Here is something we don’t hear enough of: “Dairy Farmers are one of the smartest, adaptable and resilient people in agriculture. They are experts in navigating their business during price instabilities and political changes.” Dairies are one of the rare businesses that sell a product without knowing what they will get paid for it that month. It takes grit and forward thinking to thrive.
Farming is hard work, but using technology to make farming “smart” can make it easier. Activity monitors, reproductive and management software, daily feeding data, data on rumination, temperature and even what is going on inside the rumen in real time is a common thing now. But digging through all that data can be worse than emptying a manure pit with a shovel. This is where a good Artificial Intelligence (AI) system can help. But how? In no way AI systems can replace a good dairyman with good cattle skills, but it can read all the data from a farm, compile it in a simple way and summarize it by creating daily action items.
AI systems take on boring routine tasks and gives us, humans, more time for important business decisions and maintenance. For example, AI systems can alert herd managers about a sick cow before she shows any visual signs of problem, by looking at real time video, activity and rumination data. Some systems being developed can send a message every morning to the management team with their recommended daily tasks such as a list of cows that need attention, parlor inefficiencies, sort lists and where that day’s bottleneck is to be worked on. One system uses cameras to observe empty feed bunks and eating patterns and help develop a way to keep feed in front of cows more consistently. AI can help develop a feeding schedule for your specific farm needs. It can compile a list of animals to breed by using activity monitors or video data from the night before and send them to the sorting list using automatic gates without human intervention. Lastly, it can send an updated list of business action items such as filing state sales reports or compliance reports for creameries and regulators, and even write them.
To properly know what to do, AI systems need good data as input. But the future is bright with the advent of camera and vision neural network technologies. Some companies are all in on getting video data to replace all sensors. Cameras have a relatively low price as farms only need a few of those compared to several sensors per cow.
Dairy farming is a tough business, and that might be why it is also one of the most resilient industries. Today, the most forward thinking and progressive farms are bold, looking for challenges and thinking about the future. In dairy farming, standing still in your ways will just leave you behind, using AI with a good team is a great way to push the dairy industry forward.
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Andre Pereira is an independent consultant with GPS Dairy Consulting, LLC. He uses innovative technology to help improve management practices and workflow to create high efficiency of production with a focus on integrity, transparency, collaboration, and respect. He has extensive knowledge and experience with amino acid balancing and optimizing rations.
