As farmers move forward into the summer months, Ken Hellevang, NDSU Extension agricultural engineer, said keeping grain as cool as possible should be a top priority during this time of year.

Hellevang noted there are several reasons to keep grain cool and dry during the summer, one of which being managing mold growth within the bin.

There are times when excessively large crops result in a shortage of grain storage space. And during the last couple years many farmers have decided against selling grain from the previous year, waiting for prices to improve, which has limited space for the current crop. But there are alternative methods for temporary storage of grain, according to Ken Hellevang, NDSU Extension ag engineer who specializes in grain storage.

Probably the most common means of alternative grain storage is piling the grain outside or putting it in storage bags, he noted, and producers using one of these substitute methods should give some fore thought on the matter before they actually need the storage space.

No one – not the bin designer, the manufacturer, the contractor, nor the producer – wants a grain bin to fail.

But grain bin failures do happen.