While working as an agronomist, Marcel Kringe was astounded by the thousands of dollars of grain being thrown out, destroyed and wasted by combines.
Kringe founded Bushel Plus to help farmers combat those losses, give them more control over their harvest and ultimately get more of their product into the bin.
Think of all the time and money you spend on the best seeds, fertilizer, and crop protection. Despite that hard work and investment, it’s the harvest that decides what gets stored, sold and turned into profit. It’s possible to re-seed or re-spray, but you can only harvest once.
For Kringe and his team, harvest optimization is about helping farmers capture the crops they work so hard to earn. It’s a mission that increases profit using the land and resources they already have while putting more grain back into the food supply chain. It’s also an efficiency upgrade that spreads across entire operations. For example, less grain being thrown back onto your field means you waste less time, herbicide and money on removing volunteer plants.
Optimization has clear benefits. However, tight harvest deadlines mean solutions need to be quick, easy, and accurate. Kringe’s desire to safely and effectively meet these needs led to the creation of the SmartPan System. The drop pan magnetically attaches to combines and drops safely and remotely using a remote control or mobile app. Together, the SmartPan, Air Separator and SmartDrop app gives farmers accurate loss calculations in just a few minutes.
Drop pan demonstrationWith the success of the drop pan system, Bushel Plus added the handheld MiniCombine to its suite of products, bringing a proven solution from Europe to North America. This all-in-one, battery-powered tool lets farmers quickly and accurately collect a crop sample to test for moisture before harvesting, all without wasting time and fuel bringing a combine, header and truck to the field.
In late 2022, the company expanded its suite again through its acquisition of MAD Concaves. These aggressive, durable and easy-to-change modular concaves with larger grate openings reduce dockage and rotor loss in combines, directly addressing the issues that other Bushel Plus tools measured.
This opportunity to work with MAD Concaves was more than just a business decision. Both teams believe in putting the needs of farmers first and have succeeded by continuously innovating and offering reliable, high-quality products. Similarly, both businesses began on the prairies and, together, bring even more opportunities, jobs and expertise to their local communities.
The Bushel Plus TeamBased in Brandon, Manitoba, Bushel Plus started as a hobby project for Kringe but has quickly expanded to sell products in over 30 countries, across every single continent. Lessons learned from international farmers, combined with the research needed to create products that excel in Canada and around the world, allow the company to constantly bring more innovative harvest solutions to North American farmers.
That desire to do more extends beyond business and product development. Kringe and his team put on “combine clinics” around the world, guiding farmers, operators and some of Western Canada’s largest equipment dealers through proper combine setup, readjustment and calibration. These demonstrations build trust and help ensure farmers always have quality experiences with Bushel Plus products at the dealership and on the farm. The company is also a proud member of Agricultural Manufacturers of Canada (AMC) and the Farm Equipment Manufacturers Association (FEMA), helping promote and support agribusiness.
As Bushel Plus continues growing, Kringe ensures that every bit of work the team does is focused on giving farmers more control, certainty and profitability, regardless of their experience or operation size.
