grain storage on your farm. That's what we're talking about in this episode 00:00:15 of extreme Ag Cutting the Curve. It's extreme ag cutting the curve podcast, cutting your learning curve, 00:00:21 and improving your farming operation every week. This episode of The Cutting the Curve podcast is brought to you by BASF, creating innovation 00:00:30 to help farmers do the biggest job honor. And now let's get ready to learn with your host, Damien Mason. 00:00:37 Mason. Hey there. Welcome to another fantastic episode of Extreme Ice Cutting the curve. We've got a great one for you. We got, uh, Trevor Van Lew, 00:00:44 and we've got Randy Coffee. They are both with Superior Green equipment, and we're talking about the economics 00:00:50 and the practicality of your grain system, the expansion that you might need to consider the updates you 00:00:56 might want to do. And can you justify doing that in a lower priced commodity environment? Could make the argument that yes, you have to do this. 00:01:06 We're talking about, I'm recording this right now in July of 2025, USDA 00:01:10 and various people within the, uh, grain, uh, business are saying that we are going to have 190 bushel corn. 00:01:18 That's a lot of bushels. You're continuing to climb on your soybean yields, your wheat, you name it. 00:01:24 Do you need more grain set up? Randy Coffee started making the point before I pushed the record button 00:01:29 and I said, you should save that for the air. He said, Damien, the demand for storage is, uh, tremendous right now. 00:01:35 Talk to me. Yeah, right now, you know, when you take a look at the, the whole economics of it dam 00:01:41 and with the, uh, with the, the yields looking like they're gonna be the best we've seen in years coming up. 00:01:46 Um, I'm based outta Northern Iowa and from the corn be across and Trevor Esa, we've seen some 00:01:54 of the best corn out there in soybeans I've seen in a long time. Uh, we're hoping that we have a, uh, continues through the, 00:02:01 you know, the growing season through August and, and, and the yields turn out well. We don't get in any major weather conditions 00:02:06 that affect those yields, but, um, we're just seeing a demand for storage because of that. 00:02:11 Um, and we're getting a lot of input from, from our, uh, dealers and from our, uh, direct sale business that, uh, 00:02:18 they're gonna need storage for this year. And we've been able to capitalize on that. We've been able to, um, uh, gear our manufacturing up, uh, 00:02:25 our purchasing of steel. We've, we've done all this on timely basis and it's, uh, it was appeared 00:02:30 that it's working out very well for us. Our, our goals have been, have been met, uh, and are close to being met for 2025, 00:02:38 and we're looking at potentially exceeding those goals, uh, which, you know, and, and from the past three 00:02:43 or four years we've been pushing ahead and, and making those commitments to our, to our dealers and to our end users and to our customers. 00:02:51 And, and it, it's, it's worked out very well for, for everyone. Um, go ahead. 00:02:55 Well, I gotta, I gotta say that Yeah. Things look gr I mean, mean this cornfield behind my house. Uh, I drove around last night with my dog on my golf cart 00:03:02 and I looked at it and I thought, oh my God, this, this stuff's just amazing. Um, stuff looks good in a lot 00:03:08 of parts of the country, right? And I know there's someone listening to this says, boy, not where I am. 00:03:12 I get it. We know how this works. There's always some places that are better than others, but in general, the trade clearly believes there's gonna be 00:03:20 a massive amount of bushels. Correct. And the thing is, that's why you can make the point. You and Trevor can make the point. Yep. 00:03:26 You're gonna need more, you're gonna need more storage. Yes. Um, but along with those huge yields come depressed, 00:03:33 commodity prices, because the whole world has lots of stuff. And how the hell am I going to go 00:03:39 and spend, uh, a bunch of money with, uh, a new grain setup or an expansion of my grain setup 00:03:45 or a modernization when I've gotta figure how to do this on $4 corn and sub $10 beans and $5 and 60 cent wheat. Mm-hmm. 00:03:53 Mm-hmm. Well, you know, there, there are opportunities out there for the, uh, for the farmer. 00:03:59 I mean, there are programs, FSA programs, USDA programs that have been around, have been around for quite some time. And, and those have worked out very attractively for, uh, 00:04:08 a lot of our clientele base. Our dealers have have applied those, uh, some of our direct sale business. 00:04:13 And they've, they've looked at those type of options and those have, have actually kind of supplemented the farmer, uh, and, 00:04:19 and been able to do the, um, uh, expansion of Malone facility they'd like to do. Uh, whereas without those programs, 00:04:25 it would probably be a little bit difficult for 'em to do that. So yeah, 00:04:29 I wanna get into the programs, uh, before I do that, all right. One of the economic cases, Trevor, you made 00:04:35 before we pushed record on this, uh, episode, was it's not just about the cost and then what you're getting for your commodity prices. 