It’s an infuriating but accepted fact of farming that some amount of grain is going to be lost during harvest. Despite being ripe for improvement, new technologies designed to bring more efficiency to the farm had mostly overlooked this area, something that wasn’t lost on Marcel Kringe. With a background in ag engineering and agronomy, he came up with the “Bushel Plus Harvest Loss System” to help farmers assess grain loss more safely and accurately during harvest.
Kringe grew up on a farm in Germany and wanted to pursue a career in agriculture but knew the small family operation couldn’t support him. That led him to college and degrees in Ag Engineering and Agronomy. Educational studies and internships then took him around the world where he specialized in harvest optimization.
One thing Kringe learned pretty quickly was that simply looking at the ground behind the combine was not an efficient way to estimate harvest losses. “Looking on the ground, you may think you see it all, but you don’t see the broken kernels, you don’t see the small kernels,” says Kringe. “It can easily be double or triple the loss that you actually think you have.”
After earning his degree, Kringe settled in Canada with “nothing but a bag of clothes.” He learned how to speak English by using a two-way radio while driving combines on various farms and eventually was hired by Cargill to sell seed and serve as an agronomy consultant to farmers.
In the back of his mind, Kringe was always thinking about the persistent problem of harvest grain loss that he observed in every country, and the lack of tools to mitigate the problem. He says a farm in Russia was a great eye-opener. “We were throwing a tray under the combine while it was driving by to check for loss. It was dirty. It was dangerous. It was not accurate, and it took too long.” Kringe says he also heard lots of stories over the years where people almost got driven over by a combine.
While working at Cargill during the day, Kringe spent his spare time working with a friend in Germany to design a drop tray that would measure waste from a combine more safely. After developing a prototype, he gave it to farmers to test out.
After one week of use, one of those farmer testers called to inform him of the results. “He said, ‘Hey, we did the math on this, and it saved us $60,000 to $70,000 Canadian,’” Kringe recalls. In the winter of 2017, Kringe left Cargill to focus full-time on Bushel Plus. His goal was to sell 120 pieces of equipment in 2018. Sales exceeded that goal by many hundreds.
Today, Bushel Plus sells its product on every continent and in more than 30 countries, including the Bushel Plus SmartPan System. Using a magnetic drop pan in conjunction with the SmartDrop App and a digital field scale, the system collects a grain sample while the app conducts an industry-standard loss analysis. In four fast steps, farmers have access to valuable information to help make informed decisions to optimize combines, calibrate combine loss sensors, and harness the power of combine automation systems.
The company has also introduced MAD Concaves, which replace traditional round-wire combine concaves. The company says its approach results in more effective threshing, getting the grain out of the head and into the hopper quicker for decreased rotor loss and less dockage.
Additionally, Bushel Plus makes what they call “the world’s smallest combine.” The “MiniCombine” is a portable electric device for collecting field samples to check for moisture content and quality analysis.
FarmCon attendees in January will have a chance to meet the folks from Bushel Plus and learn more about their solutions. In the meantime, check out the website HERE. There is also an entertaining video from ag influencer Dickson Delorme, aka “Quick Dick McDick,” explaining how the Bushel Plus SmartPan works HERE.
