Danny Verbeek, the accumulation manager for Elders Toepfer, the business that is working to bring on-farm storage into the mainstream through its on-farm storage accreditation scheme, said it was not enough simply to store grain post-harvest hoping for a spike in the months after.

"You have to have a strategy prior to storing the grain, it is not enough to just dump the grain on-farm and hope for a rally," Mr Verbeek said.

Growers needed to do their research and look at the likely troughs and peaks for a particular market segment if they were to make money from storing grain.

"You need to get it right, you need to make sure you have the market before you go ahead and store," Mr Verbeek said.

Speaking at VFF grain marketing meeting at Tungamah, Mr Verbeek also said that accreditation schemes would open up more doors, particularly within the human consumption market, for grain stored on-farm.

Bill Dudley, of Louis Dreyfus, said keeping track of grain quality was crucial.

"Getting a truck down to the delivery and having it rejected for quality is not a great feeling," he said.

Brad Knight, Agfarm, agreed.

"There are premiums there for higher paygrades, but signing up grain stored on-farm for these grades is not to be taken lightly," he said.

"Farmers need to be certain they have the correct specifications.

"Either get the grain thoroughly tested before it goes, or consider selling it into a lower specification, as it is costly to make mistakes."

Mr Dudley said growers should not think of testing grain as a means to gain a premium for their product.

Instead, he said it would be necessary merely for them to gain market access.

"It's just going to be about getting the grain to the market."

Matt Holgate, AWB Yarrawonga, acknowledged it was often difficult to keep an accurate sample of grain going into a silo, but urged growers to keep as many running samples as they could.