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Grain quality and safety during high moisture harvests
6 Plays10 months ago
In this episode of the Feed & Grain Podcast, host Steven Kilger engages in a vital conversation with Jess McCluer, vice president of Safety and Regulatory Affairs at the National Grain and Feed Association (NGFA), and Joe Mlynek, content creation expert and partner at Safety Made Simple. The trio delves into the repercussions of a high moisture corn harvest, discussing grain quality management, safety concerns, and practical tips to navigate these challenges.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Profiles
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi, everyone. My name is Stephen Kilgore. I'm the managing editor of Feeding Grain and the host of the Feeding Grain podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today as we dive deep into the issues affecting the feed manufacturing, grain handling, and allied industries. Today, I'm talking with Jess McClure, Vice President of Safety and Regulatory Affairs at the National Grain and Feed Association, also known as the NGFA, and Joe Milnick, Content Creation Expert and Partner at Safety Made Simple and Consultant at NGFA. Plus, he was a former podcast guest.
Impact of Wet Harvest on Grain Quality and Safety
00:00:29
Speaker
A fairly wet harvest has been reported by some in the Midwest, so we're here to discuss grain quality management and safety. It was an informative discussion about some tips on grain bin safety, keeping up quality with wet grain, and just in general tips about how to stay out of the grain bin altogether.
00:00:46
Speaker
Before we start, if you're listening to this in a podcasting app, please rate us and subscribe. If you're listening online, sign up for the Feeding Grain newsletter industry watch to see the latest podcasts and stay up to date with news from around the industry. Thank you so much for listening. Now on
Backgrounds of Jess McClure and Joe Milnick
00:01:01
Speaker
to the show. Hi, Joe. Jess, thank you so much for joining me today. Can you tell me and our listeners a little bit more about yourself and your history with the industry?
00:01:09
Speaker
Well, sure, Steve, thanks very much for having us here on the podcast. I'll just start off with a background. So I'm Justin Fuller, Vice President of Safety and Regulatory Affairs. I've been with the National Grain and Feed Association for 16 years now, and my background prior to coming to NGFA is from a regulatory policy side. I had worked at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration OSHA for about five years before coming over to NGFA to handle regulatory issues.
00:01:39
Speaker
And I'm Joe Mulloch. I am an independent safety consultant and also work with a company and I'm a partner in a company called Safety Made Simple. I've been in the grain industry for probably about 24, 25 years. Started it with the Anderson in 1999 and worked with them for 10 years. That's really where I really got exposed to the grain industry from a safety standpoint. Started consulting
00:02:08
Speaker
all across the country from small to large, mainly performing assessments, developing programs, delivering training, those types of things. In 2014, partnered with a gentleman out of Kansas City named Chuck Peery, and we started Safety Made Simple on the grain side.
00:02:26
Speaker
We have over 20,000 learners and about 70% of them are grain
Challenges with High Moisture Corn Harvest
00:02:31
Speaker
handlers. So I primarily develop all of the grain related training as well as general industry construction for our online training. Glad to be here today. I recently partnered with NGFA as a consultant and Jess has me working on some projects. We're updating some existing safety tip sheets, the NGFA safety manuals and guidance
00:02:50
Speaker
documents looking to deliver some webinars in 2024 and also will possibly help out with some of the regional safety seminars that JAS delivers.
00:02:59
Speaker
For longtime listeners, you already have heard the episode with Joe a few months back on Safety Made Simple and their online education program, which a great episode. If you haven't listened to it, please go find it. For today, we're here talking because it was a kind of a wet fall. And there's been a lot of reports, especially in the Midwest, of high moisture levels and this year's corn harvest. So can you guys kind of give us an overview on the current situation that you guys are finding when it comes to high moisture level and the corn harvest this year?
