Beef cattle farmers use technology to improve animal performance and well-being while increasing enterprise profitability. The employment of technologies in the beef business contributes significantly to the safe, nutritious, and inexpensive beef supplies. The increased use of technology in the beef business has increased livestock and enterprise efficiency while decreasing feed and land inputs.
The beef business has not fared well in the last ten years. It is under attack from three sources: the trend toward leaner white meats like chicken and fish, consumer movements like “Meatless Mondays,” and even lab-grown meats.
Meat-dense diets like paleo and keto have reintroduced beef to some consumers. But the overall implications of this triple threat are clear. Beef consumption in the Western world has been stagnant for the last ten years. And the cattle business, while consolidating and growing more sophisticated and consumer-focused, is facing existential concerns. Regardless of some economists’ growth forecasts, new ways of thinking are required.
How can the beef industry respond?
Individual animals must be controlled to achieve peak performance. Cattle are the most effective way to convert grasses and fiber into food, but we can improve pasture management, learn to conserve natural resources and engage in long-term decisions that improve soil health.
What about the end user? Can we improve beef, hence increasing the consumer experience, to offer more consistent flavors, cooking, and dining, while also addressing animal welfare and environmental concerns?
Beef farming, more than any other protein-producing industry, is in desperate need of innovative ideas and technologies. The framework of “eight digital technologies” can assist in identifying the improvements that the industry needs in order to produce better management practices, accuracy, and processes.
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Sensors
Cattle breeders can track almost anything in their herds using sensors like electronic ear tags. Manually monitoring each animal’s health and comfort can be costly and time-consuming. Beef farmers can monitor overall animal health, as well as rumination, disease, and lameness, more efficiently and accurately with wearable sensors. Sensors can also be utilized to build virtual cattle fencing.
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Drones
These small, airborne robots make it easier for producers to manage feedlots and ranches. Through aerial photos and video, drones can inspect fence lines, water troughs, and gates, as well as manage pasture more effectively.
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Robots
On a beef farm, robots can conduct routine activities like daily feeding. A self-contained robot will fill itself with feed before mixing and distributing food to the barn’s animals.
Maintain full feed bins, and your robot will feed several times each day, enhancing efficiency and production growth rates. With rfid smart reader also works for the purpose of the medication.
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3-D printing
With 3-D printing, a new world of food preparation is becoming a reality. Cakes and pizzas are now popular 3-D delicacies, but by utilizing low-value meat pieces, the food industry might potentially generate new sorts of food, creating new opportunities to raise carcass value and putting more money in the pockets of ranchers and farmers.
3-D printing can help reduce the time required to replace machine parts and may have veterinary applications.
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Blockchain
Consumers are demanding complete transparency when purchasing beef products now more than ever. Consumers are skeptical of food labels due to a lack of awareness about their origins and concerns about foodborne illnesses. Blockchain technology could be used to restore consumer trust in food items by providing product tracking from producer to retailer.
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Artificial intelligence
Growing animals to satisfy market and consumer criteria and timing is a difficulty for livestock farmers. Artificial intelligence, particularly machine vision, can evaluate digital camera photos. To properly anticipate each animal’s market potential based on depth, size, and even fat content.
Artificial intelligence algorithms are used to analyze 3-D photos in order to generate correct body condition scores for each animal. Different metrics, such as muscles, are mathematically described and assigned a value. That can be used to determine the condition of a cow based on the 3-D shape the machine “sees.”
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Augmented reality
Augmented reality integrates real-world observations with virtual-world information via a set of glasses or a smartphone, allowing users to improve their vision and make better management decisions.
One new farming technology, for example, projects images of 3D things from architectural designs. Allowing producers to see a new feedlot projected around them before it is built. Another option is to use augmented reality eyewear to go through the barn. Or feedlot and instantly see health statistics for each cow. These are only a few instances of the possibilities.
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Virtual reality
Virtual reality is the next step beyond augmented reality because, while it is also a 3-D, computer-generated environment, the entire visual is virtual in virtual reality.
This technology can be used to demonstrate farm life to the public, boosting consumer knowledge without impeding production or putting animals or consumers in danger. People do not need to go on the farm to hear and see how it works. Virtual reality can be used to engage and educate consumers about common misconceptions about farming and to help them relate to farm life.
A similar concept is used for pre-sale auctions, allowing farmers to view and acquire stock through a 360-degree pre-sale auction inspection video experience. Potential buyers use a headset to access the auction forum from their computer or smartphone.
Conclusion: the nutrigenomics piece
Precision nutrition is made possible by information. This is made feasible by nutrigenomics, the study of how nutrition affects gene expression. What and when a cow eats can have an impact on how genes influence its health, immunity, and growth rate.
Previously, it was thought that cattle should be fed free-choice minerals and supplements in order to maximize intake. However, nutrigenomics has shown that providing certain levels of nutrients to animals at specific times promotes the body to use those nutrients more efficiently, enhancing production and, eventually, profit.
The internet of things connects all eight of these digital technologies. When nutrigenomics is combined with the power and opportunities provided by these eight digital technologies. Then a new era of beef production and profitability can be heralded. Allowing beef producers to benefit from best management practices, increase productivity and efficiency, and respond to future threats.