Dairy Data – Are You Being Informed or Overwhelmed?

Dairy farmers, especially large producers, recognize that data-driven farming is the future. However, data has the potential to either inform or overwhelm farm managers with more information making it harder, not easier to take action  

It has been said that data will be next profit stream for dairy producers, but it leaves many concerned.  Who will own my dairy’s data? How will data be managed? Controlled? Shared? Many question whether technology will reduce or even eliminate the need for humans on our farms.  Other businesses have shown the way.

Consumers are willing to share personal data with map and GPS systems, sports or news apps for mutual benefit.  What benefits can dairy farms gain from sharing data?   Hospitals provide a further example. Patients’ medical records are now shared between doctors, labs, and insurers within a network. Robots carry samples between wards. Sensors collect data in real time. Blockchain ensures records are secure. As such people benefit from the convenience of not having to provide lab results and recount medical history when visiting a new doctor within the network. Data interoperability prevents one doctor or even hospital from monopolizing the data, incentivizes all players to improve their product and results in a better result for the end-user.

Data interoperability and digital transformation will benefit consumers of our dairy produce. Demanding transparency of food and the ingredients included, consumers (or ‘prosumers’) have never been more conscious about their diets and personal ethical and sustainability goals.  The opportunity is for dairy producers to find ways to respond to those preferences and capture more value.

Dairy producers have a series of platforms to manage their farms better, but more are arriving

• Dairy Comp is estimated to serve today between 1/3 and half of the US herd and was the first of its type in the dairy herd management software space. Since Dairy Comp offered the ability to collect and manage data on milk and cow health at an individual level it has been a fundamental part of the ability of large-scale US dairies to exist. While Dairy Comp has been described as a ‘legacy system’, suggesting it hasn’t been updated from its original format, recently VAS have invested heavily in a new cloud-based system called VAS-Pulse. Dairy Comps dominance has driven the desire of other technology providers such as wearables, robotic milkers and smart artificial cameras to find ways to integrate their data with the software.
• DRMS (Dairy Records Management Systems) owned by Iowa State and NC State offers high quality 24/7 data DHI processing services. Currently, nearly 30,000 dairy farms, perhaps 20% of the US herd, rely on their products PCDART and PocketDairy. Although not cloud based DRMS continues to support through academic and industry partners.
• Amelicor is by in cow numbers the next largest herd management software in the U.S. market and 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 fuelled by its use of unique cloud-based software and innovations, such as its ability to aggregate and analyse 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, milk parlor software and combine milk prices and weather.
• 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.

New platforms are being created all the time, with different data presented in forms that make it easy to take decisions in real time.  Producer feedback sessions suggest that screens need to be easier to understand, with clear data and understandable actions. Many programs fail at delivering on these simple requirements. Start-ups such as Cainthus, Labby have created their own APIs to make sure their data is usable and can be integrated with other platforms. Mydairydashboard.com owned by Dairy.com has a similar concept, bringing together farm, market, and weather data under one roof.  One of the most original new entrants is Zisk.com which allows producers to forecast their enterprise profitability in a single swipe of their smartphone, in less than 30 seconds each morning.

One concern is that if farms don’t capitalize on the increasing availability of information flows from sensors and other novel technologies on the dairy, data platforms 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, and 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.

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.

Editor’s note: The author is CEO at Cainthus and president of AgriTech Capital. He can be contacted at aconnolly@agritechcapital.com