00:03:29
Speaker
Sure, just a little background on that. So obviously there's wanting to get some feedback from some of our members, just what is the moisture this year compared to last. Wanted just to see if there's anything that really stood out, any real differences. And what I heard back was is that, and this is, and I would say this is anecdotal, right? This is a true representative sample.
00:03:55
Speaker
but I think it really puts it into perspective hearing that normal year you could have around 17 to 19 percent moisture during harvest while this year the range is over 20 and so when you hear that there's obviously a high degree of variability and that created challenge especially when it comes to dryers that we're going to be talking about a little bit later when you start hearing that the moisture is over 20 to 25 in that range that raises an antenna
00:04:25
Speaker
concern and I think it all gets back to what happened in 2009. Then 2009 was a very wet harvest and what that led to was the highest number of engulfment and entrapment incidents in 2010, which obviously gets back to the grain quality itself. So that's what we've been hearing, as I said, it's anecdotal. It's across, I would say, maybe one particular area. It's not a true representative sample.
00:04:55
Speaker
But when you start hearing those things, obviously reasonable concern, we wanted to make sure that all of our members and even those outside of the GFA were aware of the resources out there, both from a grain quality and from a safety statement.
Hazards and Safety Concerns in Grain Bins
00:05:10
Speaker
Yeah, really good point, especially since, well, we all know that higher moisture, more hazards in the bin, harder to dry, harder to maintain. It's not just for your members, but their customers, the farm customers, which is where a lot of the real danger ends up lying. But can you discuss some of the potential hazards associated with high moisture levels when they get in the bin, especially in relation to that big entrapment boom that happened in 2009?
00:05:36
Speaker
Right, Steve, I think that can somewhat be used as a predictor for the upcoming year. We generally see the likelihood of engulfment and drier fires increase anytime we have a wet harvest. So, in relation to entrapment in grain bins, when grain is high in moisture, there's a couple different things that can happen. Generally, we see clumps form that can block the reclaimed systems within the grain bins.
00:05:59
Speaker
We have bridging grain and clipping or a sheer face or alums form within the bed. So this gets very dangerous for anybody because these situations generally tend to lead to people going into a bed. And when we look at living in particular, this is all something that I've really stressed when I'm out talking to people is to be able to identify the angle of repose though anything over 25 degrees.
00:06:24
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is a situation where grain can slide or move. And if employees are in the way of that, that's when we're going to have entrapment and engulfment. So again, these types of situations generally are going to lead to employers or even farmers going inside of grain bins. And this is really where we get in trouble.
00:06:42
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. I know you guys are in the game, so you know how hard it is to actually track any of this stuff. While most entrapments don't even go reported, you know, people get out and no one says anything. Engulfments are really hard to track down. It's all usually local reporting, but Purdue University every year puts out probably the industry standard report on how engulfments and entrapments are doing. And they're, according to their studies, about half of entrapments lead to an engulfment, which is almost always fatal.
00:07:10
Speaker
Can you kind of dive into the severity of the issue and why it's so important to the industry to stay on top of it and do that constant reminder of the danger out there?
Incident Statistics and Prevention Strategies
00:07:20
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Sure. When you look at the data, right? So, hey, going back to, say, 2007, right? You're looking 2007 to say 2022. 2010, as I mentioned, that was the highest number of incidents. So, there were 31 fatalities and 26 non-fatalities. So, basically, you're talking 31 engulfment fatalities and you're talking 26 entrapments. You do it in 2022.
00:07:45
Speaker
So, after all those, all the years in between, 2022 had the second highest. Number of incidents, 15 fatalities and 27 entrapments. So, out of that total number, there was the.
00:08:01
Speaker
If I'm doing my math correctly, that was 42 compared to 57, but it was still the second highest that happened. That was without having the grain quality issues that were describing that we're starting to see right now. With that, as you had mentioned from our producer standpoint, historically, 70 percent of these incidents are not at commercial facilities.
00:08:26
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And when you look at all the data comparison from this year, right? There was actually the 42. That was actually a number of incidents in 2022. That 42 incidents, that's a 44.8% increase from the 29 that occurred in 2021. So think about that.
