Data, data and more data! There seems to be no escape for modern agriculture. During the trade fair EuroTier exhibitors exposed their innovations in animal husbandry as well as management, and a lot of them concern collecting data and how to work with it in practice. However, one crucial part is still missing: Connecting the data throughout the entire meat value chain.
An essential part of each firm's business model it to sell their own system, but the compatibility between them remains a question which has not been sufficiently answered yet. And who is the owner of the data? Are all data accessible for the farmer too? Hence, our project addresses these questions with practical field trials and use cases. In the exclusive webinars at the event dedicated to digital animal farming, IoF2020 had the opportunity to highlight the progress made so far in the dairy as well as meat sector. Project partners like Connecterra and GS1 Germany explained the relevant use cases while pointing out the benefits of data sharing. There were several exhibitors whose systems have great potential to become a vital part of an integral system in the food chain if they keep this focus in mind.
Below we would like to share some of the highlights we have seen at 2018’s EuroTier!
- Fancom developed iFarming. IFarming combines smart systems of climate control, feeding and biometric systems, eYe Grow, cough monitor, sensors and control computers. It is a complete system on farm-level to improve operating results and the living conditions of livestock.
- BigFarmNet, also an integral system, combines data of weights, climate, feed and water consumption on the farm.
- Nedap is a well-known partner in pig husbandry. With Nedap ProSense, SowSense and PorkSense they offer a complete range of products to manage the available data on any pig farm.
- With Farmmanagement 4.0, Schauer offers intra-system hardware and software components through which feed, ventilation or silo weights can be monitored and managed. With the near field communication technology tasks are performed efficiently. Data can be stored locally within the organisation and can additionally be added to the cloud as a backup for inter-operations management.
- Agrisyst’s PigExpert is an individual tracking and tracing service. The data, which can be gathered right after the piglets birth, provides insightful information to manage and thus increase the animals well-being.
As mentioned before, these are all system with great potential but the challenge for the future remains to connect them to the entire meat value chain. We sincerely hope that by applying a lean multi-actor approach like it is done within the IoF2020 project, those innovations can move on to the next level.
