Hitting the side of a feed bin with a mallet, using load scales or installing vibration sensors to guestimate feed levels is a thing of the past. To make feed bin monitoring safer and more efficient for animal producers and feed mills, Cargill is now an exclusive distributor of BinSentry, an easy-to-install feed management solution that accurately tracks feed inventory.

Sensors from BinSentry use LiDAR sensors, the same advanced technology used in self-driving cars, to read bins every four hours. BinSentry installs in ten minutes or less, requires no bin modification and is solar/battery powered. It also has self-cleaning sensors that wipe dust before each reading to ensure better accuracy. Users can confirm the correct feed is in their bins with an easy to use dashboard that they can view on any mobile device or computer.

“Integrating BinSentry sensors with our Cargill Nutrition Cloud Platform helps animal producers, feed mills and their customers get the right feed for specific animal groupings in their operations,” said Scott Ainslie, Cargill’s regional managing director of animal nutrition. “This also opens up opportunities for truck route optimization and better production scheduling in feed mills.”

BinSentry leverages low-power, long-range networks such as NB-IoT and LTE-M, so even remotely located feed bins can be monitored, regardless of whether internet connectivity is available. Feed mills can plan delivery routes more efficiently and ensure that farmers have the right amount of feed when they need it. Other benefits include fewer costly ordering errors, reduction in late or unexpected feed orders and increased safety by eliminating the need for producers or feed mill employees to climb into a bin to check inventory levels. With BinSentry, Cargill customers get intuitive software that provides powerful on-farm insights.

“BinSentry is proud to partner with Cargill to eliminate costly inefficiencies and enhance operational sustainability for those working hard to feed the world,” said BinSentry CEO Randall Schwartzentruber. “Together, our relentless pursuit of agricultural innovation combined with Cargill’s feed expertise and extensive supply chain footprint will allow us to scale our solution quickly, helping producers and feed mill operators be more successful.”