Data Management

Inside The Tax Return of Your Farm's Future

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 14:31:55 GMT

The traditional process of preparing agricultural tax returns has long been defined by manual data entry and the complex reconciliation of income. However, the integration of artificial intelligence into financial systems is ushering in a more sophisticated era of tax management. For the modern farm, the future of filing lies in a seamless pipeline where software handles the heavy lifting of data organization, leaving the high-level strategy to human experts.

Comprehensive Data Integration

The foundation of a modern tax return is the accounting system. Platforms like QuickBooks, Xero or specialized farm management software are becoming increasingly autonomous. In the near future, these AI agents will do more than simply record expenses; they will analyze them in real-time.

With direct links to bank feeds and digital invoices, AI can categorize expenditures with precision. It can distinguish between capital investments, such as machinery or land improvements, and standard operating costs like seed and fuel. This continuous synchronization means by the end of the fiscal year, the financial records are already in a format that mirrors the requirements of a tax return.

Automated Document Reconciliation

A significant portion of tax preparation involves matching — ensuring the farm’s internal records align with the documents issued by third parties. A preparer of a farm tax return may spend more time making sure all of the income is in the right box then planning to optimize the income tax level.

AI is uniquely suited to handle this high-volume verification. The system can automatically ingest Form 1099-PATR (cooperative distributions), 1099-G (government subsidies) and other Form 1099s and W-2s and verify them against recorded deposits.

If a document is missing or a figure does not match the ledger, AI identifies the specific discrepancy immediately, allowing for a targeted correction rather than a manual search through months of records.

The Role of Human Oversight

While AI provides the technical framework for the return, the final stage remains firmly in human hands. Once the software has mapped the data to the appropriate tax schedules, it produces a comprehensive draft for professional review.

This allows the farmer or a tax consultant to transition from a data entry role to a strategic advisory role. Instead of spending hours verifying line items, the human reviewer can focus on critical tax planning decisions including accelerated depreciation choices or income averaging that require professional judgment and an understanding of the farm’s long-term goals.

The result is a more accurate, defensible and efficient tax filing process. By automating the clerical aspects of the return, AI allows agricultural producers to maintain focus on their operations while ensuring full compliance with the evolving tax laws.

How One Mississippi Farmer Turned Data Into $330K in Fertilizer Savings

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 20:40:20 GMT

As the planter rolls across a Mississippi Delta field, row by row, it’s making split-second decisions on how much fertilizer to apply, where to apply it and where to apply nothing at all — a task that’s doesn’t require any second-guessing.

The decisions aren’t happening by instinct nor by habit. The planting and fertilizer decisions on this farm are all driven by data.

For Adron Belk, who farms in the Delta’s rich soils of Sunflower County, that shift — from gut feel to data-driven execution — isn’t just about efficiency. It’s about survival in a tight-margin environment, and ultimately, about profitability.

“This whole field, see how it’s calling for 8 gallons right there? It tells it the target. We’re looking for 8 gallons of fertilizer, and it’s putting out real close to 8 gallons,” Belk says as he’s making a planting pass through the field. “There’s areas in the field where it calls for none. So where it calls for none, it actually cuts it off on its own.”

On this farm, data doesn’t sit in a spreadsheet. It moves. It acts. It makes decisions in real time as equipment moves across the field.
That level of precision means decisions aren’t just guided by data, but automated with every pass.

“Where our phosphorus and zinc levels are low, the starter system turns on and it applies it. And where the phosphorus and zinc levels are adequate, it cuts it all and don’t put anything,” he says.

A Farm That Functions Like a Test Plot

Every acre Belk farms doubles as a testing ground. Every pass is an experiment. Every season is another opportunity to learn something new.

That mindset even extends to what he plants.

“I have never planted cotton on my own. My dad was a cotton farmer until 2007, when he quit growing cotton. We’re going to plant just a little bit this year though, about 130 acres. We’re going to get it custom picked. We’re just really planting the cotton to get a little bit of experience with it on a very, very small amount of acres. I believe it’s the tool I need to have in my toolbox for the future. And right now, I don’t have that tool,” he says.

At a time when many farmers are moving away from cotton, Belk is moving toward it.

“Some would say I’m just a glutton for punishment, I guess,” Belk says as he laughs.

A First Generation Farmer

Belk’s approach to farming didn’t come from following a playbook. In fact, it started with the opposite.

“I’m a first generation/second generation farmer,” he says. “My dad does farm, but we do not farm together.”

That decision for Belk to farm on his own was intentional from the start.

“My dad came through the 1980s. He just had a passion for it — worked really hard, started off with with almost nothing,” Belk explains. “And he did really well, and he knew all the lessons that he had to learn from being on his own, and mainly from messing stuff up on his own and learning. He knew how valuable that was. And he just really wanted us to always enjoy each other’s company and never have work come in between us or our family.”

So when Belk wanted to farm, his father gave him guidance — but not a safety net.

“He said, ‘I’ll give you all the advice you want,’ but he said it’s going to be beneficial if you do it on your own,” Belk remembers.

Belk took that to heart, starting his own farming operation by renting a few hundred acres while still in college. And like many young farmers, he learned by trial and error.

“I have made a lot of mistakes, and if I would have been farming with my dad, I probably wouldn’t have learned from those mistakes. I probably wouldn’t have had the opportunity to make them to learn on my own,” Belk says. “The mistakes I’ve made have taught me more than the things that I’ve done right, for sure.”

No Silver Bullet — Just Small Gains

While Belk admits he’s learned the hard way and made plenty of mistakes, in an industry often searching for big breakthroughs, Belk focuses on incremental wins.

“I think in farming, we’re all looking for that silver bullet that is going to get you 15, 20 bushels more per acre. But most of those big yield gains like that have already been discovered or have already been done, and so it’s very hard to find those silver bullets,” Belk says. “So, we are really tailoring our farm to finding the 2-, the 3-, the 5-bushel [per acre] differences,” he says.

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That mindset is what led him deeper into data.

“We started really trying to look at data. And when we first started, I thought we were doing it right. I thought were interpreting things the right way. And then realized that we really needed to be going a little deeper,” he says.

Data Into Decisions

That realization led Belk to work with Chad Swindoll, founder of J19 Agriculture, to bring a more advanced level of analysis to the farm.

“He is very honed in on how to analyze data. And working with him has really brought a whole new perspective to ‘Not only now that we have this data, how do we analyze it? And then once we analyze, what do we do with it?’” he says.

For Swindoll, that last question — What do you do with it? — is where many farms fall short.

“There’s lack of implementation on the farm,” Swindoll explains. “There’s a lot of technology that’s available. I mean, we’re with the United States. We’re a very sophisticated production agriculture, but the execution and implementation piece on taking the information that the technology will provide — and then using it to really make a decision beyond just something that looks cool or sounds cool — but really driving change on the farm, that’s very lacking,” he says.

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When Swindoll started working with Belk, he quickly realized Belk is different in not only the way he farms, but how he thinks about farming. What sets Belk apart, Swindoll says, is his willingness to act.

“He does a very good job of collecting the things that we need to make those decisions, and then if if the information is telling us we need this or that, he does,” Swindoll says.

Swindoll says Belk is a good executive, and that ability to not only know what needs to be done, but then implement it, is something that’s fueling Belk’s success.

“That’s something that I try to emphasize and talk about a lot in our industry and with my customers and non-customers. The farmer is the CEO, and an executive’s job is to make decisions,” Swindoll says. “And so we can get hung on a fence and make no progress. At some point, you have to move. And to be a good executive, it goes back to having the right pieces of information and the willingness to act.”

Swindoll says it also takes courage to do something different than what everybody else is doing.

“It’s not easy, because some of the things that we’ve found over the years are contrary to what we have been taught or told,” he says.

A $330,000 Turning Point

That willingness to trust the data — and act on it — led to one of the biggest financial shifts on the farm.

“About three or four years ago, we started really letting the data, we started analyzing the data and looking at it. And what we started seeing is, we were spending a lot of this money on fertilizer, and we didn’t really know if we’re getting a return out of it,” Belk says.

The result was a major change in how fertilizer was applied and how much was used.

“Three years ago, we cut about $330,000 out of our fertilizer budget that I would not have done without good sound data that we trusted,” Belk says. “Now, it took me a little while to get to that, to understand it. Then having J19 really run statistical data and showing us what was real and what was not. When you realize you cut $330,000 out of a fertilizer budget, and you still made the equivalent yields, that’s pretty eye-opening,” he says.

Finding Yield in the Details

While something like fertilizer savings have added major cost-savings to their farm, sometimes, the biggest gains come from the smallest adjustments. That includes what the data told them about tire pressure.

“Because we grow everything in the Delta on a raised bed, in between the tires it really pinches that row. We started noticing where we would run 20 lb. of air where the tire would kind of squat, it was pinching the row more, and we were getting more compaction under the tractor,” Belk says. “In some cases, it was costing anywhere from 10 to 17 bushels of yield on the rows just up under the tractor,” he says.

That prompted Belk to boost tire pressure to 30 lb. or air.

Rethinking the Playbook

On Belk’s farm, the field itself has become the ultimate teacher.

“That field is our textbook,” Swindoll says. “That’s kind of how we do this. If you read something in a book and it doesn’t line up, I think it was William Albrecht who said, ‘If you observe nature, and the textbook doesn’t agree, then you throw the textbook away.’ And we’ve had to do that in some cases.”

That philosophy carries through every decision Belk makes.

“Actually, my dad always told me, ‘Never tell somebody who asks you why you’re doing something, to tell them because your daddy did it.’ You know times change. I mean, we’re in a whole different world right now than we were even 5 years ago, especially 10 years ago. And so I feel like agriculture is changing very fast. I feel like we’ve got to learn to adapt and adopt really fast. Doing all this stuff has allowed us to stay kind of current with the changes in agriculture. It’s allowed us stay current with new products, with new things,” he says.

The New Equation for Farming

Farming has always involved risk. Whether it’s weather, markets or input costs, none of it is guaranteed.

But on this Mississippi Delta farm, the approach to risk is changing. It’s no longer just about taking chances. It’s about measuring them. Testing them. Understanding them. And ultimately, deciding which ones are worth it.

Because in today’s agriculture, that difference between guessing and knowing, may be what separates farmers who keep up from those who get ahead.

Data is the New Crop: Why Financial Companies are Betting on Farm Information

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 13:04:28 GMT

For decades, agricultural lending was a straightforward calculation of acreage and appraisals, but lender’s role is evolving as the global economy shifts toward renewable energy and digital infrastructure.

Farmer Mac President and CEO Brad Nordholm, who has spent 45 years at the intersection of agricultural and energy finance, sees how the farm of the future could look more like a high-tech power plant than a traditional row-crop operation.

At the International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) Dairy Forum earlier this year in Palm Springs, Calif., Nordholm laid out how Farmer Mac is navigating the disconnect in today’s land market and why the industry is betting big on the integration of data and energy.

The Data Advantage: Why Lenders Crave Farmer Information

One of the most significant shifts in modern finance is how lenders view information. Financial companies are keen on farmer data because it transforms speculative lending into predictable project finance.

According to Nordholm, when Farmer Mac looks at high-growth areas like broadband, data centers or renewable natural gas (RNG), it isn’t making speculative bets. Instead, it is looking for data-backed certainty. Lenders value farmer data for three primary reasons:

Securing forward commitments — Data allows producers to prove revenue streams 10, 15 or 20 years into the future. By showing forward commitments from customers, a farm operation stops being a gamble and starts being a bankable asset.
Bridging the land-price disconnect — There currently is a gap between high land prices and lower cash flows in sectors like corn and soy. Nordholm notes that Farmer Mac no longer lends solely on an appraisal of $10,000 an acre. Instead, it uses data to size debt based on pro forma cash flows. This data-driven approach protects both the lender and the farmer from overleveraging.
Risk management tools — Unlike the 1980s, today’s data allows for sophisticated risk management. From forward-pricing sales at the beginning of the growing season to utilizing fixed-rate loan products, data provides a suite of tools that creates resilience against inflation and market volatility.

“Financial data are the only way a lender can determine a farm’s profitability and financial soundness,” says independent dairy financial consultant Gary Siporski. “As long as a farm wants to borrow money, lenders will demand data.”

Powering the Grid: From Methane to Data Centers

The dairy industry is uniquely positioned to benefit from the electrons-and-molecules era. Nordholm highlights the massive growth in anaerobic digesters and RNG. With retail and wholesale electric rates climbing, capturing methane to produce heat and electricity is no longer just a sustainability play; it’s an economic necessity.

“We don’t allocate capital because someone says, ‘I’m sustainable,’” Nordholm explains. “We ask: Does this investment improve efficiency? Does it result in less waste?”

For dairy producers, this means looking at manure and energy management as a core financial performance metric.

This energy demand is also being driven by a massive backlash against data centers taking power off the traditional grid. The new generation of data centers is going behind the meter, looking to wind, solar and batteries — often located on or near agricultural land — to guarantee 100% assurance of their energy needs.

Why This Isn’t the 1980s

Despite sad stories in row crops like cotton and sorghum, Nordholm remains optimistic. The liquidity being stored during recent good years is helping operators ride through the current stress. More importantly, the financial system has evolved.

“In the 1980s, almost all loans were variable rate,” Nordholm recalls. “Today, the ability to lock in fixed rates and use data to manage input costs means the industry is far more resilient.” While the electric power situation will remain a challenge for the next five years, the combination of a growing global population and America’s world-class financial and transportation systems keeps the long-term outlook bright.

For the modern producer, the message is clear: Your most valuable crop might not be what you harvest, but the data and energy you produce alongside it.

