Commercial grain is sold by weight; for example, 220,000 metric tons of soft red winter wheat sold to China. But, as it's gathered in from the fields this time of year, it is purchased by volume; for example, 943 bushels of corn in a semi-truck's load. Over the years, referring to grain in bushels has become so standard, so automatic among Americans in the industry, we almost never stop to think about it.
For those who hear about U.S. grain production for the first time, or who suddenly need to know some crucial number of supply or demand, it can be a great help to spell out exactly what a bushel is, and what happens to all those kernels and bushels and tons of grain being amalgamated into the commodity supply chain.
Technically, a bushel is a unit of volume equal to about 9.3 gallons. But a bushel, practically, in the way it's used by the grain industry today, is some standard amount of weight that each type of grain "should" weigh if it was of a certain quality, moisture and density and poured into a 9.3-gallon container. For soybeans or wheat, that standard test weight is 60 pounds per bushel. For No. 2 yellow corn, that standard test weight is 56 pounds per bushel.
So, when a truck full of harvested grain weighs in at the local grain elevator with 52,808 pounds of corn, the elevator will simply divide the weight by 56 and pay the farmer for 943 bushels of corn, whether that corn actually filled out the volume of exactly 8,769.9 gallons or not. Whether the actual density of the corn is 56.0 pounds per bushel, 56.8 pounds per bushel or 58 pounds per bushel doesn't matter. Effectively, the industry talks in bushels, but pays in pounds.
It gets more complicated if the corn's test weight is less than the standard 56 pounds per bushel, which is a serious concern this year in areas that experienced drought late in the season. The price paid by the elevator might be discounted by $0.02 per bushel for each pound it tests under 56 pounds per bushel. It also gets more complicated if the grain has a high moisture content -- nobody wants to pay for water -- which itself affects the final test weight density of the grain. However, for now, that's not as important as simply picturing each bushel.
Assuming everything about the grain itself is standard and correct, and none of the field equipment has broken down, and all of the team members are healthy and showed up to work that day, and the combine is chugging along through the field at 4 miles per hour, then the ears are flowing into the header, the grain is being threshed and separated within the innards of the machine and it's coming out as a golden flowing substance from the auger spout, pouring into the grain cart. This is the magical moment of the growing season when we finally get an opportunity to get up close and personal with the commodity product that has been so painstakingly produced through the past five months of work and care.
Bushels upon bushels accumulate into piles and truckloads and grain bins, or even just as plain, anonymous numbers on a computer screen, clicking higher and higher through each field. But to give those numbers some meaning, let's think about each individual bushel and where all those kernels are going.
A little experimentation with a kitchen scale (and a lot of counting) shows that there are about 1,394 kernels of corn in each pound, which is to say each kernel of dry corn weighs about 1/3 of a gram. So, let's say there are 78,064 kernels in one 56-pound bushel. Kids these days don't know what a bushel basket is, but maybe they can envision something the size of a 50-pound bag of dog food filled with 78,064 kernels of corn. A 5-gallon bucket would hold about half a bushel, and two less-than-full 5-gallon buckets would add up to a bushel of corn worth about $4.50 in October 2023.
Source: iowacorn.org
Photo Credit: gettyimages-luc-pouliot
Categories: Iowa, Crops, Corn