9 minute read
Technology
from Dairy Farmer November 2021
by AgriHQ
Future farms
AgResearch scientists will soon begin a study with cows fitted with a range of sensors that will monitor rumen temperature, measure activity using pedometers, and use video and GPS tracking to detect interaction between cows and microphones to monitor mooing.
By Tony Benny
Digital technology is becoming more prevalent on farms and is only set to increase as farmers strive to improve the wellbeing of their stock.
Ateam of scientists working in an AgResearch-led science programme called New Zealand Bioeconomy in the Digital Age is exploring what a dairy farm of the future will look like, how some of the technology now available can improve animal wellbeing and how that technology can be used to show consumers their food is being produced ethically.
Led by agricultural data scientist Jeremy Bryant, researchers from AgResearch, DairyNZ and Fonterra are taking an animal-centric approach to better understand what are the key animal welfare indicators, how that can be objectively measured and how farmers can use technology to look after their cows better.
“You can’t have your eyes on the cow 24/7, so digital technologies provide you with that option to track how things are performing – are they improving or going off track – so that’s where there are real benefits of technology,” Bryant says.
“For consumers, it’s not enough for farmers to say, ‘They’re well cared for’. They want increasing evidence of that and digital can provide that evidence.”
There’s a large range of technology available, 90 different types in the animal wellbeing space alone, most providing data on whether an animal is sick or in heat, but very few provide broader data on how an animal is experiencing its life. The scientists want to identify existing technology that will give them a holistic picture of animal wellbeing and have funding for three years to do the work, ending in 2023.
“By then we want to say what the key welfare indicators are across the welfare domains (nutrition, environment, health and being able to express natural behaviours and mental state), what are measurable already and what might need technology measures to be developed to understand the state,” he says.
A study will start soon with cows fitted with a range of sensors that will monitor rumen temperature, measure activity using pedometers, video and GPS tracking to detect interaction between cows and microphones to monitor mooing.
“I think these animals will probably have the most devices on them ever seen really, so we can get insights as to whether these animals are well-fed or not and whether farmers could use some of those technologies, or proxies, to say this animal needs feeding now or not,” he says.
“There’s going to be microphones in the paddock to capture the moos and how many moos and the duration of them to say they’re hungry now, they need to be moved on or put on a new break.
“We’ll combine this with data from the devices that tell us about their movements within the paddock and between animals and how long they have been actively eating or ruminating.
“At the moment, understanding of hunger or fullness is very much reliant on post-grazing residuals really, which you might get when you go into the paddock, but by that stage they might have had three of four hours when they might have liked some more food.”
The scientists will also study heat stress and whether an alert system could be developed to advise farmers when they need to consider mitigation measures.
“We’re wanting to understand what’s the risk of animals experiencing heat stress, for how many days, what might the impact be on milk production and developing alerts for those farmers to say, ‘Tuesday next week, it’s going to be
highly stressful conditions, you need to do some sort of mitigation on that day’ and if you do that mitigation, it’s going to improve animal welfare and milk production,” he says.
Workshops have been held in both islands where farmers were asked to help visualise and describe what a dairy farm will look like in 2070.
“The timeline was far enough in the future that all the current barriers they are experiencing were rendered moot. It helped them think about what the world will look like and what technology and farming systems changes they might need,” he says.
“It’s really dairy farmers harnessing those digital technologies, making their life easier on multiple levels. Technology’s assisted greatly already with things like pasture measurement and with health, but it could also assist with things like the environment and the welfare of their animals.” n
Agricultural data scientist Jeremy Bryant says digital technologies on farms will not only help farmers monitor animal health, but will give consumers assurance their food is ethically produced.
Dean Malcolm, New Zealand Livestock Specialist
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Covid boosts IoT uptake
About 60% of respondents working in agriculture say pandemic-related challenges demonstrated the importance of IoT and automation to the success of their businesses.
By Tony Benny
The Internet of Things is booming as a result of covid-19 as people and businesses turn to technology to help them make it through.
