Plan U

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The Problem
The Solution
The Call to Action
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The Problem

The world we live in is changing, whether that is the technology we are using as humans and consumers, or the climate, or even our food systems. Technology plays a critical role in offering solutions to solving many of the challenges we face, and this is no different in agriculture and livestock production.

With the increased rollout of 5G across rural areas over the next five years, while also being set on course for internet 4.0 that’s big data-focused, we are going to see dramatic shifts, advances, and improved understanding in the areas of sustainability, the carbon foodprint of our food industry and a greater understanding of greater insights into improving our agricultural production systems.

Animal welfare and “a life worth living” for all food animals is a basic requirement that is being demanded by today’s consumers and even more by the consumers of tomorrow. To continue to supply quality livestock products it is going to require food animal production systems to demonstrate consistent and auditable welfare metrics, which will require big data platforms.

We have been distracted by alternatives to livestock products, often attacking our food production systems and rural areas rather than investing, connecting, and researching how we get better at sustainable livestock production while allowing “a life worth living” for all animals. To fully understand our food production system, we must understand the natural systems that interact with them, whether that is the pollination or the worms breaking down soil, or the cow manure nutrients we have from dairy animals and even the roads that pass by our farm or fields.

We all know we need to feed nine billion people by 2050, do it sustainably and in ways that benefit all. We have got to take this more seriously as we see the impacts of climate change and how it is affecting where we live.

Today we seemed fixated on getting off this planet and colonizing other planets, but if we can’t sustain this planet, our home, we will never successfully colonize other planets. When some of the early European settlers arrived in Virginia, they were so dependent on shipments from Europe that if those shipments failed, the colonies failed, which many did before Jamestown. So, let’s learn from history and make sure we have a healthy Mother Earth because we are going to need her for many more decades and centuries to come. There isn’t a solution today for everyone to jettison from earth any time soon.

The challenge of sustaining our food industry is as insurmountable as going to space, Mars, and beyond. It involves new areas of scientific research that we are either at the beginning of, like the interconnectedness of the microbiome and behavior, or new fields that we haven’t yet comprehended that cross multiple fields of knowledge. My point is that even though we are learning about what is happening here on Earth, from the soil to the air to the animals, both in the wild and on farms, we have barely scratched the surface.

The Solution

Recognizing cattle and livestock as part of the solution, the European Society for Animal Science has suggested a term for our bovine friends as “super organisms”. Taking this one step further, could cattle be symbiotic super organisms. They turn grass into protein, grass comes from the sun, soil, and rain! But cattle manure provides nutrients for the soil and regenerative agriculture and it can be turned into energy!

At one time it was estimated that there may have been as many as 100 million buffalo/bison roaming the west for thousands of years. Today we have nearly 100 million cattle in the US. How do we use this to our advantage? We have dwindling soil health, yet grazing systems help sequester carbon, while being a key nutrient for healthy soils. So doesn’t this mean livestock are part of the solution toward more regenerative agriculture?

Even if we shift from an animal-free to a plant-based diet or alternative-based proteins, this is going to require healthy soil and cattle because their unique digestive system and biome are part of that process and cycle. These are those intersections of sciences, the interdisciplinary crossovers that we need to accelerate in the field and at within our research and teaching institutions.

We have “fitbits” for cows—activity/behavioral sensors—and the hope of building a digital phenotype (digital profile), add this to genetic data, which we are already leaders in, will allow us to understand animals even better and offer enhanced individualized practices, that improves animal welfare while reducing, even eliminating antibiotic use. These more holistic and outcome-based approaches to the management of food animals and the availability of real-time behavioral and performance data are game-changers.

Mastering our understanding of the biome or getting a better grasp of how it works, is like discovering a new solar system or maybe even another planet with its own life system. What affects it, how these affect the health of the animals, are all questions we are still trying to answer. Using the Internet of Things (IoT) and Big Data will enhance our understanding of these microscopic worlds and ecosystems, while being used to our advantage as an early indicator of what is happening in our environment. This will change how we view and see the food animal and forage crop world and our entire natural ecosystem.

“Measuring it to manage it”, using big data will lead us to a whole list of new discoveries, ideas, practices, and opportunities. These will be linked to our own human systems in some way, act as learning tools for human medical insights. Data protection, intelligence, and ownership are all in their infancy in the human space and limited by data-protection laws and rights.

“Agriculture was the industry of the past. Before the industrial age, before the electricity age, before the internet age, there was agriculture – and agriculture will be the industry of the future because only agriculture can naturally bring us to carbon neutrality, so I think it’s a really exciting time.” Prof David McWilliams, TCU, Dublin, Ireland.

The US dairy market is projected to be worth $1 trillion by 2030; it employs ~2 million people and is about ~1.9% of US GDP. We haven’t even fully moved into the digital age in the dairy sector and it’s that big already, and data/information technologies have been and will continue to be a huge part of this growth. There are only a handful of tech companies in the history of the world reaching that value today while reaching the limits of where they can digitize. How big could the value of Agritech get in the next 10 years?

