Dustin, American Dairymen: Hey, everyone. Welcome to this episode of the American Dairymen Podcast. Thank you so much for joining us. My name is Dustin Hector, and I am the publisher of the American Dairymen Media Group and the host of today’s podcast. I am pleased to have you with us for this episode, and it is my pleasure to welcome today’s guest, Lydell Martin, from A.N. Martin Systems. Lydell Martin has been in the ag industry for 20 plus years, servicing grain dryers, designing grain systems, and answering dryer tech questions for service crews all over the United States. He actively travels the U.S., providing technical service for grain dryers, soybean roasters, and more. From walking the feed aisle of local dairies to troubleshooting the PLC on your grain dryer, Lydell is a phone call away from assisting you in your grain and feed endeavors. Lydell, welcome to the American Dairymen Podcast.
Lydell, SoyRoaster: Hello. I’m happy to be here today.
Dustin, American Dairymen: Awesome. Yeah, and we’re super glad to have you. And we’re going to learn a lot about roasting soybeans here in just a second. But before we get too far into that, can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself, maybe a little bit about your background and where you came from and how you got to A.N. Martin Systems?
Lydell, SoyRoaster: Yeah, I grew up on a dairy farm. My dad milked cows. Then when I was 19, I started working for a grain equipment company. I started out building grain bins, building grain elevators, and installing grain equipment. I worked my way up to where I was doing service in 2009, I believe it was. I started doing grain dryer service and automation service. And then about four years, well, over the years, we’ve done a few roasting systems for customers, where somebody wanted to roast soybeans and we installed whatever equipment they wanted. And then here about four years ago, the high oleic bean thing started and we started getting a lot more interest. We had a salesman that I worked with that worked with a lot of dairy farms and they wanted roasting systems that were automated. So, because I worked in service and automation, I got involved in helping develop a complete roasting system. People had roasters for sale, but they didn’t have a complete system. So, I got involved in helping put together a complete system that was automated. That way, when we installed a roasting system, it was a good quality feed at the end, not a guessing game to get the product right. So, I guess I’ve been around in the farming industry since I could walk and then just kept working in this direction. And now I do service and support on roasting systems and grain dryers. Grain dryers are still kind of my side hobby for a couple months out of the year, and soybean roasters are the rest of the year.
Dustin, American Dairymen: Awesome. That’s great. And yeah, chalk up another one for somebody who started in the ag industry and specifically the dairy industry and just can’t seem to get out of the industry and ends up spending their career in there. Happens all the time, doesn’t it?
Lydell, SoyRoaster: Yeah, it’s something that at one point when I was a teenager, I thought I’d milk cows, but that looked like a big investment to get started. So, I ended up working in the equipment side of things and not leaving the industry but just going on a little different path.
Dustin, American Dairymen: Absolutely. So, you’re working for A.N. Martin. Can you tell us a little bit about what they do there and what your role is within the company?
Lydell, SoyRoaster: So, I worked for A.N. Martin Systems. I first started for them in 2003, and I worked for them up until the beginning of this year. I am no longer an employee of A.N. Martin Systems. I’m actually on my own. So, A.N. Martin builds the SoyRoaster setup. Their main thing is grain and feed systems. So, they do complete grain systems for crop farmers. They do complete feed systems for chicken farms, feed mills, dairy farms, from design to build to automation, complete systems for feed, and grain. They also do a little bit of fertilizer stuff, but that’s a little smaller thing. So that’s what A. N. Martin does. They do everything from start to finish. When I quit working for them at the beginning of the year, I went on my own doing consulting and tech support on automation and consulting on feed center design. So, then they came to me a month or so after I quit and said, we want to keep you on board doing outside sales and doing tech support and commissioning systems for them. So now It’s October and I’m back to where I’m doing a large percentage of my work for A.N. Martin Systems again, even though I’m kind of on my own.
Dustin, American Dairymen: Ok, that sounds awesome. And so, I guess the one question that got me started is: If I’m a dairy producer and I’m talking with you, one question I would have is: Why should I roast soybeans for my dairy? What advantages does that have?
Lydell, SoyRoaster: So, the answer to that question has changed over the last four years, and it’s going to continue evolving somewhat. So, when it first started, the big reason to roast your own soybeans was to save money on feed costs and lower protein costs. Well, as the protein costs have dropped, what we’re looking at right now is the soybean market is down and, for crop producers and dairy producers, the dairymen can lower his feed costs. Not only his protein costs, but fat as well. We’re realizing that with the high oleic bean, you can lower your fat purchases, your palm fats, your tallow, and greatly reduce those purchases and in some cases eliminate them. And the other thing to consider is increased components in the milk. So, at first it was like protein is a big thing. We can get our protein costs down. Well, now we’re looking at protein costs, fat costs, and then there’s increased component production. So, it’s kind of a full array. Now, a farmer that doesn’t grow beans might say, “Well, how does this affect me? I can’t grow my own feed anyhow because I don’t have enough acres to grow my beans.” Right now, with the way the bean market is, any crop farmer is willing to grow high oleic beans to sell to the neighboring dairy farm and the farmer can pay a decent price for those beans and still be saving money over buying a processed feed from the feed mill.
