How Grain Elevators Work
Grain elevators are a staple of the American Midwest landscape; one cannot think about farms or the so called ‘flyover’ states without picturing a beautiful sunset behind a towering grain elevator. Besides being aesthetically pleasing they have been helping put food on American tables for as long as the country has existed; so how do they work?
I will be delving into the history of grain elevators, what they do, how they work, and what the grain elevator of the future might look like.
The grain elevator was built to alleviate the job of having people shoveling grain into the train. A time consuming and tedious task. The first elevator was built in Buffalo, New York in 1847 due to the fact that Buffalo stood at the intersection of 2 major waterways, therefore, it received unprecedented amounts of grain from all over the country but specifically from Indiana and Michigan. It quickly became apparent that the methods currently being used for loading grain were outdated and antiquated. They couldn’t keep up with demand. And so they devised a method of loading grain that utilized the natural forces surrounding them. Gravity. Since the first steam powered grain elevator was built- the methods have not changed drastically- simply swapping out old technology (steam) for new technology (electricity). Even the shape of the elevator has not changed as it is the most efficient method for storing all the mechanisms needed to make the elevator work. In Canada there was even a commission from the CPR (Canadian Pacific Railway) that provided subsidies and free rental land to farmers who built grain elevators to certain specifications so that the train operators knew that there would be uniformity and would allow for maximum efficiency in loading and unloading.
A grain elevator has several containers that contain grain, or whatever they happen to be storing. The grain is held there by the farmer so the farmer can wait until he wants to sell it. They often are operated by a co-op that several different farms take part in. Some of the responsibilities of a grain elevator include checking the quality of the products, maintaining that quality throughout the entirety of the time that the grain is there, promoting the sell of the grain, managing the prices of the market and finally shipping the grain on the way to a destination. Once the farmer agrees on a price to sell the grain, it gets dumped out of the silo into the transportation vehicle(Train, truck etc.).
The name grain elevator comes from the method that is used to get the grain to the top. When a truck pulls onto the scale it is weighed, from there the grain gets dumped into the elevator. The grain elevator employee opens the back of the truck and the grain gets poured through a grate into a pipe where it slides down to the bucket elevator. The elevator consists of buckets attached to a mechanism (it varies often) that carries it to the top of the silo where it can then be distributed via gravity to wherever you want it.
When a train or truck pull up to the elevator they select what grain they want and the elevator operator selects that bin. They then empty the bin into that vehicle. This is how elevators have operated for centuries, and the basics won’t be changing anytime soon. But the technologies used to make these elevators work may change, as they have throughout history.
The original grain elevators were powered by steam and nowadays they are run by motors and electricity. The trend has been for smaller grain elevators to go away and for grain to be consolidated in larger mass storage facilities, but that doesn’t mean the grain elevator is dead. Not by any means.
It is going through a revolution, much like farming is.
Farms are getting bigger as the profits from farming are getting smaller forcing farmers to take advantage of economies of scale. This means more grain comes from the same places and has to go to the similar places forcing many small grain elevators to become obsolete. Replaced by massive grain conglomerates at ports and collection points throughout the country, these huge storage locations are similar to the small grain elevators only in shape and purpose. These locations are relying more on automation and computers to make the whole process more efficient and faster, in the name of higher profits.
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- Ross, Jane. “Grain Elevators.” The Canadian Encyclopedia, 3 Jan. 2006, www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/grain-elevators/.
