Staff writer
If American farmers have been given the task of feeding the world, they seem to be doing a good job of producing the grain to do it.
“Two back to back good harvest years are putting a strain on storage all over the country,” Cooperative Grain and Supply grain coordinator Dean Tippin said.
Many grain cooperatives in Marion County have constructed new silos in the past year or two. Several locations have set up bunkers to hold the overflow of grain from their elevator bins.
Both Lincolnville and Tampa recently filled new bunkers with more than 400,000 bushels of wheat to make room for corn and beans. Hillsboro has a bunker it recently filled with 415,000 bushels of corn.
In the wider central Kansas area, a 5 million bushel bunker was built by Mid-Kansas Cooperative on an airstrip at Yoder to move wheat out of elevators within a 30-mile radius and make room for fall crops.
The train-loading grain terminal at Canton, which receives grain from MKC, CG&S, and other coops, has four bunkers filled with 4½ million bushels of wheat. It also has six large upright silos that hold wheat, milo, corn, and soybeans.
The terminal has sent out at least 85 100-car trains since it began operating two years ago. Wheat and corn were shipped out in August and September, and beans will be shipped during bean harvest.
Tippin said most wheat trains go to ports on the Gulf of Mexico, where the grain is loaded on ships and sent overseas. Corn and beans are shipped directly to large mills in Mexico. Milo has been sent to the Gulf for shipment to China.
Tippin said the coop would continue to haul truckloads of grain out of its elevators during harvest as farmers deliver more grain.