This innovative demonstration project is equipping Lakeland College agricultural sciences students with industry experience.

Together, Alberta Innovates, Top Grade Ag, Lakeland's crop research team and Student-Managed Farm - Powered by New Holland are developing proper in-bin sensor-mediated drying procedures to increase profitability and efficiency on today's technology-based grain farming operations through the Calibration of In-Bin Drying project.

The Calibration of In-Bin Drying project involves real-time, farm-level monitoring of a sensor-based in-bin drying system using the SMF. The system helps producers determine when grain will be dried rather than estimating when it will be. Sensors in the drying bin capture humidity, temperature and pressure data to model water removal, according to Graham Stuparyk, a second-year crop technology student and a member of the SMF crop unit's analysis team.

Stuparyk's responsibility was to organize the grain's movement from one bin to another, then take moisture samples for the study so that they could calibrate how much moisture was leaving the grain. “By doing this, we could calibrate the system to measure moisture levels properly. I also entered the data into the website.”

The data entered in the website goes to software that calculates water removal based on the moisture levels you started with and the drying conditions in the bin.

Stuparyk adds that being able to access this type of technology boosts his confidence in the future of ag. “It's been exciting for my classmates and me to get hands-on experience with this technology.”

Ryan Lutz, Lakeland's agriculture technician, who helped install the systems in the college's grain bin, says, “It was my first time working with this kind of tech, and I didn't know what to expect. I'm impressed. Before this year, we were just using construction heaters and just blowing hot air in the bin. The students put in tons of extra labour, flipping the bins, turning the grain over so they didn't get hot spots and so they knew where the moisture was at.”

A related project is investigating agronomy-based optimal harvest timing using in-bin grain conditioning. This project's outcome would provide farmers with a knowledge-based guideline for harvesting grain based on growing degree days with confidence that yield and quality will be preserved.

Photos: (Top and Bottom) Sensor-based in-bin drying systems are installed on Lakeland's grain bins for the Calibration of In-Bin Drying project.