Silo

A silo is a structure built to store bulk material in one place, most often grain but also silage, cement, coal, woodchips, or sawdust, and takes the form of a tall cylindrical tower, a below-grade bunker with concrete walls, or, in modern agriculture, a long plastic storage bag. The word comes from the Ancient Greek siros, a pit for holding grain, and pit silos are known from Tel Tsaf in the southern Levant as early as the fifth millennium BC and were in wide use in Greece by the late eighth century BC, long before the structure took its familiar upright form. Fred Hatch built what is described as the first modern silo, an upright wooden structure filled with grain, at Spring Grove, Illinois in 1873, and the cylindrical tower silo used on farms today was developed soon after by Franklin Hiram King.