Fewer Farms Contribute to Data Concerns

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 18:01:41 GMT

Farm groups and market analysts have been raising concerns recently that USDA’s outdated methods for data collection and analysis could be distorting what’s happening on the ground. Moreover, because the data in some of USDA’s reports, such as the World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates, Crop Production, and January and July Cattle reports, are benchmarks used in other agricultural forecasts, reality could be further skewed, according to Mary Ledman, analyst with the Daily Dairy Report.

Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins recently issued a Request for Information (RFI) in the Federal Registeras it considers ways to improve its reporting. The RFI includes a 45‑day comment period, ending April 9, and USDA plans to discuss the feedback it receives at its 2026 spring data users meeting on April 22 in Kansas City, Missouri.

“USDA relies on farmers and livestock producers for survey contributions, and declining participation in these surveys puts more of the estimation burden on USDA statisticians and economists,” Ledman said. To see whether declining participation could be skewing the data, Daily Dairy Report reviewed response rates for USDA’s Cattle report, a biannual inventory of all cattle and calves, Ledman added.

Ledman chose to look at the Cattle report because it has become increasingly important to the dairy sector in recent years as the primary indicator of the number of replacement heifers available to enter the national milk herd. Her analysis shows that for the past three years, 2024, 2025, and 2026, the January Cattle report put the number of replacement heifers at about 3.9 million head, compared with 4.7 million head in 2019. The largest year‑over‑year decline of 367,000 head occurred in 2023, followed by a 168,000‑head drop in 2022. The staggering declines caused Ledman to question whether they were related to lower survey response rates.

(USDA)

“USDA derives its Cattle estimates by surveying a random sample of U.S. producers. The procedures ensure that all cattle operations, regardless of size, have a chance to be included, and large operations are sampled more heavily than small ones,” she noted. “In the first half of January, USDA collected data from about 35,000 operators using mail, phone, internet, and in‑person interviews. When the sampling was over, only 52% of the reports were usable, she noted. That compares with last year, when the department collected data from about 36,100 operators and 61% of the reports were usable. It also falls well below the 80% of reports that were usable taken from 50,000 operators in 2010.”

The decline in the number of licensed dairy operations has contributed to fewer survey responses. In 2010, more than 53,000 licensed dairy farms were in operation. Fifteen years later, that number had dropped to 23,609, according to USDA data.

“Not surprisingly, some of the biggest declines in dairy operations occurred in states with the largest number of dairy farms,” Ledman said. “Between 2020 and 2025, dairy farm numbers declined by 8,043 operations, with Wisconsin accounting for 22% of the drop, followed by Pennsylvania at 13%, New York with 11%, and Minnesota at 9%. These states are also home to the largest numbers of dairy farms with fewer than 500 cows — the size category that has experienced the steepest decline in recent years and that historically has produced surplus heifers.”

Fighting Mastitis with the Help of Robots and Smart Technology

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 15:20:26 GMT

Mastitis remains one of the most costly and persistent health challenges facing dairy farms today, whether cows are milked in a parlor or by robots. In 2024, mastitis was estimated to cost the U.S. dairy industry more than $13 billion annually through lost milk, treatment costs and discarded milk.

As robotic milking systems become more common, new sensors and monitoring tools are helping detect milk quality problems earlier than ever. Even with these technological advances, the core principles of mastitis control remain the same. According to Douglas Reinemann and Carolina Pinzón-Sánchez of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, good hygiene, careful monitoring and timely intervention still form the foundation of effective mastitis management.

Clean Cows Still Matter Most

No matter where cows are milked, prevention still begins with cleanliness. In automated milking systems, that means ensuring the robot can properly clean and attach to the udder each time a cow enters the box.

“The cleanliness of the udder when the cow enters the robot has a big influence on how well that preparation process works,” Reinemann says.

Milking preparation is a critical step. Proper stimulation helps trigger milk letdown and allows teat cups to attach quickly and correctly. While premilking sanitation steps vary by robot brand, the goal is the same across systems: The robot must attach the milking unit to clean, dry and well-stimulated teats.

Postmilking teat disinfection is equally important. After milking, the teat canal remains temporarily open, leaving the udder more vulnerable to infection. Applying teat disinfectant helps remove bacteria from the teat skin and reduces the risk of new intramammary infections.

Routine equipment maintenance also plays a major role in mastitis prevention. Checking the accuracy of cleaning and sanitation cycles helps ensure the robot is properly preparing teats before milking.

“Equipment maintenance is nonnegotiable,” Pinzón-Sánchez says. “Milking systems must be serviced and tested regularly per manufacturer guidelines. Monitoring the accuracy of pre- and postmilking sanitation cycles ensures effective cleaning and prevents bacterial spread.”

How Robots Detect Mastitis Earlier

While mastitis prevention principles remain largely the same, detection looks different in robotic systems.

In conventional parlors, trained employees serve as the first line of defense. Those hands-on observations allow workers to quickly spot abnormal milk or signs of udder inflammation. But in automated milking systems, technology takes on that monitoring role.

Robots rely on sensors and algorithms to track milk quality and cow behavior. When the system detects patterns that deviate from normal, it generates an alert that a cow may be experiencing mastitis.

Automated milking system sensors commonly monitor:

Electrical conductivity of milk.
Milk color and composition changes.
Somatic cell count (SCC).
Quarter-level milk yield.
Cow visit frequency to the robot.

“These systems are very good at detecting abnormalities,” Reinemann says. “Sensor data can often identify subtle changes before clinical signs become obvious.”

Additional monitoring tools also help catch potential problems earlier. Activity monitors worn on collars, legs or ear tags track how cows move throughout the day. When a cow becomes less active or her behavior starts to change, it can be an early sign that something isn’t right. Often, these shifts show up before obvious symptoms appear, giving producers more time to take a closer look and respond if needed.

How to Interpret Alerts

Even with all the high-tech monitoring tools in an automated milking system, interpreting data the robots provide isn’t always straightforward. To make sense of what the sensors are telling you, Reinemann and Pinzón-Sánchez explain that it helps to understand two key concepts: sensitivity and specificity.

According to the pair, sensitivity refers to the system’s ability to correctly identify cows that truly have mastitis. A highly sensitive system detects most sick animals but may flag more healthy cows as potential cases.

Specificity, on the other hand, reflects how well the system identifies healthy cows. High specificity reduces false alarms but may miss some infected animals.

“No system is perfect,” Pinzón-Sánchez explains. “Increasing sensitivity can increase false positives, while increasing specificity can lead to missed cases.”

Fortunately, many automated systems allow producers to adjust these settings depending on herd conditions. When mastitis risk is elevated, increasing sensitivity may help catch more true cases. During periods of stable milk quality, higher specificity can reduce unnecessary alerts.

What to Do When the Robot Flags a Cow

Despite how capable automated systems have become, Reinemann and Pinzón-Sánchez emphasize that technology should support, not replace, human decision‑making. When the robot flags a cow, producers should:

Review the system alert and cow history.
Visually evaluate milk for abnormalities.
Palpate the udder for swelling or heat.
Take the cow’s temperature if illness is suspected.
Divert abnormal milk from the bulk tank.
Collect aseptic milk samples for culture or PCR testing.
Use cow-side tests such as the California Mastitis Test (CMT).
Consult a veterinarian before initiating treatment.

Blending Management with Technology

Despite the technology, successful mastitis control still comes down to good management. Robots can flag changes and catch potential problems earlier, but producers must still evaluate cows and make treatment decisions.

“These systems are excellent at detecting abnormalities, but they can’t diagnose diseases or recommend treatments,” Reinemann says.

He and Pinzón-Sánchez stress that successful mastitis management still relies on the basics: watching cows closely, keeping consistent routines and working with a veterinarian on prevention and treatment plans. When technology and good herd management work together, mastitis problems can often be addressed before they become serious.

For more on mastitis, check out:

From Good to Best: Record Keeping That Actually Gets Used

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 17:15:14 GMT

Most farms are not short on data. They are short on recorded, usable data.

Some have spreadsheets, some use software, some have their treatment sheets printed. But unless the numbers are prioritized, cleaned up and reviewed, they rarely change management decisions.

As Bethany Dado-Senn, calf and heifer technical specialist with Vita Plus, puts it: “The cows don’t lie. They’re trying to tell us all the time what is going on. But if we don’t have any way to measure their outputs and the results, then we can’t do anything about it.”

The real challenge is not collecting everything, but collecting what matters and building a system veterinarians and producers can sustain together.

A practical framework helps: prioritize, essentialize and systemize.

1. Prioritize: Decide What Actually Matters

Before adding another metric or installing another program, start with focus.

“We need to start small. We need to identify what our top priority is to start,” says Kelly Sporer, farm data consultant with Cornerstone Ag Management. “We can’t look at everything and say ‘We’re just going to start, we’re going to dive in, we’re going to do it all.’”

Trying to track everything almost guarantees that nothing will be done well.

Instead, identify the two or three numbers that will move the herd forward right now. Those priorities will differ by farm.

“Everything that we do, we have to think about that customer, that relationship or that client, and what they’re trying to do and where they are now,” Dado-Senn says.

For example, a veterinarian might help a producer prioritize:

Fresh cow losses
Calf morbidity trends
Pregnancy rate
Early-lactation culling

The goal is focus, not complexity. Once priorities are clear, progress becomes measurable.

2. Essentialize: Remove What Gets in the Way

“A lot of the dairies we work with are not collecting completely comprehensive data,” Sporer says.

Even when farms try to track data, the system often breaks down. When records are entered inconsistently, the story they tell can be misleading.

Dado-Senn recalls once reviewing records that appeared to show catastrophic losses: “I’ll look back and it’ll look like we had a mass die-off one month, but it was really just the one month they finally cleaned their records up.”

Incomplete data makes analysis nearly impossible.

“If we have incomplete and inaccurate data, I can do a whole lot for you as far as data analysis, but we can’t do very much in ways of recommendations or changing anything in management,” Dado-Senn says.

And if the data is never reviewed with the intention of making changes, motivation disappears.

“If nobody is looking at it, that data is completely useless to the farm that’s spending valuable time collecting it,” Sporer says.

Essentializing can help with this by removing friction.

That might involve:

Standardizing health event terms
Assigning one person responsible for data entry
Recording events the day they happen
Simplifying treatment sheets
Reviewing numbers regularly with the herd team

The veterinarian plays an important role here, helping define case definitions, treatment thresholds and consistent terminology so the records reflect real clinical events.

3. Systemize: Move From Good to Better to Best

Record keeping does not need to be perfect. The key is building a system that improves over time.

“This is not about being super robust. It’s about starting somewhere,” Sporer reminds.

GOOD — The basics are written down

Deaths recorded somewhere
Pregnancy checks entered
Treatments written down

BETTER — Records become organized

Health events recorded consistently
Reasons for death or culling included
Data entered into herd software

BEST — Data drives decisions

Trends reviewed by age or stage of lactation
Protocol changes evaluated before and after
Health and reproduction trends analyzed over time

The goal is simple: When management changes, records help answer one question: Did it work?

That is when records stop being paperwork and start becoming management tools.

Importantly, not every farm needs to operate at “best” immediately. Progress from inconsistent notes to reliable digital entry is already a major improvement.

5 Record-Keeping Mistakes That Make Data Useless

Collecting data takes time. But when records are incomplete or inconsistent, the information becomes nearly impossible to use.

Recording data months later
Events should be recorded as close to real time as possible.
Using vague or inconsistent health terms
Different staff describing the same condition differently makes data nearly impossible to analyze.
Collecting data no one reviews
Review meetings reinforce why records matter.
Incomplete herd inventory
Animals still listed in the system long after leaving the herd distort nearly every performance report.
Trying to track everything at once
Strong record systems develop step by step.

Partnership Turns Numbers Into Action

Record keeping works best when it is collaborative.

“When everybody is working toward the same goal, which is the success of the farm, there’s no room for pointing fingers,” Dado-Senn says.

The veterinarian–producer partnership is central to building that culture.

Veterinarians translate trends into management insights. Producers provide the operational context that explains what is happening in the barn.

Together they decide what to track, how to track it and when to review it.

Without that collaboration, records sit unused. With it, they guide decisions from calf to cow.

When farms prioritize what matters, remove unnecessary barriers and build simple systems together, record keeping moves from good to better to best. That’s when the numbers start working for the herd.

Cyber Attacks Are the New Threat Creeping Onto Dairy Farms

Wed, 03 Dec 2025 18:11:14 GMT

Dairy farmers know firsthand just how quickly risks can impact their bottom line. Now, a new kind of risk is quietly moving onto farms: cyberattacks. This shift from physical to digital threats has left many farmers wondering where to turn for protection.

At this year’s MILK Business Conference, Andrew Rose, ag futurist with the Bioeconomy Information Sharing and Analysis Center (BIO-ISAC,) walked producers through what that evolving threat landscape looks like. He’s spent the past decade focused on protecting agriculture from cybercriminals, first as a volunteer, now as a specialist.

“Everything is a battlefield — cybersecurity, intrusions, misinformation campaigns, corporate espionage — this is white hot right now, whether it’s a foreign adversary wanting to acquire our assets or domestic going after another domestic one,” Rose says. “This is something that is not getting the attention I think it really deserves, but something to keep in the back of your mind.”

Awareness, mitigation and response guide how he approaches these threats, and he believes agriculture can strengthen its defenses by understanding the risks, preparing for disruptions before they hit and building a network of people who know how to react when something goes wrong.

The New Face of Threats

Today, threats don’t just come in the form of market swings or equipment failures. Warfare has gone digital and invisible.

“When we think about warfare as Americans, we think about bullets and bombs and boots on the ground,” Rose says.

But who is attacking farmers and what do they want? Why target agriculture at all? According to Rose, it’s nation-states like Russia, North Korea and China. They are actively probing systems for money, information and long-term strategic advantage, and agriculture offers both the data and the leverage they are looking for.

