McArthur BDC Ensures Bushmead Farm Future-Proofs Grain Drying with Automated Electric Mecmar Upgrade

Sandy Wade-Gery who farms with his son, Will, at Bushmead Farm in Bedfordshire, has upgraded and future proofed his grain drying capability by replacing a decades-old PTO-driven grain drier with a new automatic electric Mecmar SSI 28T mobile drier, supplied and supported by McArthur BDC.

"Our old mobile drier was reaching end of life and we needed to upgrade to an automated solution providing larger capacity and improved energy efficiency," explained Wade-Gery who farms around 400ha of arable with some forestry and grows milling winter wheat, winter barley, spring wheat, spring beans and spring oats.

After researching various driers and a subsequent visit to the McArthur BDC stand at Cereals, the Mecmar SSI 28T stood out for its build quality and its ease of use, particularly the remote access capability of the drier's control panel.

"The Mecmar control panel can be configured to send a notification, via an email or text, to the drier's operator when the dried grain is ready to be discharged. There is no longer the need for the operator to be constantly monitoring the drier," said Wade-Gery.

"The old drier tied up a tractor and the burners were driven by gas from a bulk tank. It was noisy, and dusty. The new Mecmar is electric and uses diesel from an onboard tank to power the burners. It is super-quiet and has an integrated dust extraction system, two features which our drier operator, Dom Chandler, loves as sometimes you can't hear the Mecmar working and with our old drier he needed ear defenders and a dust mask!" continued Wade-Gery.

Dom, and Will, also found the old drier precarious and not easy to maintain, whereas the Mecmar is much easier to look after as the grease points are positioned in one central location beside the control panel.

The Mecmar drier is fully automatic, streamlining the entire drying cycle. From the field, grain can be tipped directly into the loading auger from the trailer or loaded with a telehandler via a portable hopper placed over the loading auger.

Using the Mecmar's control panel which has pre-set drying programmes, configured by the operator at the beginning of harvest, the correct programme is selected so that grain is dried to the required moisture content.

Once set, the grain is automatically fed from the intake hopper to the Mecmar and as soon as the mid-level sensor located inside the drier is covered, the fan and burner starts and drying begins. When the high-level sensor is covered the loading auger stops automatically.

As the grain recirculates within the drier, the Mecmar's aspirator, located at the top of the central auger, removes dust and chaff, improving the bushel weight of the crop.

Once grain reaches the target temperature, the drier then enters a predetermined cooling cycle. Once cooled, the Mecmar's integrated moisture content meter checks the grain to determine that it is at or below the pre-selected target moisture content.

If the moisture check is correct, grain is then automatically discharged. When the low-level sensor is uncovered and the drier is empty, the loading auger automatically starts, feeding grain into the drier so that the next batch begins – making the drying process as timely and as efficient as possible.

As grain is currently unloaded into a trailer, Wade-Gery is taking full advantage of the Mecmar's remote access capability. When the drier's operator receives a notification from the control panel that the grain is ready to unload and, if a trailer is in place, he allows the grain to be discharged and taken to the grain store.

Wade-Gery has been arable farming at Bushmead Farm since the early 1970s and is a keen advocate of modern farming techniques.

"We use RTK guidance on all of our machinery, controlled traffic to reduce soil compaction, min-till through variable seed direct drilling, variable fertiliser application and N sensor guidance, soil terramapping is done on all of our fields and we grow cover crops to protect and improve our soil.

"The Mecmar is light years ahead of our old drier. We wanted a drier that delivered an automated solution, was efficient, quieter, reliable and would meet our drying requirements well into the future.

"McArthur's support, which was a significant factor in our choice of the Mecmar, has been excellent and the whole system fits perfectly with our forward-thinking approach to farming.

"To keep moving forward we are looking at relocating the Mecmar into a dedicated grain store and adding a colour sorter to further enhance how we process our grain," said Wade-Gery.