Dynamic Business: Farmers 'learning to do more with less'

Technology investment is paying off for New Zealand’s dairy farmers. In the past year the industry produced 21.2 billion litres of milk containing 1.88 billion kilograms of milk solids. That’s up 2.4 per cent on the previous season.

We’re producing more milk with fewer cows. The total cow population decreased 0.9 per cent on the previous year. Cow efficiency is improving at a clip.

Wayne McNee, CEO of LIC, says some of the growth in milk production has come from farmers learning to do more with less. He says we are world leaders in precision farming. We’re also seeing the benefits of the same technology revolution that has changed almost every other aspect of our lives.

By me at the NZ Herald.

Source: Dynamic Business: Farmers ‘learning to do more with less’ – NZ Herald

Impressive speed

The speed of improvement in New Zealand’s dairy herd is impressive. Even more so when you realise the results come from breeding, not genetic modification.

LIC refers to one of its innovations as a “Fitbit for cows”. This is a wearable computer used to monitor health and performance.

Fitbit for cows is an internet of Things (IoT) application, essentially a way of embedding internet connectivity into everyday objects. Often there are measuring sensors that collect data then send it to the cloud (remote data centres) for processing.