“Russia and North Korea, they want money. North Korea targets a lot of the Bitcoin wallets, but they’re also very good at putting ransomware out there,” he explains. “China has a different motivation. What they want is information. Whether that information is useful today or not is immaterial, but it might be useful in the future.”

Threats Close to Home

Rose also warns that animal activist groups continue to evolve their tactics, moving beyond on-farm trespassing or undercover videos. Some are now probing digital systems, spreading misinformation online or seeking ways to disrupt operations. Their goal might differ from foreign adversaries, but the impact can be just as damaging when they manipulate data or target equipment vulnerabilities.

“A lot of folks don’t really weigh how devastating it can be if you have an employee. That employee may inadvertently do something, or an outsider comes and says: ‘Hey, I will pay you if you just give me this login,’” Rose says.

Animal activism and information campaigns also fall into the “gray zone” of threats. Rose points to raw milk campaigns, noting that “there were certain open doors, open windows in the dairy pasteurization equipment that a bad actor could get into and manipulate temperature controls, but the readout would be fine, and that really got us worried.”

While activists might have ideological goals, the practical impact on farms can be real.

Dairy operations increasingly rely on digital tools like herd management software, milking equipment, feed programs and financial systems, but in the rush for efficiency, security is often an afterthought.

“All we thought about was the flow of information and keeping things as quick as possible,” Rose says. “They’re not thinking about secure by design.”

Practical Steps for Farms

Rose says one of the easiest defenses is right in your pocket.

“Restart your phone every day,” he recommends. “Why? Because your phone has temporary memory, and that’s where that malware sits, because the scans that your software does doesn’t scan the temporary memory. By resetting your phone every day you wipe that out.”

He adds that a daily reboot helps your phone load security patches more quickly.

“There are so many different exploits that happen every day, these zero-day exploits,” Rose adds. “If something happens and your phone company finds it, they’ll put a fix in there, but that fix might not be triggered until you have an automatic restart. If you restart your phone every day, that goes in there.”

Passwords matter too.

“Don’t use your same password twice. And it’s not because someone is going to figure out your password,” he says. “They’re going to hack into the company where your password is stored, and they’re going to take that and cross apply it across platforms.”

Beyond personal devices, Rose encourages farmers to take inventory of what on their operation is connected to the internet.

“You guys have got a lot of tech out there on the farms,” he says. “Know what’s connected to the internet. Know what the passwords are. It’s pretty simple to do an inventory like that.”

He also stresses the importance of protecting backups and insurance documents.

“When a bad guy gets into your system, the first thing they do is they go and they shred your backups, and the second thing they do is look for insurance documents, because they want to know how much your insurance company is going to pay for a ransomware attack,” Rose says.

Keeping those documents offline, he says, can save time and prevent added damage.

Planning ahead is essential as farms adopt more digital tools. Rose urges farmers to ask hard questions before bringing new equipment or software onto the operation.

“What if our computers are bricked? What if we have no access to the internet? What if we no longer have GPS?” he asks.

He recommends involving the entire team in those conversations, not just the manager. That includes the veterinarian, banker, co-op and even local law enforcement.

“I know that sometimes people get a little edgy about bringing law enforcement in,” Rose says. “It’s a lot better to know law enforcement before something happens than after it happens. Make a friend before you need it.”

Preparation is the Best Protection

For dairy farmers, the move from physical to digital risk can feel unfamiliar, but the path forward is not. Rose reminds producers that small habits, thoughtful planning and strong community ties can go a long way in keeping their information and equipment safe.

Cybersecurity does not require fear. It requires awareness. And as farms continue to adopt new tools and technology, the producers who take the time to prepare today will be the ones who stay resilient tomorrow.

Siring Success: One California Farm’s Approach to Better Beef-on-Dairy Calves

Mon, 01 Dec 2025 20:50:02 GMT

Over the past seven years, Tony Lopes has steered his family’s fourth-generation California dairy through a remarkable transformation. Today, the family milks 5,000 cows across four locations, produces 3,800 beef-on-dairy crossbred calves and procures an additional 12,000-plus head from outside dairies and calf ranches annually, offering a model for other farms looking to diversify revenue and improve herd economics.

Lopes first got into beef-on-dairy during a period of expansion when the farm had extra pen space and a surplus of heifers.

“Beef-on-dairy was becoming the trendy thing to do, and it coincided with us going through an expansion,” he says. “The first question we had to ask ourselves was if we breed some of these lower-end animals to beef, can we still produce enough heifers. The answer was yes. It was a crawl-before-you-can-walk kind of experiment.”

Once the operation confirmed they could meet replacement needs using sexed semen, they stopped using conventional semen entirely and began focusing on generating as many beef-on-dairy cross calves as possible.

“From the first calves that hit the ground, we backgrounded them and sold them in small gooseneck loads. The math kept working, and as our volume increased, we moved up to 50,000-lb. loads,” Lopes recalls.

Over time, the program evolved even further. They now take calves in as day-olds or at 400 lb. to 450 lb., raising them to 700 lb. to 750 lb. before marketing. This growth gave Lopes the confidence to take full control of the genetics behind the operation.

“The entirety of our beef-on-dairy program today is sired by our own Angus genetics,” Lopes explains. “By 2022, we had enough data to confidently procure our own bulls, and in seven years we’ve gone from knowing nothing about the feedlot side of beef-on-dairy to making it an incredibly big piece of our operation.”

Not Held Back By Tradition
“I’ve always had a passion for genetics and have been interested in what genetic inputs can result in better performance outputs,” Lopes says.

So, when beef-on-dairy began gaining traction, he found himself watching the space closely.

“When we were all starting out, there were a lot of questions,” Lopes recalls. “It seemed like the whole industry, at the same time, was trying to figure out what to breed our cows to. Every stud company, every region, at that point, had a little bit of a different answer.”

After experimenting with several breed compositions, the decision ultimately came down to market demand.

“What drove our decision to go Angus was just buyer demand,” Lopes says. “From an animal husbandry standpoint, we were trying to do everything we could to raise a good quality calf. And as we were building relationships with buyers, they were pretty consistently saying: ‘Hey, we’d really prefer if you just made these all Angus.’”

Lopes emphasizes that genetic decisions on the farm are driven by data and economics, not tradition.

“We’re big believers in making genetic decisions based on dollars and cents as opposed to just a biased opinion or tradition,” he explains. “When we started getting kill data back and looked at the economic drivers of our decisions, we arrived at a conclusion: These are the trait compositions that are going to result in more profitability.”

That analysis led the farm to source a specific set of elite Angus bulls, genetics they couldn’t consistently find in any single company’s lineup. According to Lopes, the breed’s data quality, quantity and large population size made it a logical choice for maximum genetic progress.

“Fortunately, in the Angus seedstock world, elite genetics are well distributed throughout the industry,” Lopes says. “There are a substantial number of bull sales every spring and fall. We were able to find the bulls most elite for the traits we care about, and that just kind of grew from there.”

Still, choosing to buy and use their own bulls came with uncertainty at first.

“It was a little leap at the time, but as we continue to aggregate more and more data, we’re very glad we made that investment and very confident in the performance advantages we’re seeing from our selected sires,” Lopes says.

Data-Driven Decisions
Lopes relies on rigorous data collection and economic modeling to guide breeding decisions.

“Everything we do is built into an economic model from the standpoint of profitability,” Lopes explains. “We look at all the things that go into what we’re asking the animal to do. We’re asking the animal to hang the heaviest carcass possible in the shortest number of days.”

It’s a model that pushes the operation to look beyond individual traits and consider how they work together. The goal isn’t simply to make better cattle but to make cattle that deliver the greatest economic return.

“We’re financially incentivized not just for pounds but for quality. If a carcass grades Prime and we’re chasing the best feed conversion, we have to evaluate those trade-offs,” Lopes says. “A 1% gain in feed conversion versus a 1% increase in Prime percentage delivers very different financial outcomes. Our system converts each of those factors into dollar-and-cents projections so we can prioritize which traits deserve the most weight in our selection process.”

But to understand which traits truly move the needle, the process starts with the carcass data connected to each animal.

“We receive kill data on every individual carcass and tie it back to that animal’s ID — hot carcass weight, backfat, ribeye area, marbling score, yield grade and more,” Lopes says. “We can link all of it to genetics and to management factors like sex, birth date, colostrum score and how many times the calf was treated for pneumonia or other illnesses.”

When those metrics are layered together, the picture becomes much clearer.

“By combining all these data points, we can isolate the genetic components from management influences,” he says. “That helps us make smarter decisions about both genetic selection and day-to-day herd management.”

Eyes on the Future
Looking ahead to 2026 and beyond, Lopes remains bullish on the future of beef-on-dairy.

“I would say there’s a lot of people who think we can’t make any more beef-on-dairy calves than we are now. I don’t share that opinion,” Lopes says. “Producers could likely produce more calves with an optimized approach, using sexed semen and beef genetics. Even in five years, regardless of where beef prices are in the cycle, I think beef-on-dairy will remain a mainstay in the industry. It’s transformational for genetic progress, herd efficiency and revenue.”

On the replacement side, he sees a market that is tighter than ever but still overstocked in certain areas.

“Almost every dairy has fewer heifers than in recent memory, but some still have more than they need,” Lopes says. “Cull rates and herd management mean many farms are comfortable with lower turnover, yet heifers exist — just not where they’re needed. I know I’m in the minority, but I think there’s still an overabundance relative to actual demand.”

For his own operation, Lopes plans measured growth in 2026.

“We’re looking to expand the number of calves we bring in and work with strong operators across the western United States,” Lopes says. “The market is uncertain. Recent futures and processing news make it hard to know whether we’re sourcing at high or low values, but we’re confident there’s still value in beef-on-dairy calves, and we intend to continue growing.”

Monitoring Tools Can Strengthen Herd Health Programs

Wed, 12 Nov 2025 23:46:04 GMT

Early identification of health challenges is one of the most effective ways to reduce disease severity, minimize treatment costs and support long term herd productivity. While experienced caretakers have always relied on stockmanship and close observation, today’s operations can benefit from data beyond what we can consistently monitor with our own eyes. Monitoring tools provide an additional layer of insight, helping recognize subtle changes in behavior, intake or environment before clinical signs are obvious.

Dr. Tiago Tomazi, dairy technical services veterinarian with Merck Animal Health, shared his advice at the Dairy Cattle Reproductive Council annual meeting on how the dairy landscape has progressed, allowing us to use monitoring technologies and management practices for improved animal health.

“If we go back to the ‘80s, we can say that dairy farming was still dominated by small-and-medium-sized family farms, right? We used to call cows by name,” Tomazi says. “Then the ‘90s and 2000s came, and there was a marked acceleration in the growth of large scale operations. There was an explosion of studies, of investigations, and scientific investigation that helped a lot to bring us to the point we’re at nowadays as far as reproduction and production in dairy cows and cattle health.”

Following this growth in knowledge came the development of monitoring technologies to assist producers and veterinarians identify potential animal issues earlier.

That being said, data-driven decision making does not necessarily require advanced technology. In many herds, structured record keeping, routine scoring (such as body condition scoring, lameness scoring or feed bunk assessments), and consistent visual checks are foundational monitoring practices. The goal is to identify patterns and changes over time, not just isolated events.

Combine Technology with Strong Management Practices

When technology is added on top of strong stockmanship, the combination can be especially powerful.

“Point No. 1 is that monitoring systems are not a diagnostic tool,” Tomazi reminds. “But they help in identifying a cow that’s not having a good day.”

These activity monitoring technologies are not meant to tell you what ailment the cow has, but rather to alert you that a cow may be worth checking up on.

“Biology is not math,” Tomazi says. “While math uses formulas, numbers and calculations to get you the exact result, biology [has to] take into consideration a set of factors associated with the biology of the cow and the environment.”

While a variety of wearable tools exist for the earlier recognition of health changes, the interpretation of the data remains critical. Similar patterns can have multiple causes. For example, a decrease in rumination may reflect heat stress, early illness, social stress or rumen upset. Likewise, changes in activity could indicate estrus, discomfort or pain. Connecting these data points to clinical reasoning and management is key.

Application Evidence from Research

Data from these monitoring tools can be applied for health predictions in a number of scenarios.

Chabel and colleagues from the University of Florida evaluated of over 4,500 dairy cattle across three commercial dairy herds wearing automated monitoring devices designed for estrous detection. They found early postpartum estrous characteristics were valuable indicators of reproductive potential; they were able to identify cows at risk for suboptimal fertility. By combining these characteristics with other health, genetic and environmental data, they were able to improve the prediction of fertility outcomes and provide targeted reproductive management for the cattle.

A series of three studies by Stangaferro and colleagues at Cornell University investigated the use of automated monitoring devices for the identification of health issues in dairy cattle. They found health index scores (calculated using an algorithm using rumination and activity data) provided sensitive detection for cattle with metabolic and digestive disorders , reducing time to clinical diagnosis by approximately 2 days. However, this system was less sensitive for the detection of mastitis and metritis , being most effective for cattle with severe cases.

While these monitoring devices may not perfectly identify all health issues in your herd, they can certainly help identify some disease signs earlier than human observation alone. It’s also important to note that the implementation of these monitoring devices will be different from farm to farm.

“We have to take into consideration the level of disease protection you want at your farm as well as the feasibility and labor capabilities,” Tomazi says. “You can be very intensive, but if you don’t have the people to provide you with that intensity, then it makes everything harder. On the other hand, you can be less intensive and find that balance where you’re not going to compromise the reproduction or production during the location of those cows.”

Data Interpretation is just as Important

Training caretakers to recognize when and how to respond to monitoring data is just as important as selecting the technology. A monitoring system is only as good as the team interpreting it.

