Capacity of off-farm commercial grain storage in the United States totaled 9.74 billion bushels on December 1, 2010, up 3 percent from December 1, 2009. The largest increase occurred in Iowa where an additional 50.0 million bushels of capacity were added since December 1, 2009. Other notable increases were shown in Illinios, where capacity increased 40.0 million bushels, and Nebraska, where capacity increased 26.9 million bushels from a year ago. The largest decreases occurred in California, where capacity decreased 4.87 million bushels from the previous year.
Iowa remained the largest off-farm storage capacity State during 2010. Illinois was the second largest followed by Kansas, Nebraska, and Texas. These five States accounted for 52 percent of the Nation’s off-farm storage capacity on December 1, 2010.
Off-farm grain storage capacity includes all elevators, warehouses, terminals, merchant mills, other storage, and oilseed crushers which store whole grains, soybeans, canola, flaxseed, mustard seed, safflower, sunflower, rapeseed, Austrian winter peas, dry edible peas, lentils, and chickpeas/garbanzo beans. Capacity data exclude facilities used to store only rice or peanuts, oilseed crushers processing only cottonseed or peanuts, tobacco warehouses, seed warehouses, and storage facilities that handle only dry edible beans, other than chickpeas/garbanzo beans.
Off-farm storage facilities totaled 8,984 on December 1, 2010, down slightly from December 1, 2009. States with the largest number of facilities include Iowa with 900, Illinois with 870, Kansas with 725, Minnesota with 590, and Nebraska with 481.
