How is moisture shrink calculated?

Removing water reduces weight, so dry bushels equal wet bushels times (100 minus wet moisture) divided by (100 minus target moisture). The moisture shrink percent is the weight lost expressed as a fraction of the original. Drying 25 percent corn to 15 percent removes about 11.8 percent of the weight as water.

What is the difference between moisture shrink and total shrink?

Moisture shrink is the actual water removed by the formula above. Many elevators add a handling shrink, often around 0.5 percent, to cover dry-matter loss and dust during drying and handling. Total shrink is the sum of both and is what reduces your paid bushels.

What is a point of moisture?

A point is one percentage of moisture. Drying corn from 22 to 15 percent is seven points. Drying charges are commonly quoted per point per bushel, for example 4 cents per point, so seven points costs 28 cents per bushel of grain dried.

When does it pay to sell wet instead of drying?

Compare the net value after shrink and drying cost to the buyer's wet price after their shrink and drying deduction. If the elevator's drying charge plus shrink is cheaper than your on-farm cost, selling wet can win. This tool gives the dry-side figures to put in that comparison.

Does this include fuel and electricity separately?

No. The per-point drying cost you enter is meant to bundle fuel, power, and handling into a single rate, which is how most on-farm and elevator charges are expressed. If you want to model fuel alone, enter just the fuel component as the per-point cost.

Grain Shrink & Drying Cost Calculator

At harvest, deciding whether to dry grain on farm or sell it wet hinges on two numbers: how much weight you lose to shrink and what drying costs. This calculator applies the standard shrink formula to convert wet bushels to dry bushels and multiplies the points removed by your drying rate to give the total cost.

How it works

Drying removes water, so the dry bushels are scaled by the ratio of solids:

dry bushels    = wet bushels × (100 − wet moisture) / (100 − target moisture)
moisture shrink % = (wet bushels − dry bushels) / wet bushels × 100
total shrink % = moisture shrink % + handling shrink %
paid bushels   = wet bushels × (1 − total shrink % / 100)
points removed = wet moisture − target moisture
drying cost    = wet bushels × points removed × cost per point

The points-removed figure drives the cost, while the shrink ratio drives how many sellable bushels remain after the water leaves.

Example and tips

Drying 1,000 bushels of corn from 22 percent down to 15 percent: dry bushels = 1,000 × 78 / 85 = 917.6, an 8.2 percent moisture shrink. Add a 0.5 percent handling shrink for 8.7 percent total, leaving about 913 paid bushels. At seven points and 4 cents per point that is 1,000 × 7 × 0.04 = 280 in drying cost. Put those numbers against the elevator’s wet price and their own shrink and drying deduction to decide whether to dry or sell wet.