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British technology to improve efficiency at large farm in Paraguay

Agri-EPI Centre has been awarded funding to establish a pilot Agri-Tech demonstration facility in Paraguay. The facility will be used to demonstrate the benefit of UK developed technology to improve the efficiency and productivity of agriculture in Paraguay. Once up and running, the facility can provide an excellent launchpad for UK Agri-Tech to be deployed in other key South American markets.

Paraguay commercial business

Paraguay business and trade regulations are attractive for businesses wishing to trade within the South American trade block (Mercosur). The collaboration with one of Paraguayan leading farmers, was developed from a recent UK Department of International Trade visit to Paraguay with support from the Foreign & Commonwealth Office. The Agri-EPI Centre team has built upon this relationship and is active in developing the pilot.

The team has identified opportunities to manage cattle nutrition more precisely by installing systems to monitor cattle. It may be possible to reduce calf losses from scan to wean and increase gross profit margin. This could lead to win-wins for Paraguayan farmers and UK companies. Next steps include the installation of solutions, kick start Proof of Concept and gather baseline data.

Want to know more about this project? Please contact Project Management Team by email enquiries@agri-epicentre.com.

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DawnFresh Seafoods signing up to Agri-EPI Farm Network

Stephen Burns (Senior Project Manager) had a great visit to Loch Etive a few weeks ago where he discussed how we would be working with DawnFresh Seafoods as part of our satellite farm network. Dawnfresh is one of the UK’s largest producers of fish and seafood, and the largest trout producer in Britain. Projects discussed included wireless connectivity across the loch to collect sensor data such as water quality and fish health.

Satellite Farm Network

Thirty-two commercial farms have signed up to form the Agri-EPI Centre satellite farm network. They have been carefully selected to provide a wide geographical spread within the UK and give a representative cross-section of UK agriculture. Poultry, pigs, dairy, sheep, beef, cereals, vegetables, horticulture and fish farming are all represented.

Agri-EPI’s Satellite Farm Network can be of benefit to its customers is by providing huge potential for large scale field trials, creating opportunities to benchmark and gauge the commercial impact of new technologies as applied to real world production systems.

Perhaps the most important role that the network plays, is the real connection it gives to industry. Not only does this provide a stream of ideas and problems that farmers have encountered in the field, it also represents an invaluable source of industry knowledge and experience that can feed into other activities.

The list of putative projects continues to grow and it will be very interesting to review the impact of the connected satellite farms on the Centre’s performance in a few years. The satellite farms themselves will continue to be independent, production-orientated businesses throughout. The Agri-EPI team believes this production focus is important and will enhance the commercial impact of the Centre’s work.

~ This synopsis was extracted from an interview with Agri-EPI that was published in the Food and Science Technology Journal in August 2017.

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Sensor technology at Dairy Parkend Farm the new norm

Sensors that make sense: from farming to water control

Dairy farming has been a family affair at Parkend Farm in Scotland for three generations. But keeping an eye on the cows has never been easier. On his smartphone, Brian Weatherup receives automatic emails from the farm’s computer system, that alert him of any changes in the cows’ health or fertility status. The data is collected by collars the animals wear around their neck.

Collars for cows

“The collar indicates that there’s been a drop in a cow’s average eating time or average rumination time or average activity. And any one of these factors could be a primary indicator that the cow is either sick or just starting to get sick, and the key factor in these collars is that they can pick up these problems before they become very serious,” Brian explains.

When the animal eats, its neck muscles move – the movement is captured by the collars’ sensors, and wirelessly collected and processed. The collar’s developers are planning to add location tracking, which would be particularly valuable for free-grazing cows.

Milking cows: a robot’s affair

Milking robots measure the volume and composition of the milk produced by each cow. Farmers use this data to boost productivity and improve the well-being of their animals. These and other smart innovations are being studied at farms across Britain as part of an EU-funded research project aimed at making agriculture more sustainable and more efficient.

Ivan Andonovic is a researcher in communication systems at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, which is a partner of the project.

“What’s happened with the technological evolution over the last ten years is that processing power has become cheaper, the energy spent in processing has dropped, and the functionality – the form factor, the shape, the size of it – is much more manageable. It’s only under those criteria that you can use technology to create an economic solution for the farming sector,” he says.

According to Freddie Reed, project manager and part of the Agri-EPI Farm Network Team:

“The first stage of it is to find the extent of issues, collect the data over the farms, so we know what’s going on on the farm, then we can identify the causes of inefficiencies on the farm, and once we know the causes we can find the problems to solve those solutions.”

Brian says that in the six months since he adopted the new technology, production has increased by one fifth and his animals’ health has improved, too. Researchers see even greater potential in integrating sensor data along the production chain, by developing a common standard for data exchange.

“The way we can have a real impact and make life even easier for Brian and his colleagues in this sector is to create a consistent and coherent database which takes both the data coming in, the collar system, and the output, the robot system, and then match input to output, says researcher Ivan Andonovic.

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Source: this is a synopsis of an article that has been published on Euro News on 6 November 2017. Read the full article.

Stay informed

Keep up to date with the latest impact and results of our work, plus, news, innovation and approaches across the sector. Read our latest news and Agri-EPI blogs.

Tag Archive for: Internet of Things

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