00:08:45
Speaker
when you have a 44.8% increase in the number of incidents in one year and then that doesn't include any type of the rain quality related issues from a moisture standpoint. As I mentioned earlier, that's a real concern on what could be coming down the pipe and we just want to make sure that everyone is in particular aware of what can be done to specifically maintain the quality of the grain to hopefully prevent these types of incidents from occurring.
00:09:15
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Yeah, definitely. Because ideally no one ever gets in the bin. That's the goal. Dangerous in there. It's not fun. No one should be going in there. So that's the ultimate goal. And what steps can kind of be taken to avoid going in? What should they be doing to improve their grain quality enough that no one ever has to even enter a bin?
Best Practices for Grain Quality Management
00:09:34
Speaker
Yeah, first off, Steve, I like the way you find the question because normally I think Jess and I would probably get asked the question of how do we make sure that our people are safe when they do go into the bin? We forget about taking the time to really identify ways to eliminate going into the bin altogether. Nobody goes in, nobody gets hurt, but he gets killed. So we want to try to eliminate the need for entry.
00:09:58
Speaker
relationship with engulfment, that's really a lot of times when we look at these incidents, that's going to be the root cause. So we can address moisture content through grain drying and effective aeration practices as well. And there's a number of different best practices and a lot of what I'm going to talk about here real quickly comes right from the safety tips sheet from that GFA.
00:10:21
Speaker
Very important, we're well into harvest, or some have already finished up in my area here in Ohio, but prior to these periods where we're going to chill bins that we make sure that we remove any residual grain and make sure that all insect infestations addressed at that time. So those are a couple of things right off the bat. People can also use screeners to clean corn.
00:10:42
Speaker
In soybeans, this will reduce poor material and broken kernels. Coring bins or repetitive coring is also an important strategy that people can use. So when we think about filling a grain bin, we generally, you know, fill from the center and we're going to have a core from the top of the grain surface all the way to the reclaimed sump. And that core a lot of times is made up of
00:11:02
Speaker
Broken kernels form material and finds and it gets packed in there. So that can form columns and things of that nature, but it also can be an obstruction when we're trying to move airflow through there with fans and things of that nature. So pouring is an important thing. I think there's a lot of information out there. I know Iowa State has some kind of how to use that coring bids and those types of things.
00:11:23
Speaker
CO2 monitoring is also effective. Whenever we have corn or any commodity that's high in moisture, CO2 is really the gas that's formed that tells us, hey, something's going on in here. CO2, consequently as well, in great storage bins, when it builds up, it can
00:11:40
Speaker
So if people have to go in, it's one of the reasons why using aeration and testing the air for oxygen prior to going in is very important. Controlling grain storage temperature through aeration, as I mentioned, it's also important to monitor moisture and temperature.
00:11:59
Speaker
So monitoring through the use of temperature cables. And some of the newer temperature cables I've been reading about have humidity or moisture sensors on them as well, which can be helpful. But these generally are tied into a PLC so you can monitor all your grain temperatures from the convenience of an office, those types of things. Sampling grain.
00:12:19
Speaker
If we don't have some of the technology available, the good old sense of smell is still an effective way to identify ore grain. It has a distinct odor to it. If you've ever smelled it, you won't forget it. So those are some of the best practices that we can use to really try to reduce the likelihood or maybe eliminate the likelihood that somebody has to go into a bin.
Preview of Next Podcast on Dryer Safety
00:12:42
Speaker
And people forget about that respiratory danger, don't they, when they're going into a bin? Hey everyone, Steven here.
00:12:49
Speaker
Just popping up real quick to tell you that Jess, Joe and I continue to talk about dryer safety and maintenance along with NGFA safety efforts in a second podcast. Look for a link in the description to take you right there, or it can be found at feedinggrain.com slash expert dash insights slash podcasts. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you next time.