Overflowing Grain Elevators Store Wheat On Ground
Most people see wheat in two places: the fields and products in the supermarket.
But this year, many also are seeing wheat piled in mounds outside grain elevators where the grain is exposed to the elements.
When elevators managers run out of room in their storage bins, they’re forced to store grain on the ground. Though it happens every harvest, this year several factors have forced grain elevators to leave much of the season’s bounty outside.
According to the Washington State Department of Agriculture, as much as 10 million bushels of wheat in Washington may have been stored on the ground this season. A cut in sales overseas, an unusual harvest and a limited number of train cars all contributed to the excess of wheat at inland elevators.
“We’re moving grain as fast as we get (train) cars,” said John Anderson, general manager of Central Washington Grain Growers, the state’s largest grain cooperative. “But we’re getting them about two weeks later than we’d prefer to have them. We’re putting more wheat on the ground this year than we have in a number of years.”
In addition to the train car shortage, grain is staying in Eastern Washington because of a drop in prices. When Pakistan decided this month to buy 400,000 bushels of grain from Australia instead of the United States, U.S. wheat prices dropped 14 cents a bushel, said Jonathan Schlueter, executive director of the Pacific Northwest Grain and Feed Association Inc.
“Nobody’s buying, so nobody’s shipping,” Schlueter said.
Farmers aren’t selling now in hopes that prices will rise in the next few months. The elevators have to hold that unsold wheat, often storing it for a while outdoors where it was dumped from farmers’ trucks.
“Anytime you put food outside, it’s exposed to all the elements,” said Curtis Scholz, branch manager for Columbia Grain Growers. “You’ve got rodents, you’ve got deer, you’ve got birds. There’s a lot of risk in doing it.” Grain stored outside typically suffers minimal damage, unless excessive rain causes rot.
Columbia Grain Growers anticipated the unusual year and got by without storing grain on the ground by emptying out storage bins early in the season. But in the past, the company has run out of room.
“Nobody really likes to put it outside,” Scholz said. “But it’s a service to your producers. They need to get it out of the field and they need to get it to the elevator.”
In order to store grain outside, elevators and warehouses have to have a special permit from the Washington State Department of Agriculture and sometimes permission from the federal government.
This year the elevators are required to remove all grain from the ground by Oct. 30, said Don Michelbook, program manager of warehouse auditing at the state Department of Agriculture. Most of the elevators that applied for permits are in Lincoln, Douglas, Walla Walla and Garfield counties, he said. “This happens every year in isolated areas. It hasn’t happened statewide since the mid-1980s.”
This season the harvest in some areas took place in a two or three-week period. With so much grain coming in at once, it was easier to store it on the ground and pick it up when time allowed later. Michelbook expects most of the grain to be off the ground before the Oct. 30 deadline. “To my knowledge most of it has been picked up already.”
, DataTimes