By Charles Hurburgh, Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering
The Southeast Iowa Ag Research Association annual meeting on March 4 will include an interactive webinar conducted by the Iowa Grain Quality Initiative titled, Grain Storage and Marketing Issues: 2009 Crop Quality and New GMOs. This interactive webinar, led by Charles Hurburgh, ISU Extension agricultural engineer, will cover the difficult grain storage situation that was created by 2009 corn crop quality. It will address what grain managers should be doing now as we go into warmer weather, and the future prospects for corn storage challenges, as corn production continues to rapidly increase.
Participants will be able to send written questions during the webinar from their computer terminals. Southeast Iowa meeting attendees will participate from the meeting site at the Washington County extension office in Washington. Anyone else may enter the webinar through the link http://connect.extension.iastate.edu/grain.
The March 4 webinar will start at 11:15 a.m. The session will end at noon, but Hurburgh will remain online as needed to answer additional questions. Participants will need to turn on their computer audio to hear the session.
This has been an extremely difficult year for grain storage. Corn was harvested wet and not all was dried because of dryer capacity shortages. The cold growing season decreased test weights, which naturally reduce storage life.
The 2009 crop has about half the storage life of normal corn, which will make delivering good quality corn in the summer months a real challenge. Penalties for spoiled grain are increasing and the primary user of Iowa corn, ethanol, cannot absorb large amounts of damaged corn.
The steps that should be taken now to prevent or at least reduce corn storage losses will be covered in the webinar.
Charles Hurburgh is a professor of Agricultural and Biosystems . He can be contacted at (515) 294-8629 or by email at tatry@iastate.edu.
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- Professor, Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering
- Iowa Grain Quality Initiative