While the benefits can be significant, monitoring tools also introduce challenges. The amount of data generated can be overwhelming. Time and training is required to get the most out of your investment and use the data effectively. This provides a great opportunity for veterinarians and producers to work together in prioritizing the metrics that are the most actionable and will make the most impact on the operation’s herd health goals.

The Future with Monitoring Tools

Looking ahead, predictive models and machine learning based alerts are likely to play an increasing role in herd health programs. With these systems will come the need for increased expertise on interpretation, contextual decision making and ongoing evaluation of how monitoring tools fit into preventative care strategies.

“I think integration is what we are walking toward,” Tomazi says. “The integration of these technologies with biological factors and management factors all together will help us make decisions considering the specific scenario at each dairy farm.”

Ultimately, monitoring tools are most effective when combined with strong stockmanship and veterinary oversight. When data and observation inform each other, disease can be detected earlier, interventions become more targeted and herds can become healthier overall.

Using Data to Make a Difference: Dairy Data Partners

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 15:11:13 GMT

Every system on the farm has its own dashboard of some kind, offering insights into KPIs such as milking speed, body condition, nutrition and more. Yet no matter how much information you’re getting from each system, time and money are lost when the dashboards don’t work with each other, or worse, aren’t used at all.

“Dairymen have less time than ever and more sites than ever to be able to manage, and they need consistency across their systems, their data and their operations,” says Katharine Lotspeich of Dairy Data Partners. “And they need to be able to manage those effectively and profitably.”

Dairy Data Partners (DDP) is a service from Intelligent Dairy Solutions, based in Scotland – a division of Peacock Technology. Founder Stuart MacLennan, together with Lotspeich and Tia Buss, detailed their mission during a Knowledge Nook session at this year’s World Dairy Expo in October.

“People are saying they have so much data they don’t know what to do,” MacLennan says. “So we thought, let’s see if we can help. We are a young player in this space and do not pretend to be the best, but we’re on our journey.”

Through a proprietary system, DDP transforms complex data into clear, real-time insights delivered directly to producers via tools like SMS or WhatsApp.

“We centralize data to standardize the analysis and give it context, because without context, data can’t deliver on its potential,” Lotspeich says. “We work with dairymen to identify their goals and their priorities. Along with their management team, we create custom, easy-to-read reports on a continual basis that enable our dairymen to be able to make confident decisions based on the data that they’re receiving.”

One farmer that has seen favorable results from this service is Blaine Nicks of Hunter Ridge Dairy in Ault, Colo. “With the DDP reports that we’re getting, primarily with our feeding programs, it allows me to consolidate maybe a couple hours worth of work into a few minutes and make decisions based on that, rather than trying to pull everything together and make sure it all makes sense,” Nicks says.

Nicks uses the reports with his team for a clear way to communicate inefficiencies and how to improve. He’s found areas to improve in feeding and milking routines, and his team sets their goals based on what each can see and act on.

According to Buss, another advantage of DDP is predicting issues before they become a problem.

“Being able to automate the adjustments and optimize the management that comes out of these actions is saving a lot of time,” she says. “As Blaine said, he’s able to spend his time a lot more efficiently.

“What we’ve learned so far is that you can find efficiency gains in all aspects of the dairy, not just within the cow,” Buss adds. “You can take these to make small, targeted changes that add up to much larger results in the long run. Tech and artificial intelligence are great tools, but they do not need to be used to replace the stakeholders in the management processes.”

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Land O’Lakes, Inc. Champions Innovation in Agriculture with AgRogue Growth Partners

Fri, 05 Sep 2025 18:00:04 GMT

Land O’Lakes, Inc. recently unveiled its strategic launch of AgRogue Growth Partners, an ambitious initiative designed to harness the inherent strengths of the cooperative model. This project aims to fast-track the discovery, investment and adoption of breakthrough technologies to benefit farmers, their businesses and their communities.

“We are taking a very deliberate approach to the topic of venture capital,” says Jason Trusley, chief strategy officer at Land O’ Lakes. Trusley is leveraging his “outside in” strategy leaning on his experiences at Nike, Columbia and Nordstrom and now applying it to his work with the Land O’ Lakes team.

AgRogue includes an investment of up to $7 million in each of 10 to 15 companies focused on innovations in categories spanning:

crop inputs
ag data
supply chain processes
business models

The first participants should be selected by the end of October.

“Our market access through the 800+ retailer partners, and putting skin in the game to help scale these investments is quite different than what we’ve seen in growth equity. We want to invest at the point of inflection, and we believe our system can help find the momentum and then rapidly scale,” Trusley says.

Brett Bruggeman, chief operating officer and executive vice president of ag business at Land O’Lakes, highlights Ag Rogue Growth Parnters is “co-authored” with some of its retail partners.

“Our retail partners are half investors,” Bruggeman says. “The idea was sourced from our CEO council, the largest retailers in our system, two years ago. Right now, we have six retail partners engaged, but more can come on.”

Current retail partners in AgRogue include:

Alabama Farmers Cooperative (Alabama)
Central Valley Ag (Nebraska)
Farmers Cooperative – Dorchester (Nebraska)
Farmward Cooperative (Minnesota)
GreenPoint Ag (Alabama)
Keystone Cooperative (Indiana)

“AgRogue Growth Partners represents an exciting new chapter in agricultural innovation, driven by a commitment to farmer success. By uniting our strengths, we will focus on creating new opportunities for farmers to thrive, providing them with the new tools and resources they need to overcome industry challenges and grow a more reliable, abundant food supply,” Kevin Still, president and CEO of Keystone Cooperative, said in a company press release.

AgRogue Growth Partners will have another partner in Radicle Growth, who will manage the program and vet the startups.

Trusley says there are four themes AgRogue will address:

optimize farm income
improve grain quality/find premium markets
resiliency and soil health
help grow the retail business through systems, innovations and partnerships

“We are seeking pre-market innovation. And for example, Cooperative Ventures (CHS and Growmark’s initiative) could be potential partners as we transition closer to the growth curve,” Trusley says. “Cooperation is important to drive change in agriculture, and cooperation is especially complex with cooperatives. We are trying to create more diversification and greater scale to the funding to solve the broader set of issues for farmers.”

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Who Really Owns Your Farm's Data?

Fri, 20 Jun 2025 18:37:03 GMT

Smart technology is becoming a bigger part of farming every year. From robotic milkers and GPS-guided sprayers to soil sensors and drones, today’s farms are filled with tech that quietly collects data, often without the farmer fully realizing just how much.

According to Bill Oemichen, professor of practice law and local government law educator at UW-Madison Extension, understanding the difference between the types of data being collected is critical.

“Small data is what comes directly from your farm,” he says. “That’s your yield records, soil samples, herd info and so on. It’s useful — but on its own, it doesn’t show the full picture. Big data is what happens when that small data gets combined with other farms’ data — plus weather records, land use history and more.”

And big data is where the real money is. Tech companies collect and store small data, then work with global tech firms like Amazon Web Services or Google Ventures to aggregate, analyze and monetize it. When Oemichen first learned Amazon was interested in ag data, he was surprised.

“I thought, why would Amazon care? But now it’s obvious. There’s huge value in knowing what’s happening on farms at a national scale,” he says.

Ashley Ellixson, an extension legal specialist at the University of Maryland, draws attention to some of the risks associated with this.

“The issue of farm data has been a contentious point of debate with respect to ownership rights and impacts when access rights are misappropriated,” she explains. “Although no specific laws or precedence exists, the possibility of trade secrets is examined and ramifications for damages are discussed.”

That legal gray area becomes even more complicated when you consider how farm data differs from traditional, tangible assets, she notes.

“Farm data are not a tangible asset, like a bushel of grain,” she says. “Instead, ownership should be considered in terms of rights and responsibilities of the parties with access to the data.”

That value stretches far beyond simple crop recommendations. It influences land prices, marketing strategies, artificial intelligence tools and even investment trends. Hedge funds are now using farm data to evaluate the productivity of farmland and outbid farmers for it.

“They’re putting a number on your land based on what the data says it could produce,” Oemichen explains. “That number may not match how you see your land. But to an investor, it tells them how much they’re willing to pay. And that information is often based on your own data.”

Ownership is One Thing, Control is Another
While many ag tech agreements state farmers own their data, that doesn’t mean they have full control over how it’s used. In practice, signing a user agreement often grants the company broad rights to analyze and share the data, similar to what happens on platforms like Facebook.

“You might technically own your posts, but you still gave the platform permission to use, analyze and sell that data,” Oemichen says. “The same thing is happening in ag.”

Companies and platforms like Bayer’s Climate FieldView, WinField United, Farm Business Network, Syngenta, John Deere, Corteva and Cargill all collect and use U.S. farm data, according to Oemichen. Bayer alone is believed to hold more than half of the world’s ag data, thanks in part to its partnership with Amazon Web Services.

And with scale comes leverage. Despite the immense value farm data can create, farmers typically aren’t being compensated for it.

“You might get better seed recommendations,” Oemichen notes. “But you’re not seeing a check for the value your data is creating in the marketplace.”

The Legal Gap
To be clear, data-driven tools offer undeniable benefits. Farmers are using them to boost efficiency, improve decision-making and solve problems faster. Agronomists and seed reps now show up with drone maps, pest forecasts and application schedules all powered by data.

Still, important questions remain:

Who controls your data?
Who profits from it?
What protections do you actually have?

Surveys show farmers are concerned. Data privacy and transparency are top-of-mind, especially with ag tech consolidation on the rise. Interestingly, according to Oemichen, many farmers say they trust cooperatives more than private companies to handle their data responsibly.

“That’s not surprising,” he adds. “Farmers own the co-op. They can sit on the board, and they know the data isn’t being sold to outside companies.”

Several organizations are already testing farmer-first models. The Farm Credit System has policies against sharing farmers’ data with outsiders. Texas-based Grower Information Services Cooperative and the Ag Data Coalition are exploring similar models.

But there’s a larger problem: the law hasn’t kept up.

“There is no law defining who owns farm data,” Oemichen says. “It all comes down to the fine print in contracts.”

And those contracts? Most farmers don’t read them.

“You download the app, check the box and boom — you just gave them permission to collect and share your data,” Oemichen says. “Even as an attorney, I’ve reviewed thousands of contracts. They’re hard to follow.”

He warns these agreements often allow companies to de-identify data (removing names and specific details) and combine it with other data — something they can then profit from. Once the user clicks “accept,” companies usually don’t need to ask again.

Ellixson points out how courts often struggle when applying existing laws to rapidly advancing technology like farm data.

“History shows the law rarely keeps up with technology, and farm data are no exception,” she says.

She also argues farm data should be considered intellectual property, specifically, trade secrets.

“Broadly speaking, any confidential business information providing an individual or enterprise with a competitive edge may be considered a trade secret,” Ellixson explains.

Can Farmers Take Back Control?
So, what power do farmers really have to push back or negotiate?

“The horse is out of the barn,” Oemichen says bluntly. “Most farms lack the size or legal support to negotiate with ag tech giants. Only the biggest players might get a voice. For smaller and mid-size farms, meaningful change will likely require policy reform.”

Unfortunately, regulation is lagging in the U.S. While Canada and California are beginning to explore protections for farm data, most states have little to no framework in place. Even intellectual property law offers limited support. Raw data isn’t copyrightable and trade secret protection requires special agreements most farmers don’t have the time or legal counsel to pursue.

There are a few bright spots. One is the Ag Data Transparent certification, a voluntary program that signals a company’s commitment to transparent data use. Companies that meet the program’s criteria earn the Ag Data Transparent seal.

“If you’re working with a vendor and they have that seal, that’s a good sign,” Oemichen says. “At least you’ll know what they’re doing with your data.”

Ultimately, he believes farmer co-ops could lead the way in protecting and leveraging farm data. If farmers already trust co-ops, why not build data-sharing systems that serve their members instead of selling access to third parties?

Creating these systems won’t be easy, but it is doable. And with so much at stake, Oemichen says farmers can’t afford to stay passive.

“This issue is growing fast,” he says. “It’s tough to stay ahead of it. But the more you know, the better chance you have to protect yourself and your farm in the digital age.”

His final advice? Read the contracts. Ask questions. And look for the seal.

There's a New Way to Cash in on Your CI Score on the Farm, Thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act

Mon, 18 Mar 2024 03:04:25 GMT

As a farmer, Kelly Garret is extremely carbon conscious. He grows 7,000 acres of no-till crops and switched from applying synthetic fertilizer to using regenerative wastewater as plant food.

“I believe in being collaborative with Mother Nature, not in competition. And this is a collaborative effort,” says Garrett, who farms in west-central Iowa, near Arion.

There’s no doubt Garrett is a forward thinker. He says he was the first farmer in the U.S. to sell carbon credits. Now, he thinks there’s a new opportunity coming for farmers to possibly cash in on.

“I believe in five years, almost every product that we buy, especially food-wise, will have a CI score affixed to it. I think as producers we need to educate ourselves and be at the forefront of that,” says Garrett.

How Much Your CI Score is Worth Down to the Bushel

CI score stands for Carbon Intensity score. Garrett says now, with the 45Z tax credit that was passed in the Inflation Reduction Act and slated to go into effect Jan. 1, 2025, your CI score will soon be worth even more, especially if your corn goes to an ethanol plant.

“It states that for every point an ethanol plant can get below 50, on their CI score, there’s a two-cent-per-gallon tax credit,” says Garrett. “The ethanol plants don’t have a lot of hope of getting below 50, not very far at least, without traceability of our corn.”

Garrett says, by his calculation, for every point below the current average of 29.1, it’s worth 2 cents a gallon, or 5.5 cents per bushel of corn.

