• • • Grain Monitoring Tools Help Farmers Keep Grain Healthy
In today’s grain market, farmers can’t afford to lose even a single bushel of stored grain. Yet, keeping a crop healthy when it’s stored longer and in larger bins continues to be a problem that plagues the industry: About $12 billion in grain is lost to spoilage every year. While temperature cables hung strategically inside the bin to detect hot spots caused by grain respiration, moisture, insect infestation, mold, or fungus have offered farmers some solace, adoption of the technology has remained low.
According to Naeem Zafar, who is the cofounder and CEO of TeleSense, around 30% of the grain being stored worldwide is monitored by some form of technology; most measure temperature, and only a few measure moisture. Other experts estimate that percentage is far lower. Both TeleSense and GSI have developed solutions to give the industry a clearer view of stored grain so potential issues can be detected before they negatively impact your bottom line.
For storage facilities already equipped with temperature cables, the start-up has developed a wireless junction box that interfaces with an existing setup and converts it into a wireless monitoring and predictive solution. As data is collected, it is sent to TeleSense’s cloud-based platform for analysis. For units that have no temperature cables, TeleSense has developed a SensorBall, which is about the size of a softball. You simply toss it into a grain pile, silo bag, horizontal bunker, or vertical storage.
