A 2-Foot Peace of Mind

What’s the difference between cable sensors spaced two feet apart versus four feet apart in a grain bin monitoring system? Peace of mind.

Grain bin monitoring systems are the most effective solution to keeping the quality of your commodity on pace with your marketing goals, but not all grain bin monitoring systems are created equal.

BinManager®, a component of the complete SureTrack connected farm and marketing platform, is in a league of its own when it comes to the technology a farm needs to capitalize on grain quality and characteristics.

“By spacing our sensors two feet apart, we’re able to capture and compute more data points,” says AGI SureTrack District Sales Manager, John Lawrence. “Industry standard for bin monitoring sensor spacing is four feet, and many commercial bins only have sensors every six feet. That’s a big opportunity for discrepancy.”

It’s also a costly opportunity. The variance in accurate readings in sensors spaced at 4 feet is between 10 and 12% -- or potentially $15,000 worth of corn in a 30,000-bushel bin. Cable placement and sensor spacing is one of the most important considerations when choosing a bin management system.

“Think about it,” Lawrence says, “on a 48’ diameter bin, where the sensor spacing is every 4’, that’s around 5,788 bushels of grain – you aren’t capturing data on 5,788 bushels of grain, depending on what your margin of error is.”

Cable numbers and sensor spacing isn’t determined by sales, as is the case with some bin management systems. The BinManager system is configured for the unique needs of a grower based on the commodities being stored, crop rotation and bin size. The formula doesn’t fluctuate because the parameters needed for the system to operate at peak efficiency don’t fluctuate – a straight-forward standard that Lawrence says all customer relationships are built from.

“We want to know if we can be successful with a (BinManager) system, to meet a customer’s expectations. For instance, I had a call this week about a bin with around 90,000 bushels of wheat. The bottom 1/3 is sitting at 12% moisture, the middle 1/3 is 8% and the top is sitting around 10.5-11%, and this customer is asking me, ‘Does it make sense to hydrate’. These are the types of relationships we have with our customers. We have to be the experts and to be the experts we have to have the data,” he says.

The moral of the story—don’t leave any bushels to chance. You’ve already invested the time and financial resources in monitoring what’s inside your bin. Why not monitor what you’re storing to the best of your ability. When it’s time to look at cable upgrades, visit with a trusted advisor about reducing the space between your cables or increasing your sensor load. It will be a conversation you won’t regret.