In a recent Feed Strategy Chat interview, Ben Allen, CEO of BinSentry, discussed the rapidly evolving role of artificial intelligence (AI) in feed mill operations. Allen highlighted the significant increase in AI investment, evidenced by Nvidia's quarterly revenue growth from US$7 billion to US$30 billion, and explained how AI is transforming the feed industry through improvements in vendor-managed inventory, supply chain efficiency and automation of spreadsheet-based tasks.
Transcription of Feed Strategy Chat with Ben Allen, CEO, BinSentry
Jackie Roembke, editor in chief, WATT Feed Brands/Feed Strategy: Hi, everyone. Welcome to Feed Strategy Chat. I’m your host, Jackie Roembke, editor-in-chief of WATT Feed Brands and Feed Strategy magazine.
This edition of Feed Strategy Chat is brought to you by the Feed Mill of the Future Conference. The half-day event will bring together leading feed industry experts to examine emerging feed mill technologies poised to impact animal feed manufacturing. It will be held on January 28 at the International Production & Processing Expo (IPPE) 2025. The conference, produced by Feed Strategy and Feed & Grain, is organized in partnership with the American Feed Industry Association (AFIA). To learn more about the 2025 edition of the FMOTF Conference, visit www.feedmillofthefuture.com.
Today we're joined by Ben Allen, CEO of BinSentry. He's here to explore how the integration of artificial intelligence is improving feed mill operations.
Hi, Ben, how are you today?
Ben Allen, CEO, BinSentry: I'm well, Jackie, how are you?
Roembke: I'm doing great. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. Now, around this time last year, we had a similar discussion about the use of artificial intelligence in feed mills. What notable changes have taken place since we spoke?
Allen: The biggest change is just the speed of the uptake. One of the industry measures for artificial intelligence is going to be chip sales. If you look at a company like Nvidia, which has made a lot of headlines on the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq, for those that are following the markets, Nvidia's quarterly revenue in the last five quarters has gone from US$7 billion a quarter to US$30 billion a quarter. So if you're asking yourself, how many companies care about AI, they care about it deeply, and they're buying the raw materials, the chips, to drive that type of investment at record pace.
Watch BinSentry CEO Ben Allen's presentation, "Harness AI to lower the operation costs of feed production," at the 2025 Feed Mill of the Future Conference.
Roembke: And how are those chips being used in a way that would impact or benefit the feed industry?
Allen: Well, they're being used to build data centers that can do more computations than ever before. And in the feed industry and in agriculture, it shows up in multiple areas. Part of it shows up in genetics and diets and the pharmaceuticals being used at the barn. So it's affecting the animals quite a bit.
But for the feed industry specifically, we're starting to see animal feeders move to vendor-managed inventory-type setups, which means, instead of waiting for the orders to come from the field, they can see out into their assets and they're telling the barns when they're getting feed, because they've got better information than the people out at the barns.
Roembke: What kinds of cost savings or efficiencies have been added with those applications?
Allen: Yeah, the primary cost savings come in a few areas that show up physically for the feeders.
One is that they're having less feed returns. A feed return is an expensive action to take, because you have to send a back, truck out, move things around, and that's one of the most expensive trucks in the supply chain. We're also seeing less out-of-feed (events), because less mistakes are made, there's more visibility about what feed is located in what areas, and at what rate it's being consumed.
So we're seeing less mistakes, and that efficiency comes all the way back to the P&L (profit and loss). In healthier animals, lower feed conversion ratios for those that own their animal barns and less diesel, less overtime as the supply chain evens out and has less emergency orders.
Roembke: Great. So, you mentioned the speed at which things are evolving. What would the next phase of AI's evolution look like, and how does that translate to agricultural or feed applications?
Allen: Well, the next phase is really the automation of all things spreadsheet oriented. So there's still a lot of activities in the feed supply chain that are run on spreadsheets. It's not unusual if you walk into a feed mill to see a coordinator with three or four different screens up, and at least a few of those screens are going to have quite a few Excel spreadsheets on them. Those are just not the optimal way to handle things. AI can automate those spreadsheet activities extremely quickly and just make a lot less errors with them, and so we're seeing the automation of the daily activities and the ordering and the logistics happening in real time in front of us.
Roembke: Excellent. Thank you so much.
Now, if you would like to hear more from Ben about some of the things that we've discussed here today, he will be speaking at the Feed Mill of the Future Conference. For more information about his talk and the others — and to register, please visit www.feedmillofthefuture.com. Thank you so much, Ben, and thanks to you for tuning in.
Allen: Thank you, Jackie.
THE FEED MILL OF THE FUTURE CONFERENCE IS SPONSORED BY
