Navigating On-Farm Labor Shortages With Automation

August 28, 2024
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Ever.Ag

Dairy farms have struggled with labor shortages for decades. However, a tighter and more competitive labor market is compounding today’s situation. And unfortunately, this appears to be a trend with no end in sight.

More and more dairy producers are dealing with unprecedented labor challenges by investing in new labor-saving technologies. Although adapting new technology to a dairy operation can be daunting, the investment of a digital transformation, at any level, can offset increasing labor costs and is a sound investment for the future.

Behind the digital transformation of dairies is the drive to automate the simple and repetitious tasks needed to maintain a healthy dairy herd. Tasks that can easily be automated include monitoring feed intake, sorting cattle for herd health, and overall detection of any lameness issues or illness in the herd.

Advancements in herd monitoring digital solutions, such as activity monitors, allow dairies varying in size from 100 cows to 10,000 cows to solve labor problems. But that’s not all; dairies reveal new data on cows that would otherwise go unseen without technology. They can detect recurring patterns and stop potential problems with sophisticated digital monitoring systems.

Finding the Right Solution
With every successful digital transformation story, there are challenges with finding the right solution to adopt for a dairy and whether infrastructure allows for the successful adoption. Internet connectivity in rural farm areas is causing severe setbacks in embracing digital solutions. Despite their frustrations, many dairy producers remain dedicated to reaping the benefits of managing their dairy with tech tools. Fortunately, by recognizing these challenges, technology companies are designing on-premise or edge technology into their solutions. On-farm digital solutions that use edge technology have the advantage of onsite processing and can provide real-time analysis of the data captured in the dairy barns. With this technology, producers no longer worry about poor internet or using up significant bandwidth with uploads. Now, dairy producers can have immediate access to information for making management decisions without needing nearly as many people working in the facilities.

Getting Started
Despite the many promising breakthroughs with on-farm technology available to dairy producers, AgTech specialists suggest prioritizing specific steps in your operation’s digital transformation. Target the problems that are most frequently occurring on the farm, specifically if the issues are related to a labor shortage. Then, prioritize adopting tech tools that will target those problems directly. As issues are gradually resolved and managed effectively, producers can confidently evolve and explore even more opportunities in digital solutions, ultimately creating a gradual and solid digital transformation of their operations that naturally enables a successful future.

IN THE FIELD:

One Dairy’s Digital Transformation Story:

Valley Queen Streamlines Processes with In-Plant Digitization

A 3,000-cow dairy switched to twice-a-day milking after several decades of milking 3X. The dairy operation’s 3X milking schedule stretched their labor resources, and recent overtime restrictions pushed for the milking schedule change. Using the artificial intelligence computer vision system they had implemented years before, the dairy could effectively monitor the impact of the schedule change on the dairy herd. The dairy operation tracked the cow behavior data and revealed what cows did with their extra time between milkings – more time resting, less time standing in holding pens, and walking to and from the parlor.

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Ever.Ag

The U.S. currently has about 10.4 million job openings but only around 5.7 million unemployed workers.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce, December 2022

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