This is a picture I took today of my cousin's family farm grain operation. This isn't a commercial venture, just a modern, large family farm. Under construction is a new grain leg, a vertical grain dryer, and an additional grain bin. The grain leg is near 150 feet tall, and the new grain bin will hold about 80,000 bushels of grain. With the existing bins the total grain storage will be well over 200,000 bushels. The new dryer will dry about 1,000 bu/hr, removing 5 points of moisture. The downtubes from the top of the grain leg, to the individual bins haven't been installed. They are waiting for a crane to return to the site, to get that done. Total cost of all this new construction? Just a guess: well over 500 thousand dollars.
I'm not sure how many acres they farm now, but I would guess over 5,000.
This family also runs two large hog raising operations, with a combined total of about 10,000 hogs. About three years ago, one of their hog confinement operations had a power outage, and the emergency backup generators failed, along with the emergency notification system, and before they knew it, they lost several thousand hogs to excessive heat. They hauled off dead hogs for three days!
The family farm ain't what it used to be!
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