Qual foi o desafio/problema abordado?

It is a well-known fact that there is no day off in animal husbandry. How can the livestock farmer become a little more free? Nowadays, in our increasingly digital world, tools have been developed that allow farmers to display a range of useful and valuable information on their smart devices, so they can keep an eye on their livestock from a distance. In addition to the current status, it is also possible to look back at data from a previous period and to predict certain types of events.

Como você resolveu o problema?

In addition to knowledge and practice-based fact-finding based on the experience of the livestock keeper, digital tools can provide information that can be used to inform the very important preventive animal health practice in organic livestock production. The continuous availability of up-to-date precision data from sensors can be used to monitor herd welfare and performance, track the effects of different interventions (por exemplo. feed and pasture changes, veterinary treatments).

O que há de inovador no seu caso prático?

The information gathered on the farm allows the conditions necessary for balanced development to be known as accurately as possible and adverse effects to be detected quickly, thus facilitating preventive meat production with minimum environmental impact and loss. The solution to the increasing production costs, declining profitability and increased exposure to climate change is the digital monitoring of extensive herds, which can provide the basis for sustainability in the medium term.

Quais são os fatores de sucesso na resolução do problema?

The addition of digitalisation to the infrastructure and production support tools available to the farm is a new opportunity in extensive livestock farming that provides the farmer with large amounts of up-to-date, individualised data. In the long term, digitalisation could be the answer to a number of new problems that make meat production impossible and/or difficult, such as the disappearance of pastoralism, which is not only dying out as a cultural phenomenon, but also becoming increasingly difficult to find and even more difficult to retain in the long term, skilled animal keepers.

The data collected is displayed to users on the host’s computer by the software associated with the sensors. It is the information obtained in this way that sheds light on the true picture of the farm and thus helps to influence its performance effectively and with professional competence.

Lições aprendidas

A change of attitude is also needed among beef cattle farmers to remain competitive. Our work aims to raise awareness of the potential of digitalisation to combine centuries of experience and knowledge with the possibilities offered by artificial intelligence, which we hope will lead to sustainable farming that protects grassland and animal welfare.

Based on our three years of research, we can say that the use of sensors allows early detection of health problems within a workforce and, in many cases, can prevent or reduce losses as a result of timely interventions. Sensors developed for intensive husbandry conditions may also be suitable for monitoring grazing beef cattle herds, albeit with trade-offs.

The role of advisors in this process is paramount in the daily management and monitoring of herds and individual livestock, as the vast amount of information and data gathered from the IoT devices – even though many of them have a software visualisation tool, but most of the time not being available in the national language and the interface too complex – needs a translation and explanation support, to make it understandable for farmers and usable for decision making. This can be facilitated through farm demonstration events, and the daily provision of advisory services with the preparation of a daily report, which also contains the suggested measures and actions for farmers.

Qual o papel do consultor ou serviço de consultoria no caso prático?

The advisory service orientation developed continuously and firmly during the three years of the described research programme, because the participating farmer – despite being advanced in many of the traditional skills and competences of livestock breeding – expressed strong need for the explanation of the collected data and its conversion into practical farming steps. Some members of the advisory network, similarly the IT division of OMKi also had experience in using IoT technology in pasture based beef cattle farming, therefore they could support the livestock division with recommendations when setting up the experiments.

Our studies were carried out on-farm, ou seja. on a working farm, under operational conditions, where the objectives were agreed with the farmers. The practical conditions allowed us to carry out human visual observations on a large group of animals (120 cows and their herd).

In the selection of the partner farms, it was essential that they had a sufficient number of animals and that they were grazing animals under extensive conditions. Of the fifty farms that applied, the Charolais beef cattle farm of Gazdatrend Ltd. in Várvölgy, Zala County, was chosen.

Sua abordagem pode ser transferida e / ou adaptada para outros desafios de inovação e regiões?

sim

Transferibilidade estimada em uma escala de 1 Ir para o conteúdo 5

(Onde 1 é fácil e 5 muito difícil)

2

Por compartilhar a experiência sobre as boas práticas, entre em contato

Aliz Marton

aliz.marton@biokutatas.hu

Link para informações externas

https://biokutatas.hu/en/page/show/animal_husbandry