“My [CI] score is a -6, because of the no-till, the cover crops and the regenerative things I do. So, my score is 35 points below the average. If you take 35 times 5.5, that’s just over $1.92 per bushel,” Garrett says.

(Farm Journal)

Regenerative Roots Solutions

Seeing how crucial farmers’ CI score will be to ethanol plants in the years ahead, Kelly saw a new opportunity for more than just himself. So, he teamed up with Peter Meyer, who worked in the energy space, Jarod Creed, who works with growers across the country and Mike Busing, who’s experienced in carbon markets, to create Regenerative Roots Solutions , a business designed to start educating all farmers.

“The four of us got together here in the last couple of months, and we’re really trying to hone in on what the opportunities are for our network combined. This is specifically geared towards these CPG programs and 45Z tax credits coming down the pipeline,” says Creed.

Peter Meyer says a farmer’s CI score is based on the Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in Transportation (GREET) model. An essential update to the model is expected soon from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

“The Greet Model here in the U.S. was originally geared toward ethanol for automobiles, and now we’re talking about a whole different energy source with sustainable aviation fuel,” says Meyer.

The Ethanol Business Can’t Survive Without Farmers

With 45Z now in the picture, the new tax credits for ethanol plants will also hinge on CI scores from farmers.

“I’m advocating for this, what’s very much a partnership with an ethanol plant,” says Kelly. “The tax credit is available to the ethanol plants, not to farmers. But the ethanol plant doesn’t have a lot of hope of gaining much of this tax credit without traceability to us.”

Adds Meyer, “The ethanol business cannot survive without the farmer. And this has to be, as Kelly Garrett said earlier, a 50/50 partnership.”

New Domestic Demand... and More Money for Farmers

The team at Regenerative Roots Solutions admits it’s still a bit of the Wild West when it comes to carbon and how much your CI score is worth, but Creed says more clarity is coming.

“Ten to 15 years ago, there was a tremendous amount of angst when ethanol started to come into the marketplace. And then here, most recently, the renewable diesel space of expanding the soybean crush in the U.S. market. And ultimately, all we’ve done is continue to create more domestic demand for our products as we’ve become less competitive with the rest of the world. The market dynamics have changed,” says Creed.

The team’s goal is to provide transparency and information to growers. But today, the biggest challenge is just how much misinformation is out there.

“Well, there’s an incredible amount of skepticism with farmers, starting with the carbon market as a whole, things like that government intervention,” says Kelley. “I think farmers are eternally skeptical, and a lot of times we’ve been sold a bill of goods, so you can’t necessarily blame farmers. But then when it comes to a CI score, there are a lot of questions or skepticism about how it’s calculated, whether the government is telling us how to raise our corn, and things like that.”

It’s All About the Data

Mike Busing has already taken a deep dive into the carbon market. Through his company, Windy Ridge Ag, he and his team handle the data collection for growers on current carbon programs that are available today.

“Over the last four years, we’ve brought a little over $10 million back to our grower base. It’s pretty incredible, and that’s what we hope to do with Regenerative Roots,” Busing says.

While those carbon contracts can be one-year contracts, Busing says 45Z has the potential to be a longer term, steady revenue stream for farmers.

“Data is going to be the key piece to everything,” Busing says. “We would all love to just have our growers walk in with a piece of paper that says, ‘My CI score is a 10, pay me for my grain.’ However, there will be a large data piece of this, it’s going to have to go through third-party verification, things of that nature. So, everything is tracked, we know the data is good and the plants can acquire that tax credit.”

The Future of CI Scores and 45Z

It’s a new opportunity for farmers to possibly cash in on, one the team at Regenerative Roots Solutions doesn’t see as a fad.

“I think there is already a smorgasbord of different programs that the producer is participating in, whether that be carbon programs, whether that be CPG programs,” says Creed. “I think this is just the icing on the cake. And it’s all in an effort to continue to find additional demand opportunities for the crop domestically, with less dependency on the rest of the world.”

“We’re advocating for the farmer to be educated about what practices he or she can employ to reduce their carbon intensity score to make it a little bit more palatable for the Greet model, and thus, end up with more money in their pockets at the end of the day,” Meyer explains.

As the team continues to explore how this partnership could work as 45Z comes into play, the best part for Garrett is he doesn’t have to change any production practices on his farm—or adopt something new—to qualify.

“Well, like most things in life, this is luck. These are things I was already doing, because I believe in this way of farming. I see it’s working,” says Garrett.

Creed says one of the biggest pieces of misinformation attached to this new opportunity today, is the belief that in order to qualify, producers will have to make major changes. Creed says Garrett is proof that a farmer doesn’t necessarily have to change how they farm.

Meyer says his biggest piece of advice for farmers is to look into what your CI score is, and if needed, for ways to lower that score. However, he says there’s no value in verifying your CI score until the updated Greet model is unveiled.

Farm Journal’s Smart Farming Week is an annual week-long emphasis on innovation in agriculture. The goal is to encourage you to explore and prioritize the technology, tools and practices that will help you farm smarter. Innovation today ensures an efficient, productive and sustainable tomorrow.

More Smart Farming content for you:

Choose Wisely: Smart Strategies to Select the Right Corrections Service

10 Easy Ways to Take Your Crop-Scouting Practices to the Next Level

You Can’t Afford to Be Complacent About Tar Spot

Here’s How to Bridge the Data Gap With Your Ag Retailer

Inside AMVAC’s Strategy To Widen Precision Agriculture Adoption

10 Tips to Shorten Your Cover Crop Learning Curve

4 Ways to Focus a Tech Audit

Thu, 14 Mar 2024 23:00:09 GMT

There is a tremendous amount of new technology available these days, and the list is constantly growing.

While technology access and options might be the greatest in the history of farming, implementing and benefiting from the deployment of such technology, in many cases, is an entirely different story.

Most traditional row-crop and livestock operations have limited resources to devote to this area, especially in the wake of rising costs of iron, inputs and interest. When resources and cash flow are running tight, investment in new technology is typically one of the first players to be cut from the team.

In today’s farming environment, putting the capital into technology is paramount for the viability and growth of the business. To make sure you’re getting the most bang for your buck, start with a technology audit before making decisions about how to maximize those resources.

The focus of a farm technology audit, and subsequent purchase plans, can be based on these four key areas:

(Farm Journal)

1. Grow business revenue.
The first thing farmers think about when growing the farm is growing the number of acres or bushels. But today’s technology also allows for ways to grow business revenues without expending a mountain of capital resources. For example, more comprehensive digital field and grain bin tracking technology allows for more targeted contracts based more on a crop’s condition and digital data pedigree than solely its yield. There’s also emerging sustainability markets where the revenue is totally decoupled from the crop itself. The catch-all of these new opportunities are impossible to scale without digitizing the farm from top to bottom.

(Farm Journal)

Increase productivity.
Automating tasks and processes can help with costs and performance. Auto-steer is likely one of agriculture’s greatest examples of a technology that checked this box on a massive scale. In a Southern Agricultural Economics Association auto-steer impact study, the authors saw, in some cases, ROIs approaching nearly 25% productivity gains. As robotics and artificial intelligence advance, agriculture is ripe for leapfrog gains in this area.

(Farm Journal)

3. Reduce costs.
Shrinking costs and reducing complexity can help even small and medium-sized farms enable growth. Hands down, automatic swath control and planter clutch technology have been two of precision agriculture’s greatest ROI technologies. Even a decades-old Auburn University study reported input savings ranging between 1% and 12% per field. As even more targeted input technologies evolve and are brought to market, this will certainly be an area to keep your eye on.

(Farm Journal)

4. Stabilize daily operation.
Technology has become the heartbeat of a modern farm. In fact, technology has become so embedded that in some cases it is absolutely critical to the daily operation of the business. For example, nearly 50% of acres planted to corn, soybeans, cotton and winter wheat are now managed with auto-steer and guidance systems. What happens if the GPS constellation failed or was jammed by a foreign hacker? On an individual farm, what happens when the electrical grid goes out and automated fans don’t turn on for a grain bin full of wet grain or a chicken production facility.

Ask Yourself These Questions

Peeling back the layers on how your farm is doing in each of these four areas comes down to answering some detailed and pointed questions about your farm’s overall technical health. Those questions include:

What technology is missing that I absolutely need today or especially will need tomorrow.
Do my technology pieces play nice together and talk to each other?
Am I really using the technology I already have and the data that comes with it?

In the real world, those questions might sound something like:

Do I need to digitize and record more of my field activities, such as anhydrous or crop protection applications?
If I don’t, am I risking future opportunities in this new age of Climate Smart Commodities and carbon credits?
Is my yield monitor so old they don’t even make memory card readers to download the data?
Will my John Deere tractor talk to my new Kinze planter?

Finding the right technology balance will be unique to your farm. Labor, equipment, land and your specific farming practices all play into what technology best serves your goals. If your biggest pain point is labor, start by increasing your focus on automation. For others, it might be the need to find ways to reduce inputs with auto-swath technology.
It’s important to mention that technological harmony on your farm cannot be solved by geeking out and going on a gadget-buying spree. That usually only creates more problems. Before you buy anything new, take an actual physical inventory of the current technology on your farm. This baseline is a pretty good indicator of your farm’s overall technical health.

(Farm Journal)

Ghosts of precision ag’s past

If more than a couple pieces of technology on your farm were put in use or manufactured before Y2K hysteria was an issue, they probably should be taken out and parked in a digital fence row somewhere. There’s no lack of ghosts of precision ag’s past still present on many of today’s farms.
This is the realm still haunted by the YM2000, PF 3000 and Greenstar “brown box” yield monitors. These are the office shop drawers filled with Ziploc bags full of SRAM, PC and Compact-Flash memory cards fragilely hold onto the data of harvests’ past.

Antique analog-era technology is impeding the adoption of newer technologies with greater benefits and simplified ease of use. Curious what happens from holding on to technology far beyond its expiration date? Just ask Southwest Airlines. Its years of cumulating “technological debt,” or old tech, caused their infamous holiday meltdown. Your farm and our industry are susceptible as well.

The only thing worse than old technology is no technology. Realistically, finding no technology on a farm today is rare. However, many farms are stuck in a tech rut where the portfolio hasn’t grown beyond a yield monitor and auto-steer. In the age of sustainability and consumer transparency, it is going to take way more digitization than that. Literally, every pass across a field will need to be recorded.

What about your inner circle?

That means when you are doing your tech audit, it should include assessing your technology as well as the technology of your trusted inner circle — your co-op or commercial applicator, your crop scout, crop insurance agent and your agronomist. All that technology creates data that must interact with yours.

Finally, not investing in technology is not an option — if you want to survive. Since the dawn of precision farming, the industry’s mentality has been that technology falls into more of a luxury category than treating it as the capital expense it should be.

The technology treadmill in agriculture has always been unforgiving. Without knowing where you stand and where you’re headed, you’re going to be in for a bumpy ride because today’s technology treadmill has just accelerated to warp speed.

More Smart Farming content for you:

8 Field Activity Data Types You Need to Collect Now

Here’s How to Bridge the Data Gap With Your Ag Retailer

10 Easy Ways to Take Your Crop-Scouting Practices to the Next Level

A Software Love Affair

Tue, 12 Mar 2024 13:00:00 GMT

Integrating new software into your team can feel like a blind date. Worse yet, a speed date followed by an arranged marriage. This shotgun arrangement may not end well.

A better way.

Romance. Invite your employees along for the journey of picking out new software. If it’s new activity monitoring software, visit another dairy and see how it’s made life easier for employees. Maybe date a couple different companies. Which software is easy to use? Can they try to use it on another farm or use a demo version? Just like that boyfriend that has a fast car but no job, the manager may need to narrow the options for the team. The company needs to be around for the long term and the output likely needs to be streamed into other software.

The engagement. Before you commit to the long term, make sure you understand what you are getting into. Do you understand the feed software monthly fees? Are those missing ear tags getting replaced for free? Does the software company have bilingual support staff? There are easy questions that can be asked about onboarding, onsite support and employee training that will avoid conflicts later.

The big day, time to move in.

Well, wait a minute. Breathe a bit. If you are switching to new herd management software, you need to prep the team. Even though they signed off on the new software, have an onboarding schedule. Training sessions with the software should be thought through carefully. Not everyone learns at the same speed and showing some how to use a software one time likely isn’t going to cut it. I remember an old Extension agent I worked with in Michigan who was teaching people to use computers and QuickBooks. He had a simple rule: If you are showing someone how to use new software, don’t touch their computer or mouse. Put your hands in your pockets and talk the “student” through the process. This process will initially take longer than “showing” them how to use the software. Showing someone how to use software by grabbing their mouse and clicking through screens seldom leads to long term retention of the process.

If your new partner is feed software, day one can be tough. On large dairies, I prefer to install the new software and hardware the day before your first full feeding day. If possible, mixing 2-3 loads of feed in the afternoon as a team can be helpful to serve as a training session. And yes, go slow and don’t touch their tablets. Talk them through the process. The first load might take an hour or two while they work through the new screens.

Marriage is a marathon, not a sprint. You don’t have to be an expert on every report in your software on day one. Focus on quality input and then focus on the output. Have your software company come back every couple of months in the first year. Train and retrain.

For more on Smart Farming, read:

Uniting Technology with the Youngest Herd Members on Your Farm

Wed, 21 Feb 2024 14:23:00 GMT

Cows today are evolving to be more productive and profitable, so it makes perfect sense that today’s herd management tools have also evolved—allowing the producer to better manage overall herd and individual cow performance.

According to Taliah Danzinger, senior manager of dairy intelligence with VAS, when we can know more about the cow and everything impacting her performance, we can effectively manage her to achieve more.

“Innovations in data collection and analysis over the last 40 years have made it easier to understand what’s happening on the farm and how a cow performs,” Danzinger says.

