SCOTLAND NECK — For several farmers in North Carolina, big bin couldn’t have struck at a better time.

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Farmers like Cecil Wilkie in Scotland Neck will be able to store their crops rather than sending them to market immediately after harvest, allowing them to sell when market prices are at their best.

Wilkie got his 5,500-bushel bin through a grant and low-interest loan through the state Ag Development and Farmland Preservation Trust Fund and the Natural Capital Investment Fund.

“It’s great,” said Wilkie, a farmer for two years, in a telephone interview prior to a ribbon cutting at his farm off Kehukee Church Road. “It helps people store their crops.”

Harvest time is typically when crop values are at their lowest, Wilkie said. “You can make 30 percent more by holding on to them. That’s why the big farms are doing so well in the Midwest.”

The bin program was the brainchild of James Davis, a Scotland Neck native and marketing specialist with the state Department of Agriculture. “A lot of farmers don’t have on-farm storage,” he said at Wilkie’s farm yesterday.

They either have to sell them at market value at harvest time or pay someone to store their crops in an elevator.

Through the program small, minority and low-wealth farmers like Wilkie and others gathered at his farm have an opportunity to play the market, said Rick Larson, North Carolina program director for the Natural Capital Investment Fund, which funds projects which use the environment in a good way.

So far the program has funded seven bins with money available to support seven more. There are two farms in Halifax with the bins, one in Northampton, two in Hertford, one in Bladen and one in Orange, Larson said.

The grant money funds $14,700 for the $25,000 bin while the low-interest, five-year loan funds the rest, said Larson.

Johnnie Powell, a Hertford County farmer who is in the program, came to support Wilkie yesterday. A lifelong farmer who came back to the farm after college, Powell said, “It gives us a chance to play the market.”

State Assistant Commissioner of Agriculture Richard Reich was at yesterday’s ribbon cutting. “It helps the farmers keep money in the community,” he said. “It helps him (the farmer) pay his bills. Agriculture is economic development in rural counties.”

Wilkie is excited about the opportunities the shiny new bin, which has an aerator to control moisture, will offer him. He already plans to fill his bin with wheat when harvest time comes in June and hold it until the prices are perfect.

Then in October the bin will be filled with soybeans and he will hold onto them for sale in April or May. “Farming has really changed a lot,” he said prior to the ceremony. “Last year you could get $6 or $7 a bushel for corn, $15 to $16 for soybeans.”