What's next for dairy?
It’s no secret that our world has become increasingly connected. Use of computer, email, web tools, electronic devices, and so forth no doubt have changed your life in the last two decades. But when it comes to dairy farming, have you kept up, or is it even worth the cost? If you thought robots or automatic milking systems were the end of the line, think again. Further automation and integration of systems throughout the farm is where DeLaval sees dairy going. At the recent Smart Farming Seminar in Tumba, Sweden, hosted by DeLaval, research, development, and sales specialists described just some of the systems they believe can be integrated further to make you a better manager, and make you more profits. Stefan Bergstrand of DeLaval opened his presentation on Smart Feeding Management with the following note: “Dairy farming as a lifestyle is fading away. The ultimate objective of most dairy farms is to produce maximum profits per cow.” In-line forage testing, robotic rotaries, and automated feeding systems that have been integrated and send data to your computer were just some of the topics discussed. Cost analyses were not given, and no products were launched to the U.S. or given a timeline. To better explain their perspective, they used the integrated dairy farm illustration below. Is this the future, or will the maintenance of these systems not be cash flow-friendly? Comment and discuss below with your thoughts.
posted by Hoard's Dairyman at
4:47 PM
2 Comments:
I believe technology-driven dairy production is here to stay and will evolve at all levels. This is due not only to potential efficiencies and margin to be realized, but also to regulatory and consumer safety and traceability demands that are increasing along all fronts of the food chain. Whether it's farming, autos, textiles, or medicine, process innovation that can displace cost, time and/or quality issues (and many times all three) will win the day. If a highly functional cutting edge solution isn't economically feasible and scalable today, it will be relatively soon.
I have to disagree with Mr.Bergstrand. Dairy farming has always been a lifestyle and always will be if a family is involved. I do however think there is going to be a break between big dairies and the smaller ones.
Isn't interesting that they (DeLaval) are concerned with our profits? Give me a break... they are more concerned with their profit margins then ours. They see the future as big factory dairy farms. I see the same thing... however I also see smaller family farms making a return. Factory dairies can't IMHO feed the world. Maybe for a time. But not in the long run.
One last thing, I find it interesting the fewer the dairies there are, the more the technology is coming about to help us out,the more it costs and the more costly it will be to repair.
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