SMART LIVESTOCK FARMING: PRESENT STATUS, OPPORTUNITIES, AND FUTURE TRENDS

Abstract

SUMMARY Smart livestock farming aims to achieve more productive, efficient, and sustainable farm operations based on the effective use of digital technologies. The largest potential lies in individual animal monitoring and analysis, which is referred to as precision livestock farming (PLF). Precision Livestock Farming or Smart Farming is a new take on animal farming, similar to a management change in the ‘80s. At this time, firms started to employ employee motivation and the concept of the ‘firm as a family’ in order to make better firms. PLF is an attempt at making a similar change in animal farming by detecting the needs of animals as early as possible and helping the farmers to satisfy those needs, animal wellbeing will increase. It is hoped that in turn this will increase socio-economic benefits of animal farming, i.e. make better farms. In PLF, tools and sensors are used to continuously and automatically monitor key performance indicators of livestock in the areas of animal health, productivity, and environmental load. The ability of a computer or robot to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings. It includes learning, reasoning and self-correction. It generates insights from data more quickly and accurately than humanly possible and is able to act automatically on that insight. Internet of Things (IoT) technology is expected to play a significant role in enhancing agricultural productivity to meet feed demand. Smart agriculture incorporates IoT based advanced technologies and solutions to improve operational efficiency, maximize yield, and minimize wastage through real-time field data collection, data analysis, and deployment of control mechanism. Diverse IoT-based applications such as variable rate technology, precision farming, smart management, and smart greenhouse will be instrumental to the enhancement of production processes. IoT can address livestock-based issues and increase the quality and quantity of livestock production, making farms more intelligent and more connected. The “Connected Farm” is the future of farming, which lies in the benefits of connecting, collecting and analyzing big data to maximize efficiency and increase productivity.