AgTech manufacturer BinSentry has picked IoT specialist KORE as its IoT partner-of-choice to modernise agricultural measurement systems and drive operational efficiencies.

KORE is powering the BinSentry automated farm feed ordering platform with a single-source of IoT connectivity, simplifying the task for feed mills to quickly and accurately gauge in-bin feed levels on large-scale farms, wherever they are located.

Feed mills acquire and manipulate data streaming from those bins in real-time via APIs so that they can plan their supply and delivery based on real-time data at the individual silo level.

Farmers have typically used a manual process to forecast the amount of feed they order. Many farmers still use mallets to estimate the feed they need to purchase from the sound made when struck against the side of silos. This can result in inaccurate forecasts, under or over filling, and late deliveries to bins. An average feed mill services a range of 500 to 5,000 bins to deposit with feed on a weekly basis at farms around the world. The logistics of delivering feed requires good data so that mills can operate efficient production and supply chain processes.

Bringing efficiencies to on-farm inventory monitoring, ordering, and restocking with IoT technologies and analytics has an important knock-on effect. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, agriculture accounted for an estimated 10.5 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2018 of which feed deliveries are contributors. Farms and feed mills are already struggling with sustainable production on top of handling and organising massive amounts of resources. With access to mission-critical information and data that is pulled from the IoT enabled monitors, feed mill trucks are able to deliver the right amount of feed at the right time to the right farm and travel between 15 percent to 25 percent fewer miles, significantly reducing the feed mills carbon footprint, reducing their labor needs and saving costs. 

“This is the ‘decade of IoT,’ and in many industries, like agriculture, healthcare, and fleet management, it’s an exciting time of exploration and innovation — much like what I imagine the Industrial Revolution was like at the turn of the 20th century,” said KORE President and CEO Romil Bahl. “Through our work with BinSentry, we’re providing an IoT one-stop-shop to some of the most recognisable commercial outfits in the farming industry, resulting in data-powered delivery route optimisation, accurate feed forecasting and ordering, and increased automation of the inventory tracking and ordering process. With access to a conduit of IoT connectivity, asset monitoring, and APIs, the average feed mill has the potential to save millions of dollars.”

“BinSentry was founded four years ago to solve the information deficit that is a significant pain point in the relationship between feed mills and their farmers and growers,” said Randall Swartzentruber, founder and CEO, BinSentry. “Our goal with BinSentry is to close that information gap, and the best way to do that is with IoT connected devices sending accurate and reliable data to a comprehensive feed ordering automation software, enabled by the comprehensive and future-forward wireless networks being provided by KORE. Now, our feed mill customers can look at their dashboards and in real-time see exactly how much product exists in every single feed bin that they service, act proactively to manage demand and then plan accordingly. It takes only 15 minutes to install the IoT-powered sensors to solve a 40-year-old problem.”