Emeritus Editor

Lynn Jaynes retired as an editor in 2023.

IGIS is a privately owned but federally regulated official service provider for grain testing, which means IGIS holds the federal designation for the state of Idaho. As such, they maintain stringent testing requirements, licensing, reporting and auditing requirements as set forth by GIPSA (Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration). As a third-party non-biased facility (an extension of the federal system), they provide grain testing to ensure protection for growers, elevators and brokers.

IGIS provides testing for a variety of grains – wheat, barley, rye, triticale, corn, canola and mustard. Some of the tests IGIS provides include moisture levels, test weights, dockage, shrunken and broken percentages, proteins, falling numbers and vomitoxins. Most of the tests are standard, but falling numbers or vomitoxin tests are performed upon grower requests. “But if we see fusarium head blight on the sample, we’ll call the customer and ask if they want us to run a vomitoxin test,” Dustin says. In addition, some grains have tests specific to them; for instance, malting barley procedures include tests that quantify malt factors.

Turnaround time on a sample is usually within 24 hours, although a germination test takes longer (and the germination test is unofficial).

Dustin Young explains the storage process of samples submitted for testing. Photo by Lynn Jaynes.

For the 2023 growing season, Dustin says, “I’m a little concerned with the winterkill that we’ve had. It’s been pretty widespread. I’m a little concerned about what they planted back into that field. If it’s a spring/winter mix of soft white, it won’t matter. But if you planted a hard red spring variety in the hard red winter field and you get some volunteer winter wheat popping up, it may be a problem. And then I’m also concerned that as long as that snow stood on those fields, we might see more smut this year. And we know that vomitoxin does better on wet springs and we’ve had a pretty wet spring. It’s going to be an interesting year.”

“Domestic use is probably 90 percent of our business,” Dustin says. “This year, the export market has been quiet – really quiet.” He surmises that U.S. wheat is just too expensive (although higher quality) and many countries are willing to provide wheat at cheaper prices.

There can be, of course, some human error in testing, and IGIS keeps a sample of the tested grain, which allows a farmer to ask for a retest if there are discrepancies or questions.

“When we do an official sample, it comes into our lab and we split it in half, and half of it doesn’t get touched, it just gets put aside and saved,” Jennifer says, “and the other half has all the tests run on it. So we actually have an original portion of the sample that hasn’t had anything done to it.”

IGIS is required to store samples for a certain amount of time depending on whether the samples were submitted by growers, an official probe or an export. “Submitted samples are stored three to five days – seven at the most,” says Dustin. “Official probes, where we go out and get them from an elevator or rail car, are stored seven to 10 days. Export probes are stored 30 to 60 days, depending on where they’re going, and that’s in case there is a problem with it – then the farmer has a chance to have us send the sample to the federal facilities and get a second opinion.”

Trucks can pull into the facility directly for probing, or the inspectors will travel to the location of a rail car or mill and take probes. The size of the storage facility or rail car determines how many probes must be taken from it. Submitted samples have to be at least 1,000 grams or 2.5 pounds, whereas the official sampling has to be twice that.

Several probes are taken from each container, depending on the size of the container, as this truck pulls through Idaho Grain Inspection Services. Photo by Lynn Jaynes.

“During the harvest time, if it’s just a submitted sample, we’ll go around to elevators who use us and just pick up different elevator samples, or farmers bring them in. Some are mailed to us,” Dustin says. “Some farms will collect them all year and then bring them in at the end of harvest. But sometimes they’re in the middle of a field and want to know what the moisture is like or the proteins are like, so they’ll run a sample to us and say, ‘Could you run a quick test on this and let me know where I’m at?’”

IGIS travels well outside of Bannock County to help out mills and growers. They have made runs from Weiser and Nampa up to Ashton and down to Soda Springs and Preston – and all points between.

Will testing increase profitability for farmers? “Absolutely,” Dustin says. “If you’re just going into an elevator and you’re allowing that elevator to tell you what you have, I’d be very cautious. And not saying that they’re doing it on purpose or trying to short anybody, but they have seasonal help. And when they have seasonal help, they’re looking at it with limited knowledge and understanding.”

Producers have many different options to market their grain crops, but until a producer knows what the quality is, he may not be able to monetize it. “Say a guy over here is offering [a price] for this protein, or a guy over there’s offering [a different price] for a little lower protein. If you know what you have, you can go different directions with it,” Dustin says. “It’s always smarter to know what you have in a bin.”

The post Grain inspection: Monetizing what’s in the grain bin – Ag Proud appeared first on Idaho Grain Producers Association.

Emeritus Editor

Lynn Jaynes retired as an editor in 2023.

What you notice first on the north side of Interstate 84 running through Bliss are grain bins with “The Andersons” logo displayed. And you see large golden, pyramid-shaped piles of wheat fronted by 110-car rail units. It’s an impressive site, but there’s a lot more you don’t see.

What you don’t readily see is a corn grinder or the warehouse that stores cottonseed, dried distillers grains and soybean meal brought in for dairy customers. Behind the scenes, there are also the people who make it all work, to include the Bliss employees who partner with over 1,000 local farms as well as the employees from all 13 of The Andersons facilities across Idaho, serving domestic and global markets.