More Can Be Done with Calves

While many producers have really honed in on technology and data with their mature cow herd, more can be done with calves.

“Calves often get overlooked because they are located away from the main part of the dairy where the parlor, office and cows are at,” Danzinger says, adding that technology can help overcome that barrier. “We can set up different accounts for mobile users, so any employee can enter calf data when feeding calves.”

Data collected on calves and heifers—like illnesses and management—can help producers analyze and anticipate lifetime and production potential.

“We have so much to gain from tracking data on our calves and heifers, and it has never been easier,” Danzinger says. “With mobile cowside technology, or in this case, calfside, we can capture data on the fly and use it for long-term tracking.”

Danzinger shares that data from birth through the heifer stage can be used in a variety of ways, including:

Setting goals for how many health events are acceptable for a calf and creating a plan to reach that goal.
Managing inventory to determine who is best to keep in the herd based on performance data.
Building a breeding program around the data that influences breeding, including market prices for calves and heifers, culling rate in the herd, and desired age at first calving.
Assessing first lactation performance to evaluate how calfhood events influence lactation production and potential.

Clearly defined data collection parameters act as a safeguard against inconsistencies and inaccuracies in your calf data over time. Danzinger advises dairies to first define what constitutes a disease and the associated protocols. For example, what qualifies a calf as experiencing scours? It might differ from one farm to another.

“One farm might say it must accompany a fever and another might say ‘no, diarrhea alone is enough,’” she explains. “Once everyone is on the same page with the definition of the disease and the corresponding protocols, data entry and analysis become simple and streamlined.”

How Does Casa Blanca Calf Ranch Streamline Calf Data with Mobile Solutions?

Steve Andrade, manager of Casa Blanca Calf Ranch in Tipton, Calif., shares that incorporating technology six years ago to help manage their 6,500 calves has been a game changer.

“I used to walk around with a clipboard and spend half my time in the office entering data in the computer,” he says. “Now, 95% of my time is spent outside working with our employees and calves thanks to VAS’ Pocket CowCard, cattle scan and EID tags.”

According to Andrade, incorporating technologies at the calf ranch has helped keep inventories straight.

“Every time an animal is moved, scans are occurring,” he says. “So, our inventories are up-to-date and accurate now more than ever before.”

Streamlining the process has helped Andrade evaluate the effectiveness of protocols and treatment. For example, calves are scanned, and that data is instantly recorded into the computer system when calves have all illnesses, including pinkeye.

“All animals are scanned and all that information, including treatment, is on the computer,” Andrade says. “You can actually see how many animals you treated and at what time. I can look at what the percentage of pinkeye we had last year and if we switch vaccines, we can see if it was more or less effective and truly understand its benefit.”

Plus, Andrade can monitor additional data like weather events which become obvious when looking at year-over-year data, as they are likely to treat more calves for health incidences when severe rain comes to the central valley.

The method that Andrade goes by is the KISS method—keep it stupid simple – which with the help of technology, is exactly what he and his team at Casa Blancha are able to accomplish.

“Pocket CowCard, handheld scanners and EID tag are by far leaps and bounds more efficient than any other kind of technology in the dairy industry,” he says.

Casa Blanca currently has calves coming in from nine different dairies, including two of their own.

Danzinger shares that the best way producers can take advantage of their data is to lean on the people surrounding their dairy.

“Your management team, trusted advisors and data experts, and the tools built to make data management easier should all work together for your success” she says.

Andrade says he has found outside teams, like VAS, to be invaluable as they encourage him to pilot new technology and have provided solid support throughout his time using the technologies.

Producers have embraced technology for their mature herd, and now more dairies and calf ranches are exploring how to use it to streamline management for the youngest members of their herd – calves and heifers. The data collected pays off in more ways than one, providing a roadmap to more informed management decisions that lead to healthier, more profitable animals down the line.

New Dairy Cattle Nutrition Model Coming From Cornell Soon

Sat, 27 Jan 2024 15:39:21 GMT

For more than 40 years, the Cornell Net Carbohydrate and Protein System (CNCPS) has been both an academic and commercially applied nutrition model to predict requirements, feed utilization, animal performance and nutrient excretion for dairy and beef cattle.

The CNCPS is a “living model,” and is routinely updated using accumulated knowledge about feed composition, digestion, and metabolism in supplying nutrients to meet requirements. For the past 13 years, Cornell researchers have been developing the latest, highly anticipated CNCPS version 7, which will be an update to the current version, 6.5.5.

Dr. Mike Van Amburgh, Professor of Animal Science at Cornell, has been leading the team of researchers who have been steadfastly working toward the launch of CNCPSv7. Van Amburgh expects the upgraded model will be commercially available in the second half of 2024. Among the highlights of the update are:

A “mouth-to-rectum” model. Version 7 will feature a “revised dynamic structure” that accounts for segmented digestion dynamics in the rumen, abomasum, small intestine, and large intestine.
A nitrogen-based model. “We would like to eliminate the use of the term ‘crude protein,’” stated Van Amburgh. “Crude protein as a percentage can be quantified, but each amino acid has its own nitrogen content.” He said using grams of nitrogen per Mcal of metabolizable energy allows for the delineation of each essential amino acid’s nitrogen contribution, versus less-precise crude protein percentage.
A new model constructed with the goal of improving predictions of rumen function; aNDFom digestibility; essential amino acid supply and their individual behavior and contributions; and nitrogen supply.
New estimates of amino acid requirements on an energy basis along with a full urea and nitrogen recycling sub model to improve nitrogen use efficiency.
New accommodation of dairy cow feed intake patterns.
A new estimation of the contribution of protozoa to rumen microbial flow.
A complete lifecycle model that includes requirements and ration structure for neonatal calves through weaning; followed by heifer development; and finally, the lactating cow.

Van Amburgh said as Cornell researchers developed the model update, incorporation of protozoa growth and yield; endogenous protein supply and digestibility; recycled urea nitrogen; and intestinal digestibility all together provided new insights into amino acid supply and nitrogen efficiency.

However, despite all of the discoveries of essential amino acid (EAA) behavior and dietary contributions, Van Amburgh cautioned that diets still cannot be formulated on EAA balancing alone. “Our updated knowledge of EAAs is exciting, but we cannot forget about the non-essential amino acids,” he advised. “Even though they are ‘non-essential,’ they are still required in the cow’s diet, and for that reason, we still need to formulate on the basis of metabolizable protein.”

The Cornell researchers are developing the new CNCPS version with a triad of objectives: (1) improve animal health and productivity; (2) reduce resource use; and (3) protect the environment.

When the model is launched, Van Amburgh said a written manual will also be published featuring case studies to walk users through the model’s capabilities, and what to do with the information it provides. You can hear Van Amburgh and his colleagues describe and discuss CNCPSv7 on a webinar sponsored by Balchem; at a presentation from the 2023 American Dairy Science Association Annual Conference; and on a webinar sponsored by Adisseo.

For more on nutrition, read:

Managing 8,000 Cows with Activity Monitors at Del Rio Dairy

Tue, 02 Jan 2024 16:45:29 GMT

A big question on the minds of many decision makers on the dairy is this: Should one invest more heavily in hiring highly skilled cow people or in adopting technology that can perform tasks that good cow people could do?

On the Uplevel Dairy Podcast , Nathan Moroney from Del Rio Dairy explained how leveraging technology has revolutionized cow flow, cow health and efficiency, while allowing his best cow people to focus their time for the greatest impacts.

Streamlining Cow Flow and Workflow

Del Rio Dairy, located in Friona, Texas, has experienced significant growth over the years, expanding their herd from around 3,000 cows to over 8,000. With three parlors on-site, including a recently built 90-stall rotary, the management team faced the challenge of managing a larger herd efficiently. To tackle this obstacle, they transitioned from capturing basic data from milk meters to implementing sort gates to adopting real-time rumination and activity monitoring using GEA Cow Scout activity monitoring collars.

“So we’re capturing not only that ID, not only the activity information, but we’re getting rumination and feeding time data,” Moroney says.

The implementation of these collars allowed the Del Rio Dairy team to focus their time and attention on cows that truly needed it. By monitoring rumination, feeding time, and activity data, the team members could identify cows at risk and intervene before the situation escalated. As a result, they have been able to reduce the number of cows in the hospital pen by a staggering 30%.

Additionally, Moroney sees the benefits to not only efficiency, but also animal welfare, saying, “There’s also a lot of value in not having to just lock up a cow that doesn’t need to be locked up.”

Don’t Skip the Close-Up Heifers or Dry Cows

Del Rio Dairy is continuously exploring new ways to enhance their management practices through technology. They have expanded the use of collars beyond the milking herd to include pre-fresh heifers, and cows maintain their collars all through the dry period. This gives the team access to the baseline data that can be collected for each animal before they enter stressful periods at calving and into the first few weeks post-calving. With this information in hand, deviations to a heifer or cow’s normal patterns can be identified and responded to promptly.

Enhancing Efficiency and Time Management

Besides improving cow health, the adoption of technology at Del Rio Dairy has had a transformative impact on the farm’s overall efficiency and time management. By leveraging real-time data from the collars, team members can focus their efforts and prioritize tasks more effectively. The collars allow them to isolate individuals in need of attention, minimizing the need for lockups or unnecessary examinations. This streamlined workflow not only saves time but also enhances the well-being of the cows by reducing stress and handling.

Employees are less stressed as well. Moroney says that no one looks overwhelmed. Cow flow and workflow are steady, and they don’t have to stop the deck or cause a backlog on the rotary.

For Moroney, having this dashboard of data at the fingertips of his crew at Del Rio Dairy has allowed them to streamline cow flow and workflow. It’s been good for the cows, the people, and the bottom line of the business.

Listen to the full episode of the Uplevel Dairy Podcast featuring Nathan Moroney here:

Pagel’s Herd Manager Shares How Tech Upped Wisconsin’s Largest Family-Owned Dairy Farm’s Game

Wed, 09 Aug 2023 16:10:40 GMT

Technology and efficiency seem to go hand in hand. This is what Chris Szydel of Kewaunee, Wis. says, as he shares how incorporating technology into his role as herd manager has been a game changer that has upped the overall efficiency at Wisconsin’s largest family-owned dairy.

“It is just like a light switch,” he notes, sharing that he first performed his role with a clipboard and reports printed off of DairyComp and manually doing everything.

Szydel joined Pagel’s Ponderosa as a nighttime milking technician in 1995. A decade later, he was promoted to herd manager and now manages both the Pagel Ponderosa and Hilltop Farm dairies, overseeing three different parlors and 65 employees. His role has evolved tenfold.

“We doubled in one year, making for a big learning curve. Essentially, everything that was running so smoothly on a daily basis for 1,000 cows had to be converted to a 3,000-cow dairy with a whole new site and setup and going from one parlor to two parlors,” he says. “It was a big transition with a big learning curve. John Pagel told me, when the potatoes start falling off the plates, you got to put them back carefully.”

Cadillac System

“My best analogy is going from a horse and buggy to getting into a new Cadillac,” he explains.

The Cadillac systems that Szydel is referring to is the ParlorBoss and SenseHub (formerly SCR) working together in their rotary, which allows Szydel and his team to now perform herd management tasks while cows are milking, reducing lockup times.

“We went from 5-6 hours a day on headlock time for the herd to 4 -5 hours per week lock up time,” he says sharing the SenseHub system pulls data from the cows collars, forwards it to DairyComp that then will relay it to the ParlorBoss screen. “All the tasks we need to take care of for the cows show up on the screen. The cows are being taken care of without disrupting them, it is a low stress environment.”

Szydel shares that SenseHub has also significantly helped them reduce antibiotic and hormone cost on the dairies.

“It does a great job of identifying cows early and we can give them attention sooner. With this technology, we can better identify the animals and have the compliance to double check to make sure that the cow got the attention that she needed,” he adds.

Conducting all their vaccinations and hormone medicine on the rotary, Szydel explains if a cow needs more attention, they can use sort gates to separate her for an exam.

“Everybody else can then go from the parlor back to the pen,” he says, explaining even on small breeding days, they can sort off cows into a small pen and breed and not disrupt the whole group of cows. “The cows are more comfortable in the pens after milking. The sort gates also allow us to breed cow 2x a day, separating the ones we need. We can breed the cow within 5 to 10 minutes and then open up the gate and allow her right back into traffic.”

Investing in technology like DairyBoss and SenseHub has also changed the workload amongst all Pagel’s employees.

“My biggest challenge over the last year and a half with the sort gates, ParlorBoss and SenseHub is keeping my team productive. We have saved time with this technology, so I have had to restructure what we’re doing,” he says.

Dialing in on efficiency across the entire dairy, Szydel and his team have taken on maintenance work during their downtime.

“We’re doing things with our team to help out other departments to help fill the gap,” he says. “We don’t want to let anybody go because the farms are expanding, and we have great people. We are just restructuring a bit.”

Cool Cow Boost

Turning fans on and rolling curtains up used to occupy a lot of time for Szydel. He shares that incorporating a temperature control system in the barns and parlor was a huge time saver, as well as a boost for production.

“I can control the temps in the parlor and the holding area from my cell phone or laptop and this gives the cows the best environment,” he says.

Szydel shares that the herd’s production hovers around 90-92 lbs. of fluid, 106 lbs. energy corrected.

“We would drop probably 8 to 10 lbs. of milk in the summer because of the warm weather,” he states, sharing repro also saw a boost.

“Our pregnancy rate is holding between 37 and 39% and we are able to not only get cows pregnant, but keep them pregnant, too,” he adds.

