Increased size and flexibility seem to be needed in modern agriculture.
Now a new 40-feet by 40-feet concrete dry fertilizer bin will add 650 tons of storage to an existing building complex at Cooperative Grain and Supply?s site in the Hillsboro Industrial Park.
The project should be completed in mid-Novem?ber.
Chad Arnold, CG&S agron?omy manager, said the bin will be used to store urea nitrogen 46-0-0.
The large structure with 14-inch thick steel reinforced concrete walls will join to a 30-foot extension of another building that houses seven bins with 2,300 tons of capacity in seven bins for mixing other ingredients such as phosphate into the 46-0-0, he said.
Arnold said the building unit may bring an additional 800 tons of capacity to the unit. The unit should replace the capacity of a facility that was torn down at Marion, plus give needed additional capacity.
He noted that the tendency of farmers to use ever-increasing sizes of equip?ment adds to their needs to use more fertilizer at a time.
Arnold said when he began with CG&S most farmers were using six-row planters, but that has expanded with many of them using 12 to 24-row planters.
The size and flexibility of the unit allows CG&S to mix fertilizer for different crops anywhere from corn to milo to wheat, he said.
