Peter Archer introduces commercial elevator
CAMPBELLFORD — In 1998, Peter Archer took his father’s farm to a new level, dismantling grain bins and a drier from a Woodstock farm and hauling them to his dad’s farm just south of Campbellford.
After planting season, installation began. There was the 30,000-bushel bin, an overhead bin to handle 65 tonnes of crop, a 100-ft. elevator leg and a drier. Everything was ready for their own harvest on 600 acres.
"I was full of (you know what) and vinegar," Archer recalled. "I was 25."
They added on each year, including buying land, and eventually became a commercial operation last year. They crop 1,500 acres. They expanded again this year, as have other commercial elevators, as large buyers, such as Greenfield Ethanol, seek contracts for next spring. The large buyers are willing to pay farmers a premium to store grain and avoid supply shortages while stabilizing prices.
You can see the Archer expansion at its open house June 18. Here is what they’ve done:
• They added a drier on top of their 20-tonne-an-hour stackable drier to bring drying to 40-tonnes an hour.
• They erected four tanks to add 1,250-tonnes of wet storage to bring their wet storage to 2,000 tonnes, Later in the year, it will be used for dry storage. "If the elevator were empty, with the drier running we will be able to receive 3,000-tonnes of corn a day," Archer said. "That’s 1,000 acres of corn."
• They added a 7,000-tonne bin to bring dry storage to 11,000-tonnes.
"There seems to be a lot of demand for drying," said Archer, who wants to open the bottleneck at harvest, noting that many elevators have similar problems: long lines of transport trucks at harvest waiting to unload.
"We now have 12,500 tonnes of on-site storage," Archer said, adding that he is offering spring contracts to area producers.
The Archer farm has an added advantage of being the closest commercial elevator to the Kawartha Ethanol plant, which is fewer than 20 kilometres north. The ethanol plant hopes to start accepting corn before the end of the year and won’t be able to accept wet corn, Archer said.
Archer, who also custom combines 2,000 acres, says he only plants corn and soybeans. He just can’t seem to get a good wheat crop, he says, noting that on his farm "it just facilitates poverty. There are always problems with it – winterkill, Fusarium, mildew. We stay clear of it."
Archer has two full-time employees and his father, John, at age 67, runs the trucks and cultivator in spring. His wife, Donna, is on extended leave from teaching high school and manages the bookkeeping, as well as managing their four kids, ages 8, 7, 3, and 16-months.
While winter months were once slow days for crop farmers, not anymore. "Planning and paperwork eat up my winter," Archer says. "We have enough irons in the fire."