Data security is also food security. The wars of the future will no longer be fought on battlefields, but through domestic or economic disruption, and what better than our digitized food systems and precision livestock farming tools. We need to build our precision livestock farming systems with cybersecurity that reduces these risks or exposure and defend against cyberattacks.

Developing and deploying precision farming technologies and big data strategies with data protection and ownership for farmers, who are the data owners pre- and post-algorithmic processing will require technologies like blockchain, and Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT’s). These innovations will also help derive value from data, opening the door to cryptocurrency technologies. Heck, if we can turn waste into energy on farms and connect them to 5G, why can’t farms also become server farms? it’s going to require thinking outside the box and getting creative.

Digitized food systems and using big data with ML and AI are going to assist in the development of many creative solutions that solve some of the most difficult problems while creating valuable data on the farm. The deployment of cameras and other sensor technologies to gather data on behaviors, environment, that all feed into ML and AI and give us new insights, that work with virtual assistant technology, so the farmer can ask “Hey Alexa”, or “Daisy, what are my yields, welfare or sustainability score/level, etc.?”

With everything becoming big data, sensors, computing we need to learn how to do this within our agricultural systems at a greater pace by attracting talent while getting comfortable with this language and these tools. This is what will make us the global leaders in food production, and applicable across farm sizes.

Software tools are now universally available and off the shelf, allowing them to be very cost-effective, flexible in our deployment needs, and scalable for the growth we will undergo. It is taking Azure (Microsoft), AWS (Amazon), Google (Alphabet), and IBM tools today and applying them to our problem. Tools like sensors, cameras, and accelerometers are ripe for our sector and just need to be intensively and appropriately applied to agriculture. These are literally the same tools used by Space X, Tesla, Google—we just need to apply them to our industry and reap the benefits.

There is so much tech to still enter, be developed, and discovered in precision livestock farming and the agritech space. If you think about what is cool coming out of Silicon Valley, you’ll be struck by agriculture, its scale, and the possibilities.

The Call to Action

Many of the greatest discoveries have taken decades of innovation, from the first mission to the moon 1959 – 1969 to DNA’s first transcription 1980-1990. Let’s set today to 2031, the decade to lead in the digitization of the food industry and precision livestock farming.

“The opportunities in the 4th Industrial Revolution in Agriculture, where the convergence of artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, advanced materials, and bioengineering technologies is enormous. We have the potential to democratize ownership, broaden political-economic participation, and reduce environmental harms.” We need you!

Up to this point, the digitization of agriculture has been slow in terms of uptake widely across our food systems, but this is our chance to full throttle into digitized food systems and revolutionize our understanding of “Field to Fork” and our entire natural and rural economy and ecosystem(s). This is where the true sustainability and security of our food systems lays and allow us to become the industry of the future.

Today it’s not a space race, but a sustainability race and the people who win this race wield the best technology that pushes science beyond where it is today, for the betterment of mankind and all that live on earth.

Our greatest assets in this endeavor are people, so, enlist here Gen Z, Gen X, and millennials, we need digital natives, innovators, and creative thinkers, problem solvers, math people, animal people, planet lovers. These are our scientists, animal scientists, dairy scientists, veterinarians, but also data scientists, computer scientists, and many other new professions and areas of expertise. Having a diverse background and coming from a livestock production system is a plus, but not a requirement. The more neural diversity the better, whatever the background or community from which you come, we need dyslexics, introverts, extraverts, city and rural people. We are all part of this ecosystem, and the problem is that vast, unique, and new, it’s going to take big steps by mankind.

Using Big data and technology, we can aspire to get to “a Life worth living” for all animals, understand livestock as sentinel beings, beyond what we understand of any species, to help every other species. Technology offers us an unparalleled view into the world around us that the human eye can’t pick up. We need to measure, manage and see this world.

Investing your talents in a career in this precision livestock farming helps rural communities and impacts nature, animals, and the world in which we live positively. Livestock systems especially are at the beginning of truly digitizing, so it’s a great career opportunity to jump on board with, and the value of the food industry is already huge. Think about it like this, Silicon Valley is the tech hub for humans and all potential rural landscapes are the tech hubs for animals, food, and nature. Come be part of solving the exciting problems of today and the future.

Finally, let’s call this “PLAN-U”, our emergency sustainability plan, a wake-up call to students and Universities. Precision Livestock Agriculture Needs – U (you and Universities). We need that plan for U to create a path of lifelong learning, with the infusions of creativity, problem-solving and innovation.

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Top tips:

Learn about Big data, IoT, and computer languages, even if its beginner level.
Keep being interesting in science, life is a continuum of learning and always asking questions
Starting at home is as good as anywhere, whether that is the food you buy, the career path you take, the community you help.

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