“It’d be like farming without a rain gauge,” Brown said. “I just wouldn’t want to do it. This tool makes storing grain so much easier.”
A first-generation farmer, Brown has been farming in Southeast Missouri for more than 25 years. Working with his brother, Brown started farming after graduating from Arkansas State, starting with family-owned land and growing the operation from there. Today they plant cotton, corn, rice and soybeans, all with irrigation.
The Browns had stored their grain in another brand of bins for years. But in the spring of 2020, a nasty storm wiped out the entire storage system. The local GSI dealer had recently built a shop for their operation, so they called him first to see what could be done.
“The very next day, Roger Price, GSI’s Director of North American Grain and Fertilizer Sales and Service, was on the farm,” said Brown. “He told us we could get the bins, so we just started designing what we wanted. From there, we put in all GSI.”
GSI had Brown’s storage system back up and running by that fall, with roughly 15 new bins. Brown says they primarily store corn on the operation’s north side and rice on the south side so as not to get mixed up on busy days. .
“We had more bins than that before, but with GSI, we could go a bit bigger with our bin size,” said Brown. “Now we have about 1.1 million bushels storage here on the farm.”
The Browns were trying out another grain management system when Virgil Rhodes, Director of Engineering GSI/AGCO Grain Conditioning and Electronics, told them about the new GrainVue system idea and how it could benefit their operation. Brown had always used a traditional cable system, so working with GSI to fine-tune the GrainVue system was a perfect fit.
“This last year was our first full year working with the system, and it was great,” Brown said. “Every day, I look at the screens to check the moisture, and we’re coming out consistently what the cables say.”
The Browns were the first users of the GrainVue system, and today, they have a GrainVue system in every bin they own. Brown says there are several examples of why the GrainVue system is crucial to their operation, but the most important are holding weight and quality. The Browns use a large dryer system on their operation, and if corn overdries, it’s easy to lose weight and thus money when they deliver. Because GrainVue has a cooldown setting, they are able to slow the drying process once the grain is in storage.
Also, with large bins such as the 120,000-bushel bins the Browns have on their operation, it’s essential to see what’s happening throughout the different layers. GrainVue allows them to see any hazardous hotspots or other bacterial growth in their stored grain and make the necessary adjustments.
“It really gives you comfort once you learn to trust it,” Brown said. “Sometimes the fans will kick on, and you’ll think, ‘oh, it shouldn’t be kicking on,’ but then you look at the humidity and the temperature and realize they absolutely should be.”
Understanding GrainVue
GSI’s GrainVue uses an easy-to-understand dashboard to help growers manage their stored grain, 24/7.
In addition to monitoring for moisture, temperature and inventory, the GrainVue system includes CO2 monitoring – one of the first indicators of a pest or mold issue in stored grain. The system also includes automated, efficient aeration management that farmers can use to reach various goals, including natural air drying, a cooling setting that runs at the most efficient times, a soybean rehydration process that uses relative humidity and a storage setting that uses weather data to minimize condensation in the bin.
“We’ve built a great relationship with GSI – they’re great to work with,” said Brown. “And that’s the key in this business – having good people to work with. I just can’t complain.”
