Grazing Intelligence

The Challenge:

Currently, extensive sheep and cattle producers are mainly making subjective decisions about grazing management. Animal weight and production data is collected infrequently and is not linked to pasture observations. This retrospective and infrequently gathered data leaves long lead times for issues in animal performance to arise. It also makes it difficult for producers to link day-to-day decisions with livestock performance. This separation between data and decision can impact on the business bottom line.

By shifting from 'subjective' to 'data-guided decision-making' and focusing on animal performance and feed base availability sheep and beef producers could improve farm profitability by up to 20 per cent.

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The Solution:

This project has helped producers make better grazing decisions. Food Agility, together with the NSW Department of Primary Industries and agtech company Pasture.io, delivered machine learning models that remotely predict animal performance and daily pasture availability. These ‘Grazing Intelligence’ models will improve the confidence of producers in making grazing and livestock value-adding decisions. They will provide clear animal performance recommendations and projections through the Pasture.io software.

The Grazing Intelligence models:

• Accurately predict the number of days animals can graze a paddock at a given production target.
• Improve farm management planning to optimise paddock use and grazing patterns.
• Provide whole-of-farm visualisation of expected production to aid in planning livestock sale, supplementary feeding, purchasing and de-stocking decisions.

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Read the final report here.

For more information please contact hello@foodagility.com and warwick.badgery@dpi.nsw.gov.au