Harvest Calendar
How wet grain is at harvest, how dry it must be to store, and the natural and mechanical ways of closing that gap.
Moisture is the single most important number in post-harvest handling. It decides how fast mould grows, how active storage insects are, and whether a bulk of grain will keep for months or spoil in weeks.
Cereals rarely leave the field at a storable moisture. Wheat and barley may come off at 14–20%, maize at 20–30% and paddy rice at 20–25%. Safe long-term storage, by contrast, demands roughly 12–14% for most cereals, and less for very long keeping.
Natural drying closes part of the gap for free. Crops can be left to dry standing, cut and laid in windrows, or threshed grain can be spread on floors and turned in the sun. The method is gentle and cheap but depends entirely on dry weather, and wet paddy in particular cannot wait for it.
On narrow screens, swipe or scroll the plate sideways.
Mechanical dryers push heated or ambient air through the grain in batches or in a continuous flow. They make drying independent of weather, but temperature must be controlled: grain intended for seed or milling is dried cooler than feed grain, because high heat kills germination and cracks kernels.
Drying is finished by cooling. Grain put into store warm keeps respiring, and moisture migrating through the bulk condenses on cold surfaces, creating wet patches where mould starts. A short cooling pass after the dryer prevents most of this.
Once in store, moisture is managed, not forgotten. Regular checks of temperature and moisture, plus low-volume aeration, keep the bulk even and catch problems while they are still small.
Further reading