00:04:44 There are gains of efficiencies. So talk to me about gains of efficiencies that if I'm looking, if I'm a farmer 00:04:49 and I'm looking at my current setup, expanding my setup, modernizing my setup, whatever the gains of efficiencies 00:04:56 that come back and save time or labor or both. Absolutely. So the, one of the main areas that we can look at to save the, the farmer money, 00:05:08 and yes, it's a huge expenditure at the beginning, but as you, uh, spread that across the years is the receiving capabilities 00:05:15 and the receiving capacities of the farm. That's a huge area. If we look at just upgrading from a 10 inch spout, 00:05:24 which is roughly 5,500 bushel an hour, up to a 12 inch spout, which is roughly 8,000 bushels an hour, you gain roughly three minutes per dump time. 00:05:35 If we take that even another step farther, we're gaining almost six minutes. So as we spread that out, and we, 00:05:40 and we look at that, that's less man hours that you're having to pay a farm hand. And I know I'm based out of, uh, central Illinois, 00:05:50 I know there's a huge demand for farm hands that there is simply not the farm hands there to be had. And so with that being said, 00:05:59 you're spending more time away from the family and you, the help that you are getting is, uh, is is being stretched to the limits. 00:06:10 Yeah. And so you keep that in mind and to retain the people, you have to have a system that's going to flow and work well together. 00:06:18 When it comes down to that, then we start talking the economics. If we look at speeding up your grain system, uh, 00:06:24 three minutes, six minutes per load, we're talking a, a great amount of fuel saved of a truck idling. We're looking at, uh, faster fields being picked, 00:06:34 less airdrop, you know, in the field. 'cause you're getting it out of the, the field faster. All of these different things. 00:06:40 It's a hard one to, to, um, put a exact number to. But I encourage you to look at it, look at the, the, and pencil it out. 00:06:48 What does it take for my, um, my truck to dump my grain cart to dump on time? And am I paying somebody to sit there while they're 00:07:00 offloading a truck that's now taking 20 minutes to offload That could, could take six minutes to offload. It's an interesting deal because there's a lot of the, 00:07:08 and I know every farmer will tell you they work 600 hour weeks and all this, you know, 00:07:12 and they get a little, they get a little overdone sometimes. There's a lot of the year that, 00:07:16 that the speed maybe isn't critical, but the condition of, of harvest, if you miss your window by too much, and like you say, the time, 00:07:25 time is truly money, then it may not be so much in February, but by golly it is. 00:07:30 It is. Then, um, back to the, uh, the economic part of this. I'm sure there are people that are putting pencil to this, 00:07:36 A lot of farmers are putting pencils to this right now, and they're saying, I just can't make this make sense. So what's your answer? I mean, 00:07:41 you guys are obviously selling grain stuff. You said you're already booked up through 2025 and, and starting in 2026 with your, uh, your demand. 00:07:48 But what's the answer out there? I, I mean, uh, let's admit it, agriculture people, a lot of times it's a little doom and gloom. 00:07:56 They, they like to go, what's, what's it, what's it like? Uh, see, I, you said that 00:08:00 and everybody laughed. That's right. Uh, Well, I, I think Damon, a lot of times what we have to do, and we, we do a lot of custom designing 00:08:08 for the client clientele base. Yeah. Um, and we try to look at the economics of the systems that we put in. 00:08:13 But yet at the same time, we wanna make it functional and we wanna make it, as Trevor mentioned, to speed up the capacity. 00:08:19 So, you know, everybody's always looking at what's cost per bushel. Right. And that's always something I've heard 00:08:24 for years and years and years. So we try to design and help, help the customer take a look at what best fits his scenario and his 00:08:31 and his economic situation to get him the storage and the material handling and the drying that he potentially needs, 00:08:37 and yet somehow try and make it economic for him. 'cause there's a lot of range of things you can do when you're, when you're designing systems 00:08:43 and putting grain bin projects together, uh, that can fit those needs of, of the particular client in, in each one of their situations. 00:08:51 I wanna go through the money part and then I wanna talk specifically about the system. Mm-hmm. And the mistakes that you see or have made 00:08:59 or have corrected, because it's kind of like, I was raised on one of those dairy farms that every year there was something 00:09:07 new, you know, then there was a feed bin, and then the next year there was an expansion of the freestyle bar and the next year. 00:09:14 And you look at these places, it's like, who the hell cobbled this together? Well, it was done over 20 years or 30 years. 