Livestock farmers coping with multiple production cost hikes have little choice but eliminate non-essential inputs and use essential ones as precisely as possible. That’s according to Jonathan Statham of RAFT Solutions, closing the Precision Livestock Farming in Practice conference (23 to 24 November 2021) for farmers and vets.
Speaker Nicolas Friggens, visiting professor at Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC), senior researcher at INRAE and leader of the GenTORE consortium, said some aspects of greater precision in the use of resources needn’t be complex nor costly for many farmers.
“As long as [the [GENomic management Tools to Optimize Resilience and Efficiency is] calibrated for accuracy, used frequently, then the measurements studied and acted upon,” he said, “a weigh crate or crush is a precision farming device.”
More high-tech options like behaviour surveillance for early problem spotting or oestrus detection are also becoming more accessible, explained animal behaviourist Mark Rutter from Harper Adams University.
“Up front financing of the necessary capital investment will become a thing of the past,” he said. “Already, this is moving towards the smartphone model, with capital cost items wrapped into a service contract.
“Clearly, a return on the monthly outlay is essential to make this viable. Farmers selecting any higher precision support system need a clear definition of what they want it to do for them and how that payback will be derived.”
Organised by research-into-practice specialists RAFT Solutions, the conference was staged because “there’s no escaping that raising the precision of resource use is critical to the future of UK livestock farms and their vets,” said Jon Statham.
The Conference took place at the York Biotech Campus, home of the Food and Environment Research Agency (FERA).
