WASQUEHAL, FRANCE — BayWa is adding silo sensors from AgTech Javelot to an additional 20 facilities in Germany, following a pilot phase at five locations.

This year, at least 300,000 tonnes of grain and oilseeds will be digitally monitored a BayWa. Smart sensors will be added at locations in Franconia, Eastern Bavaria, Upper Bavaria and Württemberg to control cooling and ventilation in real time.

These will be linked to an app, “Store&save,” that immediately warns the silo master if the temperature in the grain store rises to a critical level. Energy savings in grain cooling are expected.

France-based AgTech Javelot already has a strong presence in that country where it monitors around 10 million tonnes of grains.

“Germany is also an important producer of high-quality grain,” said Roberto Schumann, Javelot’s branch manager for Germany. “This makes the market very attractive for our system. As Germany’s largest agricultural trader with locations from Württemberg and Upper Bavaria to the island of Rügen, it (BayWa) is the ideal partner to gain a foothold in the local market.”

Until now, it has been common practice for the silo master to measure the temperature of the grain manually at regular intervals and document it on paper. Javelot’s silo sensor technology permanently monitors the heat development: an early warning system detects potential hot spots in the silo, locates the specific zone affected and reports the exact level of the temperature and the speed of the temperature rise.

Thanks to automated control of the coolers and fans, the silo master can regulate the temperature to the optimum without any loss of energy.

“Even if there is currently enough grain available globally, it will remain a challenge in the medium to long term to meet the increasing demand of a growing world population,” said Jörg-Simon Immerz, chief trading officer at BayWa AG.  “To achieve this, we would actually need a record harvest every year in the world’s main growing regions. Climate change and, at least in the EU, efforts to make agriculture more extensive in the future speak against this. Every ton of grain is needed. The world cannot afford unnecessary losses, which underlines the importance of high-quality, loss-free storage.”