How To Calculate Bushels: Measuring Your Yield
The Basics Of How To Calculate Bushels Manually
Harvest season can come in the blink of an eye. If you’re wondering how to calculate bushels to measure your yield, stick around!
In this article, we’ll be going in-depth into:
What a bushel is.
The history of why we’re using bushels as a measurement
The importance of grain bins.
How to manually calculate bushels.
What Is A Bushel?
A Bushel is the measurement of grain in the United States. It’s typically 1.25 cubic feet in volume. The rest of the world uses tons or metric tons.
Several types of grain go out to the markets. To facilitate trading, the USDA standardized each grain to be weighed in bushels instead of volumetric measurements.
For example, corn was designated a bushel weight of 56 pounds. Soybeans were designated 60 pounds. Rye, 56 pounds, and fescue at 32.
If you want to sell your grain, the weight needs to be determined by knowing a known volume. When the weight is lower than the standard, the sale will get “docked” on a percentage basis.
Several other factors affect grading standards for grain such as cracked kernels, heat damage, and much more. A grain management solution can help you avoid these issues.
But, with the rest of the world using tons, why did the US even use bushels in the first place? Here’s a quick rundown of the history behind bushels.
Bushel: History
Why does the US use bushels? Short answer—the British.
Bushels act as an intermediate value between a pound and a ton. It was made a legal measurement of English wine and grains following the Norman Conquest.
Initially, bushels were defined per wine gallon. But, this was changed thanks to Edward I or II which defined the London bushels per larger corn gallon.
In both instances, bushels were estimated to be 64 bounds of 12 ounces per pennyweight of 32 grains. During the 16th century, the bushels were redefined as 56 avoirdupois pounds.
Meanwhile, the modern American or US bushel comes at around 2150.42 cubic inches. This follows the Winchester bushels which had a volume of cylinder 18.5 in diameter and 8 inches in height or roughly 2150.4202 cubic inches.
What Is a Grain Bin?
Grain bins are galvanized metal silos used to store our harvested grain products. We use grain drying silos or bins to protect our products from external harm or moisture build-up.
These bins are essential for any farm as it ensures proper airflow through the metal grain bins. With a grain monitoring system in place, your product is sure to be protected with operations running at optimal levels.
We need to know the capacity of our grain bin to calculate the number of bushels we can store or produce. There are different types of grain bins we can use.
Some are piled, have conical tops, a hopper bottom, or are even square or rectangular in shape as opposed to the traditional cylindrical shapes.
The sizes of grain bins also vary. Some can hold 1,000 bushes (around 25.4 metric tons). Others can handle 1 million bushels.
So, if you’re trying to develop a grain storage system for products or feed storage solutions, you need to know how to calculate initial estimates for your bushels and other storage requirements.
How To Manually Calculate Bushels
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As mentioned earlier, there are several types of grain bins that you can use. However, two of the most popular types you’d often see are cylindrical and rectangular or flat storage.
Here’s a guide on how you can calculate for both:
Calculate The Bin Capacity
Before calculating the grain bin capacity, remember to keep everything on the same units. If you want to use imperial, then go imperial all the way. The same goes for using the metric system.
There are other grain bin shapes to account for. Each one would require a different formula. Here are the formulas you’d need for the common grain bin types:
Round Grain Bin = (Pi)(r^2)(H)
Round Grain Bin Peaked Top and Hopper = (Pi)(r^2)(H1) + (1/3)(Pi)(r^2)(H2) + (1/3)(Pi)(r^2)(H3)
Round Grain Bin with Curved Top and Hopper = (Pi)(r^2)(H1) + (Pi)(r^2)((2/3)(R)+H2)) + (1/3)(Pi)(r^2) ((2/3)(R)+(H3))
Rectangle Grain Bin Capacity = (L)(W)(H)
Rectangle Grain Bin with Peaked Top = (L)(W)(H) + (1/3)(L)(W)(H2)
Rectangle Grain Bin with Curved Top = (L)(W)(H) + (L)(W)((2/3)+(H2))
Convert To Bushels
Once we have the capacity of the grain bins, we can now convert them to bushels. To do this, we simply need to multiply them by the conversation constant 0.7786 bushels per cubic foot.
Example 1: Let’s say we have a grain bin that’s 40m in diameter and 25m tall. That means we use the formula: Round Grain Bin = (Pi)(r^2)(H) to get 25,132 cubic meters.
Next, we multiply it by 0.7786 bushels per cubic foot. However, as mentioned earlier, we can’t just multiply feet by meters.
Convert cubic meters to cubic feet first. Afterward, multiply it by 0.7786 to get 691050 Bushels per cubic foot.
Example 2: In this example, we’re going to use the same size bin as the first example, but this time, the bin has a conical roof and hopper that’s 5 meters tall.
We need to use the formula: (Pi)(r^2)(H1) + (1/3)(Pi)(r^2)(H2) + (1/3)(Pi)(r^2)(H3). H1 is the height of the bin, H2 is the height of the conical roof, and H3 is the height of the hopper.
Each of the addends represents the volume of each part of the grain bin. As such, we need to multiply each by the constant 0.7786.
The volume of the bin becomes 54452 cubic meters and we can have 1,497,211 bushels.
Key Takeaways
Calculating bushels is essential for estimating the storage requirements and the potential yield of your grain. Here’s a quick summary of key details you might’ve missed:
Bushels are the measurement of grain in the United States.
It’s traditionally 1.25 cubic feet in volume.
USDA standardized each grain to be weighed in bushels.
To calculate bushels in a grain bin, you need to know the conversation constant of the grain and the volume of the bin.
Advanced grain management is a game changer in ensuring your bushels get maximum yield. Contact Wall Grain today and learn how you can take your grain management to new levels!