Inmarsat market development manager Steven Tompkins says the adoption of technology by New Zealand farmers and others has risen due to the covid pandemic. T he impact of the covid pandemic on production, travel and supply chains has increased the uptake of Internet of Things (IoT) technology worldwide in diverse industries, including agriculture, according to recently released research by multi-national satellite business Inmarsat.
Early this year, Inmarsat commissioned interviews with 450 respondents around the world, all of whom worked for organisations with at least 250 employees and all of whom were responsible for delivering IoT initiatives.
The pandemic has challenged agricultural producers and miners, transport and logistics companies, among others, and many have turned to technology to help them make it through.
“Those organisations that have come through this period best are those that have embraced digitalisation, accelerated their adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies and adapted their business models to give themselves the best chance of weathering the next twist of fate,” the Inmarsat report says.
In the 2018 edition of the report, 26% of respondents said they had employed an IoT device. In 2021 that has jumped to 80% and although the report doesn’t break down its fi ndings regionally, Inmarsat market development manager Steven Tompkins is confi dent New Zealand is part of this transformation.
“The US has been a big heartland for agtech and agtech adoption but that’s quickly spiralling out to everywhere, including Latin America and the Pacifi c. I think New Zealand is obviously pretty
innovative when it comes to agriculture technology and we’ve seen lots of new exciting things there as well so I would say you guys are pretty well up there in terms of adoption of the technology,” Tompkins says.
IoT’s been quietly spreading through NZ agriculture for years, one of the earliest adoptions being auto-steer tractors and now there are thousands of weather stations, soil moisture probes, animal tracking and robotic systems and the like beaming data into the sky.
Tompkins says one of the things aiding the adoption of this technology has been the simplification of operating systems.
“It was previously the preserve of people who understood the tech and could deploy it,” he says.
“It’s becoming almost like a level of consumer tech really, and we’re working with lots of manufacturers of that tech and building our connectivity so it’s just easy to use and everything’s in there and the farmer doesn’t have to worry about being a tech expert.”
Inmarsat was established in 1979 as an inter-governmental organisation to provide a safety network over the world’s oceans but it has since been privatised. Its network of 14 satellites in geostationary orbit covers the globe, apart from the polar extremities, and provides reliable internet and voice coverage.
Tompkins says while the adoption of IoT technology has been accelerating worldwide anyway, the pandemic has given that an enormous boost.
“I think the pandemic was a challenge particularly in terms of restrictions on labour and restrictions on movement. The supply chain impacts from grounded aircraft and closed borders have really highlighted a lot of the challenges and the need to move to more automated systems,” he says.
“It’s challenged peoples’ thinking and it fits very well with what this tech can provide, being able to monitor and automate those systems in the field and not have to travel thousands of miles every week to monitor a water tank or whatever you might be doing.”
But the report also highlights limitations to the usefulness of the technology, the greatest challenge being the interoperability of different systems.
“You’ve got loads of tech everywhere and the data doesn’t necessarily all go on the same platform and actually the hardware’s not interoperable either, which means you can’t walk into your ag merchant and just pick what you want off the shelf, stick it in the field and it all goes to the same place,” he says.
Tompkins believes in time that issue will be resolved and he’s encouraged by the huge amount of work happening in terms of platforms and technologies that help get all that data into one place from different providers.
Despite the limitations, 60% of respondents working in agriculture say pandemic-related challenges demonstrated the importance of IoT and automation to the success of their businesses. As a result of their experience in the pandemic, 86% of respondents have either sped up deployment of IoT projects, or plan to do so in the next few years.
From being a somewhat nebulous concept, IoT has quickly become an established part of our lives, part of the enormous technological change that has happened in living memory.
We’ve seen businesses that failed to move their shop window online in the form of a website fall by the wayside and in the same way, businesses not digitising their operations as part of the new connected supply chain model, will face significant challenges as these ways of working become ubiquitous. n
The 2021 Inmarsat report surveyed 450 respondents and shows 80% of respondents employed an Internet of Things device, which is a huge increase from 26% in 2018.
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