Dustin, American Dairymen: Well, that makes sense. And a dairy producer or even a cattle producer for that matter definitely wants to be efficient and find ways where they can lower costs. Not cut costs, but lower some of their costs. So yeah, roasting soybeans sounds like a great option there. I’ve been hearing bits and pieces about these high oleic beans. What’s all the fuss about? And can you tell me a little bit about what that is?
Lydell, SoyRoaster: So, for years people have roasted soybeans and fed soybeans a little bit here and there. It hasn’t always been a huge thing, but there’s always been some farms that have played with feeding roasted soybeans. The soybeans need to be roasted to make them more digestible to the cow. And, the problem previously with roasting soybeans was the linoleic acid in the beans. Your standard soybeans have up to 25% linoleic acid. And that is the unhealthy part that, if you feed too much of that to a cow, it can affect their rumen. People that have fed too much have seen it hurt components. Now they’ve come up with these high oleic beans. For myself, I wish they didn’t even call them soybeans. I wish they came out with a new name for them, because they are so different to feed. They only have up to 0.25% linoleic and they have mainly high oleic. So, they have very little to almost no bad fats. And they have very high amounts of the good fats. Your issues with feeding a lot of roasted soybeans are eliminated with the high oleic bean. In my experience, I wish the seed companies would have said, “Hey, we developed a totally new bean.” And the interesting part on it is when Pioneer came out with Plenish, there were farms I worked with that are non-GMO. Then Beck’s come out with a non-GMO high oleic. So, there’s a broad spectrum of seeds available now for it. It’s been very interesting learning on it. And that’s something I’ve been working with for about four years now.
Dustin, American Dairymen: Okay, so then I guess that leads me to my next question is: What is the best method of roasting soybeans?
Lydell, SoyRoaster: That’s a very interesting question. I’ve been involved in designing and installing roasting systems from flame roasters, hot air roasters, auger type roasters, to electric heat. I’ve worked with a lot of different roasters. For every roaster, if the process is set up properly and the bean is taken up to the correct temperature and held at that temperature long enough, you can make a quality roasted bean. So there’s a lot of different ways to go about roasting the bean. We started talking to a dairy with a few thousand cows. The last thing they need is more labor on the farm. So even if they can save money on their feed bill, but have to hire an extra employee, what are they gaining at the end of the day? So that’s where I got involved in the soybean roasting process. So, your flame and hot air roasters roast the bean in less than a minute. When the bean goes in one end of the roaster till it comes out the other end, it takes less than a minute. Sometimes it’s as quick as 30 seconds in the roaster. Then there’s some auger type roasters where the bean is in the roaster for up to 4 minutes. But the way the standard auger type roasters work, you have beans that lay against the pipe and others that are setting on top of them. They get augured through and your outside beans get over roasted and burnt while your inside soybeans are hardly roasted. So, it’s not a consistent roast. So, we designed a roaster where the bean is in the roaster for 30 to 40 minutes. We keep the bean in the roaster for 30 to 40 minutes. It looks like an auger type roaster, and although it is an auger, it is a mixing auger. As it’s going through there, we are mixing the soybeans. Every bean spends the equal amount of time against the hot pipe to get heated to temperature. Because of our mixing process, and the time in the roaster. we can run at a much lower temperature on our heating surface. Where your flame roaster is running 650 degrees on the beans, we’re running at 350 to 400 degrees on soybeans. With the way ours is designed with the mixing process, our fire hazard on the roaster is similar to that of a water heater. There’s basically no fire hazard. And by doing that, we could automate it to where you press a start button on the panel and go on about your day. Stop in and check it once per day and just walk through, making sure everything is working properly. The automation can send alerts to your phone if there’s a problem. So, there’s a lot of ways to roast soybeans, but we’ve found fire hazard is a big concern in bean roasting and nobody wants a fire. So, let’s design it so we don’t have fire. And the other concern is labor. Nobody is looking for more work for their employees to do. So, we fully automated it. Now the labor is very, very minimal. The other consideration is even roasting, and getting a high rumen bypass protein. And that comes with a slow roast, keeping it hot for a long period of time.
Dustin, American Dairymen: Interesting. Yeah, as you were talking, I was starting to wonder about, the fire hazard and what risks there would be. So yes, you’re exactly right. Nobody, wants a fire.
Lydell, SoyRoaster: Right. I want to say more on that fire conversation. With our roaster, if it loses power and everything just shuts down hot, it’s not good. You end up with charred beans, but no fire starts. Our operating temperatures are low enough that beans don’t spontaneously combust at 300 or 400 degrees. That is why our fire hazard is like a water heater. Our style roaster is the only style that has this low of a fire hazard.
Dustin, American Dairymen: Okay, perfect. Tell us a little bit about the SoyRoaster system and how that works.
Lydell, SoyRoaster: So, the way we handle it this: The beans come into the roaster. There’s an auger feeding into the back of the roaster. Our automation control panel automatically fills the roaster. We can pull out of a cone bottom bin. We’ve also done setups where we’re roasting out of a 50,000-bushel storage bin. The automation is automatically conveying from the large storage bin right into the roaster. When it comes out of the roaster, it goes into a steeping hopper. However, we configure specifically to a farm or mill’s needs. Not every system is identical. On the most common setup, the soybeans come out of the roaster, dump into what we call a steeping hopper or cooling hopper, then the soybeans steep for an hour and 40 minutes. And after about an hour and 40 minutes, it hits the high-level switch, and the cooling fan starts cooling the soybeans. It cools for about 20 minutes to get them cooled down. Then we have a hammer mill set up. I’m going to kind of take a side route here on this. On a lot of the first systems we did, we installed roller mills in. As I talk to people from California to New York, it is very normal for people to say, I want to roll my beans. We got to run them through a roller mill because we don’t want dust and big particles. We want an even grind on these beans. So we did roller mills, and we had a lot of maintenance on the roller mills. We had roller mills that after six months into use, they wanted to change the rolls and get a finer grind. After we installed a few systems, we ended up pulling the roller mill out, and putting a hammer mill in. Now, we’re pretty adamant about putting a hammer mill in. We set up our hammer mills on a variable speed so that we can get every bit as consistent of a grind. If somebody wants quartered beans, we can make quartered beans with no more dust than a roller mill would have. And it simple as changing a screen, changing mill RPMs, and we can make that bean anywhere from quarters right down to a fine ground of 400 or 500 micron, whatever you want to do. And it’s been very universal for us. Not every farm wants those beans ground the same. Depending on the rest of their ration, and what the value of their forages are, they might want to grind the soybeans coarser or finer. One nutritionist at multiple different dairies is going to vary it slightly. With the hammer mill, we can do that. We have a full range of milling abilities. I’ve seen a lot of commercial facilities where they have coarse beans and fine beans coming out of the same hammer mill. Then coming out of our hammer mill, we blow the beans to your hopper bin, commodity bay, or wherever you’re storing the finished product. We have a blower to convey the product with, which is an important part of our complete process. There are a couple benefits to having that blower. It finishes the cooling process and helps with dust control. And this way, the conveyance is very low maintenance.
Dustin, American Dairymen: That sounds very, very intriguing. So, I’m a very visual person. Is there somewhere that a producer can go and see a SoyRoaster in action?
Lydell, SoyRoaster: Yes, we have a couple spread across the country and more are getting installed every month. The easiest way is to visit www.soyroaster.com. There we have videos attached. We also have videos on YouTube. My consulting business goes by Grain Dryer Repairman, and I have a YouTube channel. I have videos of startups that I’ve done. So, if you go to www.soyroaster.com or YouTube, there are videos you can watch on how the process works. I’ve done some videos of systems installed in containers, and some where they’re installed in a customer’s building. It just depends on what is the most economical for your facility. Also, on www.soyroaster.com, there’s some analysis results on the soybean meal produced.
Dustin, American Dairymen: Awesome. Lydell, I want to thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day here. We’re recording this on Friday. So, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day and sit down and chat with me about soybean roasters and the advantages of having one on your dairy. Thank you so much for sitting down with me.
Lydell, SoyRoaster: You’re welcome. Thanks a lot for having me.
Dustin, American Dairymen: You bet. Folks, that was Lydell Martin talking with us today about soybean roasters. Thank you so much, everybody, for taking time out of your day to take a listen to this episode. Make sure you go to your favorite podcast platform and like and follow the American Dairymen Podcast. And make sure you tell your friends and neighbors about us. Until next time, take care everybody.
Thanks for reading this article! If you would like to contact us, please call SoyRoaster at 315-902-4524. You can also contact Lydell directly at 315-209-7979.