00:09:20 Well, you know what I'm talking about. I think it's the same with grain systems. You drive by and you're like, why'd they bother trying 00:09:26 to connect that 2,500 bushel bin to this mod? Jesus smash it and take it, take it to the scrap yard like a beer can. 00:09:34 Anyway, let's just go ahead and talk about that. Then we'll talk about the money, the expansion or the modernization or the mistakes. 00:09:41 Because like I said, I've, I've spent a lot of time in the country, you know, my speaking gigs all over, and I, I drive by and I'm like, 00:09:46 I understand why you did this, but why did you do that? So let's talk about that. Well, I I think a lot of that ties back into, um, 00:09:56 experience, um, the experience that we have as far as design build. I mean, early in our years, we probably did some things 00:10:03 that didn't function right. It didn't work right. And, um, we better have learned from that scenario and we can, we can apply some of 00:10:10 what we've learned through the past in creating a, a functional and operational system for the, for the farmer now. 00:10:16 Um, 'cause we do know what doesn't work. And we know after so many years where corners have been cut as mm-hmm. 00:10:22 As you mentioned, um, and we try to make sure that doesn't happen. Trevor, what's the biggest mistake you 00:10:27 see when it comes to, I see people throwing high dollar conveyance mm-hmm. As you were saying, to a 2000 bushel bin. 00:10:36 Uh, it's a big one. And, and it's Because that, that, because that's the first grain bin dad built. 00:10:43 Yeah. Yeah. And, and I, I see sentiment coming into it a lot, and I agree, I understand it. 00:10:50 Have somebody take it down and move it to the side out of where your grain system and make a picnic shelter out of it. 00:10:55 Mm-hmm. Something along those lines. And I, and I'm not trying to be hard, but sentiment, we can't be doing that if we're going 00:11:02 to have a profitable grain system that's going to, um, actually make you money so that there's another generation, you know, where your kids can go, 00:11:10 Hey, my parents built this. Okay, so I heard, I heard from Randy cutting corners, I heard from you sentiment. 00:11:15 So both of you can expand on that. And if I'm, if I'm being non-emotional and I'm not, and I'm looking at this, what I'm, 00:11:24 I'm a first off my friend John Re says, biggest mistake should have made it the green, drier bigger. Um, at some point you can't just keep doing bigger, 00:11:34 but it seems like that's like farm shops, um, you know, any, any tool shed that you build, you should always after you, you, you save me, I should have made it bigger. 00:11:44 Is that, is that the one grain dryers are usually undersized because, and because the guy is looking at it gal 00:11:50 and says, I, I, I gotta go with what I can afford. And then three years later you say, crap, need more grain drain capacity. 00:11:59 Right. See it all the time. Yeah. And, and once again, that comes into planning. Get with someone who can help you stage this out. 00:12:09 Very rarely do we see someone who's gonna walk in with, you know, $5 million able to build the whole grain system and expand it to 00:12:16 where the stage they need it to be Right now. Get with someone who's going to help you and, and draw it out, expand it out 00:12:23 and look at what you projected acres you're gonna be farming, projected yields. Um, it's, it's impressive the amount 00:12:31 of yields we're doing right now. I know Randy mentioned it, but central Illinois looks amazing on, uh, on corn. 00:12:37 The, some of the best looking corn I've seen in years. And, um, but, uh, just a solid plan and go bigger plan build for five years down the road. 00:12:47 Not right now. I know, I know. Randy's surprised. The guy from Champaign says, crops look good. Oh yeah. It's really hard to have good crops in central Illinois. 00:12:58 You people don't even know. You. People don't even know what it's like to have to farm hard anyway, uh, mistakes you see, uh, Randy, in your experience that you, 00:13:09 you think you can save somebody a lot of headache right now? 'cause I'm sure the, the skeptic, listen, this says, well, 00:13:14 yeah, but they're in a business of selling this. I've gotta make this all make sense. It's not that you, you're not gonna be in business long if 00:13:20 you, uh, are are selling the system doesn't pay for itself. So, I mean, I think we gotta get past that. Well, 00:13:25 I, I think we have to get into the economics like we mentioned, Damian, that, and the, the, the advantage we have with, 00:13:31 with our drying equipment, especially when it comes to drying, is that we have expandability, um, and you build and design systems for expansion. 00:13:39 Mm-hmm. You build them so that you don't come back and take something out and replace it to someone's pay good money for year before. 00:13:46 You wanna make sure that whatever you're putting in now is that in the future we can supplement that 00:13:51 and we will add to that. We won't take anything away and, and trying to get that sold earlier, uh, uh, 00:13:57 sometimes you can, you can provide the good information to his farmer to see what he is gaining by doing this, and yet get him in an economic situation. 