Data-driven agriculture – the future of farming

By Ornit Sade Benkin Director of Marketing, Allflex30th December, 2019

What’s exciting about the future of data-driven agriculture is its ever-increasing ability to provide quality insights into precisely what’s needed by your animals—and when it can do the most good.

These days, everyone seems to have a strong opinion about data and its ability to shape the future. Some people claim sophisticated algorithms will solve all the world’s problems while others are quick to warn of potentially negative consequences.

There’s a middle position that’s less sensationalistic and more practical: Sound data is just one more tool that can help you and other farm families prosper. What makes the future so exciting is how new technologies are making that data clearer and more easily digestible than ever.

At its most basic, data is simply a collection of actionable facts—and good, trustworthy facts have always led to the best possible choices, even before the arrival of complex algorithms. Simply stated, actionable facts help farmers make timely, well-informed decisions about the needs of a single animal or the well-being of a herd.

Thanks to technologies available today, as well as innovative solutions on the horizon, the quality of that data keeps improving. And that, in turn, means more profitability, greater advances in animal care and improved traceability, transparency and sustainability.

How Better Data Increases Profitability

Without question, there’s more data available than ever. But simply having greater quantities of data isn’t enough to boost profitability on individual farms. What’s exciting about the future of data-driven agriculture is its ever-increasing ability to provide quality insights into precisely what’s needed by your animals—and when it can do the most good.

For example, data-driven technologies are having a tangible impact on health, and reproductive and feed efficiency. These qualities, actionable insights have helped a New Zealand dairy farm get more milk out of 800 cows than they had previously been able to get from 1,000. And they’re helping farmers from Northern Europe to South America achieve their own individual profitability targets.

Because both the quantity and quality of data is improving exponentially, animal agriculture is better positioned than ever to ensure bottom lines remain strong.

How Better Data Improves Animal Care

Making sure animals remain healthy and happy has always been a priority for those involved in animal agriculture. Imagine getting even better insights that help you catch issues early and provide individual animals with the attention they need, even if you’re not anywhere near them.

In many ways, effective livestock monitoring for parturition, environmental stress or other needs is nothing more than a logical evolution of the animal identification tools that have been around for decades. Where identification was able to tell “who” individual animals were, monitoring technologies take the next step by delivering a better understanding of what they need, how they are behaving and when they might need care.

Technologies are also available that can turn identification, monitoring and tissue sampling data into intuitive and actionable insights for use by industry professionals and farm managers. The result: more informed and accurate animal care decisions, improved management practices and a smoother overall workflow.