Worth the Investment

Additional cost-effective technology that Szydel says has been worth the investment includes:

Pulse NeedleFree System is a lightweight, disposable needle-free injector. “We want to make sure that we don’t have the blood-borne pathogens switching from cow to cow and it takes a lot of time and effort to switch needles,” he says. “Headlocks are no longer needed for routine management treatments.”
Cattle-Care is a dairy management software that uses existing parlor cameras and artificial intelligence to generate automated protocol reports. “We can reduce deviation in our protocols and having this technology lets us know the consistencies of the protocols and our shifts.”

Five Most Used Apps

Szydel says his role as herd manager has him in front of a computer 50% of the time. He shares his four most used apps include:

Valley Ag Software
DairyBoss
Teams Folders
Cattle Care camera system
SenseHub (formerly SCR)

Szydel points out their Cainthus system monitors the feed that is in front of the pre-fresh cows, making sure bunks are full, as a dairy technology must have.

“If we get some areas where the cows are eating more, or eating less, we can talk to our feeders and have them drop more or less feed in those areas,” he says. “It also sends alerts to the feeder’s phones if the cows look to run out of feed, letting them know to feed this group first.”

With so much technology to choose from, Szydel says ultimately what he is selecting for is cost-effective technology that will improve the overall efficiency of the dairy.

“Otherwise, all this technology adds up, so we got to make sure that we’re spending the money in the right areas and that we can get the results from it,” he says.

What Can the Dairy Industry Learn from the Healthcare Industry?

Wed, 31 May 2023 15:20:38 GMT

Robots, sensors, connected devices, virtual reality and even artificial intelligence (AI) have become a daily presence in our hospitals, care facilities and even in our homes. As agriculture is facing its own transformation what lessons can we learn?

Robots

Every day, up to 3,000 blood samples are transported by robots in Denmark’s Aalborg University Hospital from bedside to the lab, with the same robots being witnessed in the corridors of America’s biggest hospitals. Robots enable consistent, accurate sample analysis through maintaining stable temperatures during transport without deviating from their path or getting distracted from their task.

Agricultural robots are being embraced in a similar manner on the farm. Shouldering the burden of harvesting, planting, irrigation and other manual tasks in the field. The advent of robots to milk cows (or most precisely allowing cows to decide when they want to be milked), cleaning barns and feeding, which AgriTech Capital estimates at over 1 million cows globally.

Internet of Things (IoTs)

IoT technology , smart devices like Fitbits and Apple Watches, are changing the game in our hospitals. Wearable health devices provide real time relevant data for doctors and consultants, freeing bedside staff from constant monitoring.

Likewise, precision agriculture is using sensors to monitor crop conditions for moisture (irrigation efficiency), diseases, readiness for harvest, and other factors. Before, this was a time-consuming and labor-intensive task with frequent observational errors. Now, IoTs can accurately analyze dairy farm inputs and management in real-time, increasing precision and giving farmers back time. Visible examples of this in our dairies include the use of millions of wearable collars and eartags, and more recently the smart rumen bolus of SmaXtec is the latest technology in the US dairy market, already being used in hundreds of thousands of cows. Knowing cow movements, cows productivity and health before problems become visible is worth hundreds of dollars per animal per year to a dairy farmer,

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Clinicians’ mistakes result in cost the healthcare industry over $2 billion annually and the lives of over 200,000 people. Artificial intelligence (AI) can play a critical role in eliminating this. Errors caused by fatigue, memory, lack of experience or training, and misapprehensions are significantly reduced when AI supports decision-making.

What mistakes could we eliminate on our farms? When so much knowledge relies on being passed from generation to generation AI can eliminate human errors, accurately a nalyz ing data, predicting yields, identifying potential health challenges, optimizing resource allocation and linking decisions to market demands and prices. In fact, AI computations can play a crucial role in addressing carbon credits and resource scarcity. B ig data and cloud computing are also allowing farmers to address the real complexity they face of weather, genetics, market turbulence and the microbiome of soil and the animals they feed. Ever.Ag is an example of a technology company specifically focused on dairy, which enabling better decisions to be taken in real time based on market movements, with fewer mistakes.

Lessons for Ag

The World Bank has raised concerns about technology replacing workers but as we’ve seen in hospitals, we don’t have fewer doctors, nurses or caregivers. Human labor is not being eliminated but the jobs humans fill have shifted, and the same is expected to happen in agriculture.

Future dairy workers should be recruited with new skills; data analysis, software engineering, coding. A McKinsey survey revealed that more than 50% of large farms and nearly a quarter of small farms are using (or planning to use) precision agriculture technology, so the demand for high-skill jobs will only grow.

What is the best way to prepare agriculture for these changes? Retain and invest in talent. Agricultural employment in the U.S. is only expected to increase by 1%. Agriculture has always had a “ people problem .” But as Agri executive search group Kincannon & Reed says “if it was difficult to find good help before, then it’s even more difficult now.”

Automation could also help. T raditionally work ers have left farming because of poor pay and difficult conditions. If automation replaces the jobs laborers don’t want to do, the opportunity will be for stimulating, higher-paying work that attracts and retain s an adaptable workforce.

Talent retention goes hand in hand with talent investment. As I noted in the The Future of Agriculture , education and training programs cultivate a diverse and flexible workforce that evolves with each innovation.

Technology on the farm offers solutions to many of agriculture’s most pressing problems, but if dairy farmers can learn from healthcare and invest in the workforce now, these technologies will boost productivity and profits. Is Healthcare’s transformation a road map for farming? Using robotics, sensors and AI to grow food efficiently, precisely, cost-effectively, offers safe and affordable food, but also answers the sustainability demands of the consumer, climate change, resource scarcity.

Leaning into the Future: Producers Share How Technology Enriches Their Operations

Wed, 19 Apr 2023 17:03:23 GMT

Over the years, dairy producers have continued to dial in on productivity and profitability. In turn, they have also leaned into technology to help them achieve these goals. Ranging from robotic milking, RFID identification and monitoring systems, technology has helped advance agricultural productivity.

Recently on a Farm Journal Milk Business webinar, three dairy producers shared what technologies they currently have invested in and additional technologies that they are looking at to help push their operations forward.

Milk Source, Wisconsin

Chema Ortiz, a herd management specialist for Milk Source in Wisconsin, says that like most of the industry, they too have been challenged with labor shortages over the last few years.

“The way we did things five years ago is definitely different now,” he says. “And, it’s going to be different five years from now too. We try to get better, more efficient and also improve some of our health and reproduction.”

Intending to reduce labor, Ortiz says one of the ways Milk Source has been able to do that is by adding sprayers in their parlors, as well as utilizing activity collars on some of their dairies. Today, Milk Source is home to 35,000 cows across five locations located in three different states.

McCarty Family Farms, Kansas

Ken McCarty with McCarty Family Farms in Kansas has recently installed the first of two DeLaval rotaries that include a whole host of technologies.

“Some of the advantages that we see with that system are obvious, it’s a much more labor-efficient way of milking cows; easier on the cow and easier on the human,” he says. “But we’ve also installed post dip robots that have eliminated a little bit of labor from the wheel while maintaining basically the same level of application.”

Additionally, McCarty’s also feels like cow activity monitoring systems are making an impact for their dairies located in Kansas, Nebraska and Ohio.

“The Delpro system tracks daily weights, animal activity… all those sorts of things. We’re still learning, but we are diving into the insights to better understand how we can optimize our system as a whole to drive productivity and profitability,” he says.

Four J Jerseys, California

Out west in California, Ryan Junio with Four J Jerseys in Pixley says his biggest focus has been on calf rearing and improving calf health before outsourcing them to a custom calf ranch.

“We’ve taken on new pasteurization processes and colostrum freezing processes trying to mitigate any disease,” he says. “We’re also in the midst of looking at installing pre and post-dip sprayers trying to reduce labor and trying to become more efficient on the dairy in that way.”

Junio, who milks 5,000 Jerseys and farms 12,000 acres in Tulare County, shares that they are also in the process of incorporating a monitoring system to help manage herd health and dial in on reproduction efficiencies.

“We don’t have a system online yet,” he says. “We plan to become more efficient in terms of labor and in terms of repro hormones. We think that the payback there is immense. So that’s something we’re aggressively trying to get online right now.”

The Next 24 Months

Technology is also the focus for these three producers in the next 24 months. Junio says they plan on bringing the cow monitoring system on board and want to dial in on efficiencies across the whole herd, especially with herd health.

“The sprayers in the carousel are going to be able to reduce labor,” he says. “We’re trying to ramp up efficiencies in the carousel and [milk] a few more cows 3x versus 2x. We’re looking at a DeLaval system that incorporates a second vacuum line, that will enable us to ramp up the vacuum, too.”

New to utilizing activity collars, Ortiz says that those at Milk Source are trying to learn the program the best they can as a trial. The team is also working to better incorporate sort gates.

“I see [this technology] as part of the plan in the future for other sites,” he says. “What we are seeing from the beginning looks promising.”

Additionally, Milk Source is in a trial with an artificial intelligence company working with cameras.

“As that technology gets better, it’s definitely something that we’re going to try and utilize the best we can,” Ortiz shares. He outlines that from their point of view, an investment in technology must either reduce labor or improve cow health and reproduction.

The standards that dairies hold themselves continue to get higher and higher and that is certainly the case for McCarty, who shares that they are looking at investing in additional robotics on their farms.

“Anything that we can do that standardizes practices on the farm, drives down labor costs and can benefit the welfare of our team members is worth pursuing,” he says. He adds that the primary focus right now is on robotics and autonomous tractors.

To hear these three producers talk more about technology and how it is playing a big role on their farms, watch the entire webinar here: https://fjwebinars.com/account/register/dairy-herd-management/167

A New Kind of “A.I.” for Dairies

Fri, 09 Dec 2022 19:11:22 GMT

Move over, artificial insemination. There’s a new “A.I.” in town, and it’s more intelligent than you.

A graduate student at the University of California-Davis has developed a customizable artificial intelligence (A.I.) platform that analyzes cow behavior data to help farmers anticipate changes and problems in their herds, and choose the right management interventions to address them.

Animal biology PhD candidate Catie McVey said she developed the platform, called DairyFit , utilizing data that already is being captured from sources like activity monitors, ear tags, and other precision dairy technologies that document behaviors like eating, chewing cud, walking, and resting time.

“DairyFit helps to pull out patterns hiding in big, messy data streams,” said McVey. “Then it lets the farmer decide…I want to empower farmers with data, not replace them.”

An interesting example of the power of DairyFit emerged in the analysis of sick-cow behavior. McVey and her team anticipated that sick cows would enter pens last, with their healthier herd mates leading in the front. Instead, they found that healthy cows led from the front and chased from the back, sandwiching the sick cows in the middle of the pen to keep the herd together.

Earlier this year, McVey’s research earned the “Animal Health + Industry” award as part of the Big Bang! Business Competition at UC-Davis. She currently is testing DairyFit with a group of farmers, with the goal of converting it to a smartphone app.

The platform can be applied to herds of all sizes and is designed to by highly affordable, opening up the world of big data analysis to small farmers. “We should be giving them tools to engage with their data,” McVey declared. “I’m never going to make an algorithm that knows better than the farmer. And I don’t want to live in a world anymore where the algorithms that monitor my online shopping are more sophisticated than the ones that keep my cows alive.”

Enhanced Farm Management at Your Fingertips

Thu, 13 Oct 2022 17:11:47 GMT

“Digital technologies are the future of dairy farms; farmers will have a competitive advantage in the future when they invest in these technologies,” says Aidan Connolly, President of AgriTech Capital, host of the 2022 World Dairy Expo Tech Spotlight in Madison, WI.

“With the WDE tech spotlight, we are offering leading dairy tech companies an opportunity to present their technology to producers and answer some commonly asked questions they might get at a tradeshow from producers,” he adds.

During both a virtual session prior to World Dairy Expo, and an in-person session in Madison, each of the nine companies from around the world had an opportunity to showcase their technology, business model and experience with producers. They then fielded questions from the audience and a panel of dairy experts including Dr. Jeffrey Bewley, Dr. Michael Hutjens and Dr. Julio Giordana.

Nedap was the first company to apply RFID to cows in the 1970’s. According to Nedap’s Tera Baker, their history in the industry sets them apart when it comes to their new products, such as CowControl. CowControl combines activity monitoring and location tracking with augmented reality and integrates with most herd management systems for seamless integration into the farm’s current systems.

Baker says, “Tracking cows 24/7 at any scale of herd allows you to pinpoint cows to manage by exception without disrupting the whole herd.”

SmaXtec, according to CEO Stefan Scherer, is changing the way we understand cows. Their unique bolus system that measures activity and rumination from inside the cow is part of a 24/7 health manager system that can reduce medication use, maintain performance and improve KPI’s. Scherer says producers see a return on investment in the monthly monitoring model with reduced medication, more milk and less labor.

Milk Moovement focuses on milk traceability throughout the value chain, helping track and move milk efficiently from farm to processor and beyond. CEO Rob Forsythe says their easy-to-use app provides real-time pick-up and drop-off data, truck route planning and tracking, historical milk data comparison, production predictions and more. He says, “It’s not massive amounts of new data; it’s getting the right data into the right hands at the right time so that decisions can be made and issues can be seen.”

Milc Group introduced the “animal” app, a new piece in their herd management suite that includes “one feed, train trac and one facility.” Along with several familiar features of a herd management app, animal offers a way to help manage the people completing day-to-day tasks on the farm. Milc Group’s Ramon Gomez says, “The advantage of all this data going to the same database is that we can take pieces from feed, herd management, employee and parlor management to eventually come up with an analysis and diagnosis for the dairy.”

Labby offers both in-line and hand-held milk quality testing for early mastitis detection. Co-Founder and CEO Julia Somerdin says, “Profitability is always top of mind. When you look at the potential loss from mastitis, between milk yield and premiums, treatments and labor, it’s a 5% revenue loss. With this type of early detection, you can make your initial capital investment back within six to twelve months.”