00:14:04 It might fit, he may need more wet holding right now if he can't put the additional cause into the dryer, 00:14:09 but we'll design the dryer so it can be expanded in the future. And that's, we, we've done a good bit of that. 00:14:14 A lot of systems we put in, um, you know, we're looking at, uh, material handling equipment, uh, conveying equipment, 00:14:21 the leg elevators, uh, concrete design are all being done now for this particular model system we may be putting in. 00:14:27 But those items will still apply in the future when we go to expand the facility and grow it 00:14:32 larger for the customer base. So, and be able to get it into 'em from an economic situation right now for them. So, 00:14:38 Yeah. Uh, money, by the way, the other one I was gonna say, I'm sure that you probably see it, 00:14:43 um, allowing yourself enough room. Uh, I, I know that the, the other part of this is, you know, there's a chance that five years from now you're going 00:14:54 expand and then, and all of a sudden it's like, yeah, we ain't got room to get trucks in here. I mean, I would think that that's one 00:14:58 that is probably overlooked because they, you don't think about Yes, this could be double the size 00:15:03 five years from now, 10 years from now. Yes. We, we'll do a lot of design work, which will tend to show the future project 00:15:11 what it would look like years from now. Uh, and, and another thing that does for us when we do that, it, it allows us to look at potential horsepower 00:15:19 requirements in the future. So as we're going in now, we make sure we design a system that the electrical, uh, 00:15:24 demand will be there for, for the future. 'cause going back, going later on and trying to come back and maybe you have to change the transformer or, 00:15:31 or you'll have to add some, another control panel that, that can be quite expensive when you plan for it in the future. 00:15:37 So it doesn't, it cuts down on the cost as you move forward. Mm-hmm. 00:15:42 Money. Um, I don't know that you're a complete expert, but it sounds like you probably are because you're the one that's 00:15:48 out here talking to these farmers. Um, you talked about USA programs you talked about, and I know there's some electrical ones 00:15:54 because Kelly Garrett got involved for energy savings, et cetera. So kind of walk me through that. 00:15:59 If I'm looking at, um, I wanna expand my grain set up, modernize it in the next year, what do I need to know? Trevor, you wanna run with that or you want me 00:16:08 Go ahead. I think you're a little more well versed and I have a pretty good handle. I think it's changing a lot right now mm-hmm. As well. 00:16:15 And so yeah, we, We'll, we'll sit down. Thank you Trevor. Yeah, we'll, we'll sit down and, uh, and we'll, and we'll look at the different programs 00:16:22 that are out there for the loans. Obviously there's, there's energy grant programs available for the drying systems. 00:16:28 Uh, and in some cases when, when we're talking about the energy grants, we're talking about the potential possibility 00:16:32 of expanding the drying future and what that's gonna save the customer long term from, from a an efficiency standpoint. 00:16:39 Um, electrical numbers are out there. You, you can get, get was a good electrician, make sure he, he, uh, he understands what you're doing now 00:16:47 and what you're doing in the future so that he can supplement that and take care of that and have, have a room big enough, 00:16:53 even from electrical room standpoint, making sure you build enough of expansion ability to the room so that you can add a different, different types 00:17:00 of foot gear and, and, and control panels and electrical panels and things like that. So many times I've, I've been out on projects 00:17:07 where it's like, oh, we, we didn't add this in the future. We didn't look at that. And Damien, 00:17:11 that goes back to what we're talking about. We, we go through all this upfront with the, with the new potential client and, 00:17:16 and discuss, what are you looking at now? What are we looking at in the future? We make sure back, like you were saying earlier too, Dana, 00:17:22 about the, the, the amount of property that's required for it. Uh, and that you have all that integrated into the system 00:17:29 and, and you discuss that upfront and it, it is just gonna save money long term for the customer. 00:17:33 As far as the, um, uh, I mentioned earlier the FSA and the USDA loans, there are loans out there available. We've done several projects with that. 00:17:41 It has worked out very well for it. There's, there's a lot of paperwork involved in it. Um, there's a lot of programs that are tied into that 00:17:48 that we have to make the customer, well make him aware of, of as far as payment schedules and, and how things are done. 00:17:54 'cause a lot of times the, some of the programs out there, it's, it's payment at the end of the project. 