Opinion Paper: Digital Animal Monitoring – What is on the Horizon?

Abstract

With the advancing digital transformation in society as a whole and in agriculture in particular the use of digital animal monitoring in livestock farming is steadily increasing. Since the introduction of the first automatic systems in the 1980s many monitoring approaches have been developed. However, adoption and diffusion of the systems varies, and uptake is often slow. Of course, all new developments bear challenges, risks and opportunities. We herein summarise the expected future prospects and developments as perceived by stakeholders by using discussions in focus groups to collect the information. Therefore, a stakeholder workshop on the topic of animal monitoring and digital transformation in livestock farming was held in November 2017 in Kassel, Germany, with 30 invited participants from a range of stakeholder groups. We identified four key messages: 1. Health and welfare of livestock can be improved by optimised process control using objective real-time data without replacing human judgement; 2. disruptive processes can result in new farming models and markets; 3. different personalities and highly qualified workers might enter the agricultural businesses, and 4. small farms could profit from digital transformation. Our findings highlight the importance of providing possibilities and reducing barriers for agricultural development so that disruptive technologies and new people and ideas have a chance to grow sustainably. Policymakers need to develop suitable regulations for data security and protection to safeguard a fair workplace and market for the involved stakeholders.