Strategies for Survival

Comparing Costs and Options for Grain Storage:
This session will discuss various grain-storage types, including emergency ground piles, permanent ground storage used continuously, flat-storage warehouses, steel grain bins, concrete structures with low volume but long- term storage capabilities and concrete structures with high volume capabilities. The presentation will compare some of the capabilities, limitations and advantages of each.

Competing for the Best: Hiring and Keeping Good Employees:
This session will continue GEAPS’ efforts to help grain businesses deal with one of the most pressing challenges facing the industry: How to remain competitive by attracting and retaining good people, especially when the businesses down the street or across town are offering big bucks and great benefits for the same pool of talent.

Preventing Dust Explosions:
Understanding how grain-dust explosions occur is essential to preventing them. Presented by a neutral “third party” with access to numerous explosion sites, this session will examine details about main causes without divulging where the blasts occurred. The session will cover management responsibilities, employee training and employee responsibilities, preventive maintenance, building systems and best-management practices.

Brazil’s Ag Sector: Big and Booming:
Investment in infrastructure and production has made Brazil — one of the largest countries in the world — into an international ag-industry powerhouse, able to compete head-to-head with the U.S. and other major agricultural producers. This session will discuss how Brazil managed to sustain several successive years of growth, especially in its grain and oilseeds sectors.

Managing Shrink:
This presentation will cover the details of determining and calculating dryer shrink, mechanical shrink, handling shrink, aeration shrink, and how to adjust inventory. It will also review best management practices to control grain quality and quantity, and avoid undesirable inventory shrink.

Obviously, we’ve left a few sessions out but this cross-section of topics provides a good glimpse of the depth and breadth of the quality of the sessions available to attendees.

WHAT’S NEW?

Grain managers always look for the latest technologies to help grow their business and protect their investment. To no one’s surprise, one of the most popular portions of the GEAPS Exchange is the Idea Exchange composed of the “What’s New” and “I Did, Why Don’t They” forums.

This year’s “What’s New” forum products and participants are as follows:

• The Honeywell XD Personal Gas Detector for Phospine, Jerry Heath, product manager, The Industrial Fumigant Co., Olathe, KS
• The Hex-Pak, Dwight Kinzer, president, Process Equipment & Design LLC, Fargo, ND
• The Torit Powercore, David McGovern, grain market manager, Donaldson Co., Minneapolis, MN
• The Tensioneer Heavy Weight, Clayton Ellsworth, technical advisor, EBM Manufacturing, Norfolk, NE
• The FLIR Series Infrared Cameras, OJ Utter, president, Utter Precision Inc., Utica, NE
• Perma Tron Forms, Michael Hauber, vice president, Perma Tron Elevator Inc., Denison, TX
• The AgraStrip DON kit, Steve Nenonen, area sales manager, ROMER Labs Inc., Union, MO
• The V-Blox Power Protection and Energy Optimization System, JJ Moffat, energy specialist, Total Energy Concepts, Springfield, IL

For the “I Did, Why Don’t They” forum, the following innovations and the people presenting them include:

• Anchorage Points in Grain Bins, Wayne Bauer, safety and security director, Star of the West Milling, Frankenmuth, MI
• Master MSDS Links Page, Brandon Dills, safety and compliance officer, Co-Mark Inc., Cheney, KS
• Drag Supports, Eric Kelley, location manager, Attebury Grain, Amarillo, TX
• Laser-Guided Truck Feed Loading, Lionel Helweg, senior plant engineer, Kraft Foods, Toledo, OH
• Grain Bin Safety Device, James Smith, manager, Delta Rice Services, Webb, MS
• Sweep Auger Handrails, Brad Bankson, superintendent, Consolidatedl Grain & Barge Co. Jeffersonville, IN

POPULAR PODS

Since its launch at Exchange 2007, the “pod” concept has taken off. In just four short years, the concept has grown from a single trial pod to this year’s lineup of a dozen topics, all relating to operations and maintenance of conveying equipment and providing the hands-on access the pods have become known for during their short history.