00:17:59 Well, you really can't do that on projects nowadays. It has to be progress site payment application. And, and, and you have to make the farmer aware of that. 00:18:06 He has to discuss those options, uh, with the loan programs, with the co even with his banks for, for bridge loans 00:18:12 that he might need, uh, during the process of the project before he gets the payment at the end by USDA or FSA 00:18:19 And then on, there are some with energy, but I don't think that that's a federal program. I I, I know that I've, I've heard from somebody 00:18:26 and one of my guys that something with, uh, within their own electrical cooperative maybe that there was a energy efficiency, uh, incentive. 00:18:35 Yeah. Yeah. There are energy efficiency grants and you're right, it is, it is some to the, to the cooperatives. 00:18:40 Um, and some of it is, is, is differentiated even from state to state. It's a little different too. Um, it's always a good idea to, 00:18:48 if you're looking for something like that, to get someone who's qualified and has the capabilities of writing a good grant for you, 00:18:54 uh, 'cause that will make or break it. Uh, and they have to be, they have to have the ability and the background and 00:18:59 history to know how to write those grants. I see. Uh, anything else, Trevor? I'm thinking about modernizing and upgrading my grain setup. 00:19:08 What do I, what's the, what's your last piece of advice or pieces of advice? Become an expert of your own grain system. 00:19:17 You, we, we are expected to be experts and we are experts in the field. I, I would especially put Randy in that category, 00:19:25 but don't just look at your grain system as something I'm handling and using a couple months out of the year. 00:19:31 Mm-hmm. Get to know that grain system. Have, have your timing down time. Figure out how long it's going to take. 00:19:38 Um, how many hours you could pick at a certain amount of bushel, you know, a certain amount of yield to fill your wet bin 00:19:45 and figure out, oh, hey, if I had another 15,000 in wet storage, here's what I could be doing. 00:19:51 Become the expert in, in your grain system. Don't, don't rely on someone else. Know the numbers and become the expert in your grain system. 00:20:00 Is is a big one in yours. Good point. Yeah. Well, I like it because, you know, farmers, you go 00:20:05 to the National Farm Machinery Show, or North American Farm, whatever it's called there in Louisville looking at equipment, 00:20:10 they get really excited about it. And to a lesser extent, these grain setups. And I'd say you can change out a tractor with a phone call 00:20:19 and, and it's in a flat bed. It'll be pulling in here, your grains set up. You should spend more time on this. Right. 00:20:26 This is a long-term capital improvement and it's not as easily changed. So I really like Trevor's point, really, 00:20:34 really get, dig into this. Is this gonna be with you for a while? This is, this just can't be hauled away on the next flatbed. 00:20:40 Uh, you know, if, if the thing doesn't work out Well. And it's, it's so nice to, 00:20:45 after you design the system for now and for the future, that you have that opportunity to come back and supplement that project a based on 00:20:54 what your design was earlier. And, and that means a lot when people come back to you. 'cause it shows confidence in what you've done for 'em. Yep. 00:21:01 Absolutely. Alright. If you want to have the right grain set up, you can look up my friends here at Superior Grain Equipment, 00:21:07 uh, you can visit them if you, if you're listening to this before the Farm Progress Show, they're gonna be there. 00:21:11 In fact, I'm going to be there and I want you to be there. Uh, I'm gonna be there with an entire cast. 00:21:16 Uh, the people from Extreme Ag are gonna be there and we're gonna put on a panel. We want you to come to this. 00:21:22 And, uh, I very much encourage you to join. I'm gonna have Johnny, I'm gonna, I'm sorry, I'm have Chad Henderson. 00:21:27 I'm gonna have Kevin Matthews, I might have one of the other extreme Ag guys. I'll probably have these guys right here. 00:21:31 And we're gonna be doing a panel at the Farm Progress Show. So please do come and look us up. 00:21:35 That's in Decatur, Illinois at the end of August. We're gonna be there on the Wednesday. That would be August 27th. 00:21:41 I'm looking at the calendar over there, August 27th. We're gonna be there in the afternoon. And so we'd like to see you there. 00:21:46 Uh, in the meantime, if you wanna check out, learn more from the experts, go to superior bins.com. That's superior bins.com, 00:21:54 and look at all of the stuff they can do for you to help you modernize or upgrade your grain handling set system. 00:22:00 And remember what our friend Johnny Verell says, you can never have a big enough dryer. Till next time, thanks for being here. 00:22:05 That's Randy Coffee and that's Trevor Van Lew. I'm Damien Mason with Extreme Ice cutting the curve. That's a wrap for this episode of Cutting the Curve. 00:22:12 Make sure to check out Extreme Ag Farm for more great content to help you squeeze more profit out of your farming operation. 00:22:19 This episode of The Cutting the Curve podcast is brought to you by BASF, creating innovation 579 00:22:25.305 --> 00:22:27.605