Harvested rice has too much moisture in it to store directly. It can only sit in the trucks for roughly 24 hours before fermentation will begin due to self heating. Because of this, growers rush the rice to a drying facility. The trucks drive over a "pit" where the rice is emptied out of the truck and moved into the drying facility (center).

     The dryer (gray structure in upper right) is a structure that allows a thin "wall" of rice to move vertically at a set speed. Large fans move heated air through this wall of rice to remove moisture. After a pass through the dryer, the rice is moved back to a storage bin (large tubular structures) for a few hours so that the moisture will even out. Several passes are usually required to get the rice dry enough to store (14% moisture), so the rice will come out of the storage bin and into the drying facility multiple times. Once a proper storage moisture is attained, then unheated, ambient air is passed through the rice in the storage bin as needed to keep it cool.