Right now, labor shortages are having a great impact and placing quite a burden on employees. “Our employees have really stepped up and have truly sacrificed their time, putting in heavy hours and doing hard work, to make sure that our customers are served,” says Austin Hanny, profit center manager over the Idaho facilities.

Kevin Cardoso (left) and Austin Hanny (right) are part of The Andersons Inc. team, helping farms manage the logistics of getting the right grain to the right location. Photo by Lynn Jaynes.

Another challenge is the unreliability of the rail system, when cars show up days or even several weeks after they were scheduled, requiring after-hours unloading or loading. Supply chain disruptions and delayed rail transportation ranks high on the list of difficulties of many ag businesses. The railroad and trucking logistical challenges have made transportation difficult for everyone in recent years.

Hanny says, “This year we were forecasted to complete shipping of last year’s crop in May, but it is now August and our elevators are still full of 2021 production, which makes it challenging to receive this year’s grain.”

“We sell wheat to the Pacific Northwest,” Hanny says. “Typically, we ship to Washington, where it would then get loaded onto a boat for Asia. But due to rail shipping being several months behind on car placements, we can’t load cars to execute these sales today. Rail shipping issues anywhere greatly impact Idaho’s access to grain markets and, by extension, the whole Idaho ag economy.”

He adds, “The ongoing labor disputes from the railroad labor unions have made it difficult for the whole shipping industry.” As laborers threatened to strike over salary, benefits and other work practices, administration officials met to achieve a tentative truce in late September. The averted strike would have included five U.S. “Class 1” freight railroads (BNSF, CSX, Kansas City Southern, Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific). But the ongoing rail struggles have had a detrimental impact on the grain industry.

“When rail cars are late, there’s no recourse for The Andersons – we end up absorbing the damages or extra costs for late product, etc. For instance, there have been corn shortages throughout Idaho this year due to rail non-performance. Literally, cars have been loaded in the Midwest ready to ship to Idaho and have sat for three weeks before their voyage begins. There’s not that large a margin for error that can be absorbed without impact,” Hanny says.

The pyramid-shaped grain piles stored in the open air are treated and monitored to prevent insect invasion. Photo by Lynn Jaynes.

“It’s a tough situation,” says Kevin Cardoso, Bliss facility operations supervisor. “When they say we have rail cars coming, we stop what we’re doing, change out the setup and get ready to load, but then usually find out the cars aren’t here when they said they would be. We then have to reset and reshuffle the workload again. It’s hard on employees. Filling or emptying rail cars at varying times and at odd hours takes a toll on the labor force who have community or school events and family commitments to juggle, too. Plus, changing the workflow all the time isn’t very efficient.”

Hanny agrees, “These workers who show up every day at our facilities are our backbone. They seldom get the thanks and attention they deserve. We couldn’t do this without them. I can’t say enough good about the workers who show up, who stay until 9 p.m. or midnight whenever the rail cars actually arrive, who stick out the long hours during harvest – we would be nothing without them.”

“And you know,” he continues, “the first person and the last person our customers see on the way in here is the person at the scale and the person dumping their truck or loading their truck. These people are exceptional and need to be commended because it’s not as popular to work in agriculture anymore.”

Hanny, from a fourth-generation farm himself, says many of The Andersons employees are connected to agriculture in a personal way – as former dairymen, former farmers, former truckers. “They absolutely understand our customers and interact with them every day, not just in their business dealings but also in their communities. If you go to church, you’ll see your customers. If you go to the rodeo, you’ll see your customers. If you go to the grocery store, you’ll see your customers. It’s really important to get the right people working with us, and we have some of the best employees of any business in Idaho.”

The Andersons will handle 40 to 50 million bushels of grain per year statewide. This doesn’t include dried distillers grains (DDG), soybean meal handling, cottonseed handling and other feed ingredients. Of the 22 million bushels that go through the Bliss facility, 10 to 12 million bushels will be grain corn.

One of the 13 facilities of The Andersons in Idaho is in Buhl, which handles a lot of triticale seed processing. Photo by Lynn Jaynes.

The pyramid-shaped piles outside the Bliss facility are roughly four stories high, each holding 1.5 million bushels. “Grain is stored in open piles like this all across the world,” Hanny says. “You’d be amazed how much water these piles shed because of the shape. We also use fans to help aerate the piles through a pipe system. Water is always a concern, but there is a tolerance that we can manage – and we tarp the piles when needed.”

But there’s more to think about than just moisture. “Some of the challenges we’ve had this year have been created by wind and blowing dust, too,” Cardoso says. “It’s a bigger problem than you might realize for us.”

The Andersons provides value to the marketplace through logistic services of grain, so that the right product gets to the right buyer at the right time. The company also offers storage for producers who want to just store their grain and then sell it at a later date. Hanny shares, “There’s no farm too small and no farm too big for us. We take a lot of pride in servicing the needs of every farm. They’re our priority, no doubt.”

“We’re not just a grain-handling business. We’re a service business. The service we provide is grain handling, but our mindset is that we are a service industry,” Hanny says.

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