La Candelaria: Seed Storage, Old and New

Storage technology for seeds has changed drastically in the last decade. Previously, all seeds harvested had to go through a mechanical silo plant (shown below) to be dried, fumigated for pests, separated, stored or loaded for shipment. This technology, though effective, was very time consuming and costly. For this reason, the silos here are used almost exclusively for storing feed for the feedlot today - namely corn, sunflower pellets and sometimes soy.

Though the plant manager, who knows the silo system inside and out after 20 years of employment at La Candelaria, he admits that the technology is now considered archaic. Today massive industrial plastic bags (silo bags) are used to store seeds directly in the fields where they are harvested or wherever you would like to lay out the bags. For example, much of the corn that is harvested is transported to a storage area beside the feedlot where the corn is first milled before being put in the storage bags.

The technology does save transportation costs, maintenance costs for the storage medium (since it is only used once no maintenance is required), and is very flexible on space. Using the bags, it is important to ensure that the crop is fully dehydrated before storing, since it is no longer subjected to drying after harvest. However, since there are no longer storage constraints in terms of volume, the flexibility to harvest when the crop is ready is more easy to achieve.

Once major challenge with the bags that was an obvious advantage of the mechanical system is that the harvested seeds are no longer fumigated for bugs, which have been able to proliferate in bags under the right conditions. Technologies to fumigate the bulk seed when it is being removed from the bags into trucks to be sold is being developed.

Another problem with the bags is overfilling the bags beyond their capacity. For this reason, each box the bags come in, has a measure stick that can be compared to the marked areas on the bags to ensure the stretch is within the tolerable limits. If not, the bags and accordingly its contents, are at a higher risk of experiencing breaks or being penetrated.