The Labby in-line testing system works in both robotic and conventional barns.

Ever.Ag is solving the dairy industry’s complexity challenges by enabling the overlay of all data sources and systems in one location, viewable on an easy-to-use dashboard interface. Ryne Braun discussed the importance of automatically capturing objective data in real-time, without the margin of human error, judgment or bias. Ever.Ag achieves this by leveraging data from Cainthus, ALUS nutrition and ALUS Behavior.

EIO Diagnostics CEO Tamara Lee says they are offering something completely different in the world of mastitis detection. “We like to call it a clear picture of udder health,” she adds. The Udderhealth mastitis system is an infrared camera installed on a rotary parlor that instantly analyzes each cow as it comes around the rotary. The analysis is based on a rolling five days of data, and the low-maintenance system is set up to alert milkers of data deviations in real time.

Dalex is a leading provider of feed formulation software for dairy, beef and swine that provides ration formulation at www.dalex.com. Dalex’s Dallas Shaw says, “This isn’t just a calculator – it accounts for biology and economics. Moving data around efficiently and free from error is critical.” The system is designed to integrate with herd management systems, accommodate multiple feed models and species and can be used by companies, nutritionists and individuals.

Cattle Eye offers the world’s first machine vision solution for monitoring livestock. A camera mounted at the parlor exit scans each animal to provide a locomotion score and is proven to detect laminitis better than a human can. CEO Terry Canning says Cattle Eye is working towards a hoof health ecosystem, collaborating with hoof trimmers and other hoof health companies and integrating with herd management systems.

Of the Tech Spotlight, World Dairy Expo General Manager Laura Herschleb says, “We know the pivotal role technology has played in getting us to where we are today, and there’s no denying that it’s going to play that impactful part in where we go with animal health, profitability and so many things.”

The full recording of the virtual Tech Spotlight session can be found at wdetechspotlight.agritechcapital.com/livestream.

For more on dairy technology, read:

Agriculture Technology Development Takes Partnerships

Thu, 22 Sep 2022 04:17:20 GMT

Developing new technology isn’t as simple as coming up with an idea. It takes years of work, access to funding and collaboration.

The Sprint Accelerator has served as an avenue for startup technology companies to connect with other entrepreneurs since 2014. This year, Dairy Farmers of America (DFA) joined Sprint in sponsoring a 90-day agriculture technology incubator. Four companies participated in the 2017 Sprint Accelerator, see below for details.

The Program’s Benefits

The program exceeded expectations of DFA, says Kevin Strathman, DFA senior vice president of finance. “What we brought were connections.” Through the process My Dairy Dashboard formed a partnership with DFA to build an enhanced version of myDFA, a website where DFA members can access information on their farms.

The portal enables users to access milk production and weather data from the cooperative, all being displayed through charts and graphs. DFA members who want to upgrade the experience to include on-farm data from their herd or feed management would be able to subscribe themselves and combine it through myDFA.

“They’ll able to pull that data together to give them a richer environment to see trends and make decisions,” says Mitch Norby, CEO of My Dairy Dashboard.

What The Future Holds

In the future Norby hopes to work with other companies to help get more data into producers’ hands, similar to what is being done with DFA to increase the automation of data collection. Having data collection companies like HerdDogg and AgVoice participate in the Sprint Accelerator opened the door to building those types of connections.

“We’ve bounced ideas off each other and there are opportunities as we move forward to work with them,” Norby says.

HerdDogg works as a “Facebook for cows” says Melissa Brandao, CEO of HerdDogg. The tags gather information from cattle that walk within 30' of a Bluetooth “dog bone” tag reader or a smartphone.

Through the program HerdDogg is conducting research with DFA, Sprint and Colorado State University. One goal is raising conception rates by improving heat detection.

“This program in all earnestness has been a game changer for HerdDogg,” Brandao says.

AgVoice made its first venture into dairy, having previously been focused in fruit and vegetable markets. Now, AgVoice has found uses in dairy such as breeding cows, pregnancy checks and herd health inspections without having to write anything down.

“It is interesting that all of us complement each other, we don’t compete with each other,” says Aaron Gobin, co-founder of AgVoice.

The Sprint Accelerator will continue next year with an agriculture focus, along with a food component. Sprint and DFA will return as sponsors with CoBank as a supporting partner.

Note: This article appears in the October 2017 magazine issue of Dairy Herd Management.

Is Dairy Data the New ‘Oil’?

Thu, 22 Sep 2022 04:13:01 GMT

Dairy producers are increasingly aware of the value of the data on the farm. Just as oil flows from wells and milk from cows, it seems that data has the potential to inform or overwhelm farmers with more information than they can comprehend. 

Dairy producers have had a series of platforms to choose from, including:  

Dairy Comp is the original of the species and the largest and first of its type in the dairy herd management software space. Dairy Comp is the first to truly offer producers the ability to collect and manage data on milk and cow health at an individual level. While it is sometimes described as a ‘legacy system’, suggesting it hasn’t been updated from its original format, this is not a fair characterization as they have invested heavily in creating a new cloud-based system called VAS-Pulse. Industry estimates are that more than 60% of the U.S. herd are currently using Dairy Comp, which in turn has driven the desire of other new technologies. For example, wearables, robotic milkers and smart artificial cameras to find ways to integrate their data with this software.  
Amelicor  by my estimates (in cow numbers) is the second largest herd management software in the U.S. market and is widely used in herds west of the Mississippi. They have four products for herd management (DHI-Plus), feed management (EZFeed), commodity tracking and dairy records management.  
BoviSync is an award-winning platform, and its growth is fueled by its use of unique cloud-based software and innovations, such as its ability to aggregate and analyze data for groups of cows, allowing management of cows at pen level. 
Vyla is a new platform backed by Nestle, Land O’Lakes and Lely and supported by other industry players. Offering something like a “Facebook for farmers” makes it easy to integrate information from any system in a single open app, including feed management, parlor software and combine milk prices and weather.

Mydairydashboard.com owned by Dairy.com has a similar concept, bringing together farm, market, and weather data under one roof.  
The MILC Group has continued to add more and more data streams under the umbrella of their ONE platform, to manage feeding and sensor alerts for milking facilities.

If farms don’t capitalize on the increasing availability of information flows from sensors and other novel technologies on the dairy, data platforms may become a bottleneck preventing livestock from achieving the promise and profitability of smart precision farming. Dairy farmers, especially the largest producers, recognize that data-driven farming could provide multiple benefits, such as optimizing inventory, precise feed formulation and reducing feed costs, enabling better milk production through precision nutrition, responding better to consumer demands.

In short, what the milk supply chain needs is for all moving parts to work symbiotically through shared data or data interoperability as it is known in the technology world. Data interoperability allows different systems to communicate their data with each other on a shared interface. It allows systems to not only create, exchange and consume data, but create shared expectations and understanding of the data presented. 

In healthcare, we have seen how patients’ medical records may be shared by many doctors, labs, and insurers within a network. Patients benefit from the convenience of not having to provide lab results and recount medical history when visiting a new doctor within the network. More generally, data interoperability prevents one company from monopolizing the data, incentivizes the players involved to improve their products given the competitive nature of the shared platform, and results in a better result for the end-user. For the food supply chain, this means that instead of multi-generation long relationships, external publications and word-of-mouth communication, data from raw material analysis to animal performance will be tracked and communicated throughout the entire process making the supply chain integrated, not segregated. 

Ultimately, data interoperability and digital transformation benefit the end consumers. Users of Facebook and Google demand increased transparency and accountability for big tech companies. Likewise, consumers are demanding transparency and control over their food and the ingredients involved in the making of it. Consumers (‘prosumers’) are becoming more conscious about their diets and personal ethical and sustainability goals, so dairy producers need to find ways to respond to those preferences and deliver better products while remaining an integral element of the food supply chain. 

Questions about the future of dairy data and who owns it? Leading food companies such as Nestle, Danone, Dairy Farmers of America, Parmalat potentially might invest or take stakes in leading data players. But how soon before Amazon, Google, Apple, IBM or Microsoft decide they want to be part of the dairy data ‘land grab’?

How do farmers benefit from this? Consumers accept sharing their emails, their location and travel data with big data companies in return for free and valuable services. How can dairy producers gain from their willingness to share data?  

Is dairy data the new oil? The choice of data platform is yours, but just like landowners sitting on oil reserves, we may not know its real value until we allow others in the supply chain to ‘drill’ into it. 

Dairies Don’t Need More Data – They Need Information

Thu, 22 Sep 2022 04:13:01 GMT

If your cows could tell you when they’re too hot, or when the air they’re breathing isn’t clean, would you listen? Would you know what changes to make in your facilities so that they’re comfortable again, and could you make those changes quickly enough to prevent a drop in production or an illness?

Although dairy producers have made leaps and bounds in the efficiency and productivity of the cow in the last five years, Mark Doornink of VES-Artex says the facilities haven’t kept up. “We’re putting a smart animal in a dumb environment – it’s like putting Michael Phelps in a kiddie pool. The facilities haven’t kept up to the high-performance athlete that today’s cow is.”

The back of the barn, which Doornink defines as the home of cooling, ventilation, lighting, curtains pumps and scrapers, has more or less stayed the same in the past five years. Numerous screens and monitors, connected to equipment across the farm, feed into several different apps and programs, maybe even on different devices.

Doornink identifies two opportunities for streamlining dairy barns to get them up to par with the performance of the cow: 1) centralizing the controls and monitors for all of the equipment into one place, and 2) narrowing the variation that the environment introduces each day.

“One hundred percent of the daily variation comes from the environment – every day, the physiological needs of the cow are variable,” Doornink says. He summarizes the cow’s daily needs into his “Maslow’s Hierarchy for a Cow:” air, food, good water, shelter, safety and rest. “Every dollar we spend should go to the cow. Every ounce of energy we spend should be measured, as well as outputs.”

The Dairy Barn Operating System (DairyBOS) from VES-Artex brings the back of the barn up to speed, streamlining communication not only between systems on the farm, but also between the environment and the systems – and most importantly – between the cow and the systems. Doornink says this allows producers to keep the focus on the cow.

Using sensors, probes, panels and military-grade motors throughout the barn, Doornink says DairyBOS is helping the farm understand how their management practices affect both cows and calves. “Has wind speed and direction facilitated natural ventilation? How does winter ventilation rate manage ammonia levels? What have temperature and humidity been for the last week? Has ventilation controlled the inside environment properly?” Not only can these questions be answered, but the resulting solutions can be automated, to some extent.

Doornink carefully differentiates between knowing the air temperature inside or outside the barn and knowing the cow’s body temperature – and setting up fans, misters and shades to be proactive and reactive to the effects the environment is having on the cow.

“When we pay attention to them and invest in them, they reward us with health, longevity, efficiency, productivity and profitability,” Doornink says.

Doornink, VP of Product Management, has decades of experience in dairy production and management. He presented “Smart Barn Technology at your Fingertips” as a Knowledge Nook session at the 2021 World Dairy Expo in Madison, WI. View the full recording here .

The Three Things You Need to Know to Keep Your Farm Data Safe

Tue, 22 Feb 2022 21:55:32 GMT

Cybercrime has become an increasing threat to today’s farmers. Ransomware and cyberattacks targeting the food and agriculture sector has been on the rise, and unfortunately, no operation, whether large or small, is immune from this risk.

According to dataprise, an IT management and consultant business, the infrastructure in the agriculture industry is becoming more enticing to cybercriminals because the sector has adopted more smart technologies that open doors to other crime opportunities.

Experts warn that as an industry, agriculture has a very soft digital underbelly that’s easily breached due to very limited investment in cybersecurity to date. While it’s easy to think, “That will never happen on my farm,” cyberattacks happen every single day, and they’re creeping into rural America.

Doug Jacobson and Ally Frickel, electrical and computer engineering specialists at Iowa State University, offer these tips to help prevent cybercrime from happening on your operation.

Keep an Eye on Your Email

“Email is a huge opportunity for attackers to trick victims into downloading malware,” the pair state. “This tactic is called phishing. In emails, senders will disguise themselves to sound like someone important to the victim. In regard to farmers, attackers may pretend to be a cooperative, supplier, implement dealer - anyone that is critical to farmers’ jobs.”

For a phishing attack to work, it requires the email recipient to click on a link or attachment that is connected to the malware. This will cause the computer to download and install harmful technology to their device.

To prevent this from happening, Jacobson and Frickel suggest the following: “Trust your instincts. If the email looks fishy, it probably is. Do not trust unfamiliar email addresses. If you suspect an email is a phishing email, do not click on any link or attachment. Delete the email.”

Protect Your Passwords

We’re all guilty of using the same password over and over again, but this can be a dangerous practice for your operation.

When creating a password, the duo encourages farmers to focus on password strength. This means creating a password no one can guess. Additionally, this may also mean creating dozens of different, hard-to-remember passwords for various websites and programs.

“It’s understandable to be a bit overwhelmed,” the team shares. “One suggestion is to write the passwords down in a small notebook and keep it in a safe place. Do not create a document on your computer with account information and passwords.”

Lastly, it’s important to not share passwords with others. This may seem obvious but think about all of the different people involved in your operation. If the password is shared amongst other, it may put your farm’s private information in jeopardy.

Backup Your Data

If a cybercrime were to happen on your farm, it’s possible you could lose valuable information forever.

“To prevent losing this data, perform a periodic archive to secure storage,” the duo adds. “The point to backing data up to a secure storage - the cloud - is to be able to recover the data later.”

Another way to help make sure your information isn’t lost is to backup data via cloud storage or via a USB device. However, the key to making sure information isn’t lost is to backup data on a routine basis. Don’t wait until it is already lost!

To learn more on how to prevent a cyberattack, read: