Kairi Maize Silos are heritage-listed silos at 22 Godfrey Road, Kairi, Tablelands Region, Queensland, Australia. They were designed and built in 1924 by Henry Simon Ltd. They were added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 8 August 2007.
History The Kairi Maize Silos are a complex of 4 concrete silos located approximately east of Atherton near the outskirts of Kairi Township on the northern side of the Tolga/Johnstone railway line.
Maize production began purely as a response to a local demand, and grew rapidly as the dominant agricultural industry of the southern Atherton Tablelands up until the Second World War. Although some of the crop was exported to the south and overseas, its main market was and remains regional. Chinese settlers were instrumental in setting up the industry during the late 19th century, and returned soldiers from the First World War continued the industry in the early 20th century. The maize industry has experienced mixed fortunes over its history and has been subject to government intervention at every stage of its evolution. It now remains as a small section of the local economy, no longer monocultural, or as the dominant crop.
During the early 1920s, pricing problems and the region's climate impacted on the area's ability to store grain. This led to the formation of the Atherton Tableland Maize Board, which became responsible for storage issues and marketing the crop. In 1924, the Atherton Tablelands Maize Board erected three storage cluster silo complexes at Kairi, Tolga and Atherton. Only the Kairi Maize Silos remain as evidence of the region's significant maize industry.
Agriculture in the Atherton Tablelands followed mining and grazing. Although timber drew many settlers to the area, the maize industry was pivotal in opening up the Atherton Tablelands to agriculture. Maize initially fulfilled the requirements for stockfeed for the mining communities around Herberton and Irvinebank and later, further west.
Realising that it would be difficult to prosper only from planting maize crops, the farmers attempted to find alternate crops. The Atherton Farmers' Associated lobbied the Minister for Agriculture to establish a State Farm to provide research and advice on the growing of different strains of maize. As a result, the Kairi State Farm was established in 1912 and was responsible for much of the experimental work carried out within the maize industry. The Kairi State Farm remained in operation until closed by the Queensland Government in 1935 despite the closure being disputed by the farming community which pointed out to the Government the desirability of having such a facility in a tropical environment.
White maize farmers resented the successful Chinese maize growers and with the inception of the Soldier Settler Scheme in 1917, Chinese farmers were displaced.
The area of land planted to maize steadily declined from 1919 to 1923 due to a series of difficulties experienced by small farmers under the Soldier Settlement Scheme despite attempts by the Government to relieve problems and allocate abandoned farms to remaining settlers to increase the size of their land. However at the time available varieties of maize were not suitable for the climatic conditions and were subject to various fungal and bacterial conditions. This resulted in an inferior product for the market and a push to resolve the problem by growing resistant strains of maize, and by erecting proper storage.
Farmers experienced difficulty in drying their crops and protecting it from pests while in storage. Treatment for pest eradication in the stored grain was costly, requiring an investment in drying and storage facilities for each farm. Failure to dry the grain to the required 14% of moisture also resulted in mouldy grain which was difficult to sell and added to the poor reputation of the Tablelands crop. Initially farmers stored their maize in barns but rodents and weevils soon encouraged the more affluent farmers to erect galvanised tanks for storage. They tried to overcome grain moisture problems by sun drying their maize on canvas tarpaulins before storing it in the tanks. Carbon bisulphate was then added to the top of the sealed tanks to kill the weevils. These efforts had variable results.
The Queensland Department of Agriculture and Stock recognised the difficulties and advocated for a modern plant for the drying, treatment and storage of the grain as early as 1921. It identified the need for a centralised, modern drying and storage facility, but recognised that the financing of such a facility was an insurmountable obstacle for the farmers. This difficulty, as well as the problems inherent in the marketing of the crop, was overcome by the introduction of legislation which was part of the complete reorganisation of agriculture in Queensland.
During the interwar period, the Queensland Government introduced five critical pieces of legislation which fundamentally affected the maize industry on the Atherton Tablelands. The Cooperative Production Act of 1914–19 allowed farmers to borrow money from the Government for centralised storage. The Primary Producers' Organisation Act of 1922 provided for the political organisation of agriculture. The Primary Producers' Cooperative Association Act of 1923 made possible the formation of cooperative companies to deal with the marketing of primary produce. The Primary Products Pool Act of 1923 enabled the establishment of pools of primary produce which allowed all the farmers to be placed on an equal footing, with one selling agent to handle the marketing of the crop and the Agricultural Bank Act of 1923 provided for cooperatives to borrow money for advance payments on crops before the sale of the commodity.
By 1923, as a result of the introduction of these pieces of legislation, the farmers had the means to form themselves into a Cooperative Company, raise money for suitable grain handling facilities, and market the crop as a whole, with returns guaranteed to each grower. The maize farmers after much acrimonious debate, took advantage of the legislation, and formed a pool, administered by the Atherton Tablelands Maize Marketing Board by authority of the Primary Producers' Organisation and Marketing Act of 1922–1926.
Thus, the inaugural Atherton Tableland Maize Growers Board negotiated a loan of from the Government and built storage facilities at Tolga and Kairi, and a storage and drying plant at Atherton. Each had a working capacity of about , barely enough to process the anticipated delivery of about . The Board began operations in 1924, in time to handle the harvest of that year.
Each cylindrical concrete structure was constructed to in diameter and high.
The silos were designed, constructed and equipped with elevators, cleaning plant and driers by a Sydney-based firm Henry Simon Ltd.
Constructed using "sliding form" concreting (later known as slip-form concreting) the Kairi Maize Silos is one of the earliest applications of this technique in the construction of maize silos in Australia. The construction of the Kairi Maize Silos was overseen by a British engineer, Mr. C.P. Kinninmonth. The facility cost which was financed by the Queensland Treasury, and was repaid through levies on maize sold by the Board. The silos were opened by the Honourable William Gillies on the 15 November 1924.
The complex was initially powered by a single cylinder 20 horse power Ronaldson Brothers & Tippet horizontal engine. In a measure of efficiency the engine was fuelled by burning corn cobs after they had been shelled. It powered the grain elevator and the fans to dry the maize. This engine was replaced in the 1930s, and may have incorporated an electrically driven system.
A small axial flow fan was constructed in the base of each silo. This was attached to perforated ducting, which sat on the floor of the silo. When in operation, the fan blew cool dry air, which was distributed via the ducting throughout the bin. This reduced the temperature of the maize within the structure to a level at which insect and mould development could not occur. A combination of drying and cooling using this method enabled the maize to be maintained in a sound and fresh condition for long periods. Cleaning equipment was located at each silo complex, while a drying plant was established at the Atherton silos to process maize with a moisture content exceeding 14 percent.
When the maize was received at the silos it was discharged from the truck through a grate in the timber floor of the grain receiving building, into a bin. From sub-surface level the maize was lifted by an elevator about to the mezzanine floor above, which housed the sorting / grading machine. The sorting machine removed foreign matter from the shelled maize.
Using a system of electrically driven conveyor belts and elevators, grain in the silos was directed around the cluster of silos for cleaning, re-cooling or back through the tunnel to transport it from the site.
The elevator, located in the inter-silo space, carried the maize to the maize elevator tower which straddles the roof of the four silos. The maize then was conveyed through one of four chutes, into a designated silo. This part of the process was performed manually and access to the maize elevator tower was via a ladder attached to the exterior wall of one of the silos. Provision for access to the tower was incorporated by installing a passageway under the silos, which led to a ladder attached to the exterior wall. The silos could be fully emptied of its maize by the incorporation of inspection hatches located at the base of the silo.
The silos were an example of the socialisation of agriculture practiced by the Queensland Labor government following World War I. It based its practice on Union organisation principles, with the aim to organise the farmers in order to cut out the middleman and market co-operatively. Bolstering these organisations would be State-provided infrastructure such as transport, agricultural education and research.
The system of organised marketing and pooling of the crop certainly gave the farmers some surety of income, but instead of eliminating the "middleman" it imposed another layer of bureaucracy, for which the farmers had to pay. The Queensland Government experiment with agrarian socialism during the establishment of the maize industry on the Atherton Tableland resulted in a highly regulated industry which produced high levels of debt for the cooperative entity and local government. The system did not meet expectations and was not an outstanding success on the Atherton Tablelands.
In the years following the construction of the silos the costs associated with the production of maize dropped and remained fairly stable, rising and falling as a percentage of grower returns, but remaining in the region of 20% to 25% of total returns. In spite of being the only maize growing area in Queensland to take advantage of legislation which allowed farmers to take control of the collective marketing of the crop, the industry struggled until the Second World War. The small size of farms forced farmers to grow maize as their only crop resulting in weed infestations, pests, and erosion gradually depleting the soil and grain yield. This often reduced farmers to a state of grinding poverty.