Innovative Technology

Innovative Technology & Practices for Transforming India’s Dairy Sector

Team Pashudhan Praharee

May 31, 2023

482

Innovative Technology & Practices for Transforming India’s Dairy Sector

Dr. Deep Narayan Singh

Bihar Veterinary College,

Bihar Animal Sciences University, Patna-800014

Introduction

India is the largest producer of milk among the world, and a key player in the dairy industry having significant opportunities for growth. India is the world’s top milk producer and holds the top spot, producing 24% of the world’s milk production in 2021–2022. Between the years 2014–15 and 2021–22, India’s milk production climbed by 51%, reaching 221.06 million tones. Out of which only about 18 to 20% of the total milk produced through the appropriate organized sector with little innovation. Indian dairy farming has taken great strides and evolved significantly, after the era of white revolution or operation flood. However, the Indian rural farmers are still less aware about technological intervention in dairy sector. However, owing to the proliferation of dairy-tech start-ups by dissemination of knowledge and digitalization, the Indian dairy sector is slowly and steadily transforming. Technological innovations leads to improve farming methods and the organizational supply chain, with improving milk production. India is the largest milk producer in the global dairy industry.

Digitalization will have a profound impact on the ‘milk production’ segment in the value chain. Digitalization with innovative technologies have a significant impact is dairy animal management and Farmers can track animal feeding patterns and monitor their health by leveraging Information Technology and advanced analytics. This is likely to boost cattle productivity and milk yield. However, cattle monitoring via AI-based solutions is still in its infancy in India, with only a few companies providing this service. At the present time, technology platforms based on the Internet of Things (IoT) monitor the health of the cattle by collecting the data of walking, temperature changes, and rumination of the cattle. The device of IoT that is usually used to track these data is a collar, which is put on the neck of the animals and transfers the collected data every second. The collected data is analyzed to detect any symptoms of the potential diseases or outbreaks among the cattle. Another method of detecting the disease is by applying the Machine Learning (ML) vision by using the image of the udder of the cattle. This method is successfully applied by MoooFarm, the algorithm of which observes the change in markings or discoloration of the udder.

Companies/Apps involved in Artificial Intelligence (AI) based systems for Dairy Sector:

Mooofarm: An award winning, farmer driven agri-tech start-up firm , has been actively engaged in enabling the much needed ‘white-tech revolution’ for the dairy industry. It has developed an innovative android based mobile application that aggregates data to conveniently bring key dairy services at the farmer’s fingertips. This unified app is well-integrated and packed with valuable features catering to the pivotal requirements of the farmer that can reach their doorstep with ease. Other services offered by Mooofarm include Cattle Induction and access to Artificial Insemination to allow safe and secured breeding.
DeLaval: DeLaval Plus is a portal for an ever-growing set of cloud-based services that enable advanced farm management analysis and reporting. By drawing on the latest in data processing, farmers can ensure that their cows are healthy, well looked after, and milked efficiently, safely and sustainably.
Cainthus: An Ire-land based company that uses artificial intelligence to identify the health and reproduction of cattle.
Milc Group: Milc group is US based company involved in technology development as well as animal nutrition and healthcare in dairy animals.
Stellapps: Internet of things (IoT) infrastructure provides actionable insights to optimize dairy supply chain.
My Dairy Dashboard- Itis a developer of a data visualization platform for the dairy industries.
Nedap-Livestock Management is the global leader in farming automation using individual animal identification.

Constraints in Adoption of Technology

There are three major challenges to achieving the AI vision of India’s dairy sector.

Lack of dataset availability
Government policies and initiatives are implemented in the crop agriculture sector, not in the dairy sector
It can be difficult to extend high-end technology solutions to the rural population

There are various innovation in dairy sector for improving health, production and reproduction parameters.

Health Tracking Devices for Cattle

Health tracking devices used for tracking disorders related to productivity, longevity and reproductivity of cattle. Every year, farmers cough up huge amounts of money on their cattle’s health and wellness. This animal gadgets will be helpful as fitness trackers, farmers can track, monitor and manage cattle’s health, nutrition, behaviour, pregnancy, milking frequency, milk production anomaly and activity level in real-time. These smart animal trackers can be implanted in the cattle’s ears, tail, legs, neck or any part of the body. Last year, Karnataka government had implanted GPS-enabled digital chips in the ears of 56 lakh animals across the state to track their health and early diagnosis of medical condition. Some of the companies that have developed smart cattle health tracking devices are SmaXtec, Cowlar, Moocall, Smartbow, Stellapps, etc.

Robotic Milking Machines

Robotic milking machines are enabling farmers to eliminate the pressure on physical labour, maintain a hygienic milking process, milk the cows anytime of the day instead of following a fixed schedule and improve the milk production and reduced the cost of milk production. The robotic milking machines have arms or cups with sensors that can be attached individually to cows’ teats. The sensors can detect whether the cow or which of its teat is ready for milking or not. Once the milking starts, the machines can also identify impurities, colour and quality of milk. If the milk is not fit for human consumption, it is diverted to a separate container. The machines can also automatically clean and sanitize the teats once the task is over. Raghava Gowda has developed a low cost, nonelectric milking machine for cows. Some other start-ups which have introduced automated milking systems are mi-Robot, GEA, De-laval, Full-wood-Packo and Lely among many others.

Cattle Monitoring Drones

The livestock surveillance drones can follow the animals and herd them back to the barns from the fields. Some drones include thermal sensor technology, which allows them to follow animals based on their body heat. Drones may also take photographs of pasture areas and provide information on whether or not they are appropriate for livestock grazing.

Block Chain Technology

An increasing number of dairy manufacturers, suppliers and other stakeholders are leveraging block chain technology to give real-time data about their products to customers. This is done by putting a QR code on the packaging which customers can scan on their mobile devices to get information on the origin of the milk – how and where it was collected and packed, how old it is, what kind of transportation and cold milk chain facilities were used, etc. The Kerala government in India is leveraging block chain technology to streamline purchase and distribution of milk, fish and vegetable in the state. The international food giant Nestle has tied-up with Australian start-up Open-SC to deploy block chain technology in to improve its dairy supply chain. French supermarket Carrefour sells its micro-filtered full-fat milk in bottles with a QR code. Some of the start-ups operating in food biotech are StaTwig, Ripe, Agri-Ledger, TE-Food and Food coin.

Neck Collars

Cow neck digits are used for successful herd management in productivity, health, and reproduction. Digits are attached to special collar or strap.

Milk Freshness

Australia-based food technology company Naturo has developed a technology that can keep natural milk fresh in the refrigerator for at least 60 days without using any additives or preservatives. US scientists have pioneered a new pasteurization technique which increases shelf life of fresh milk from 13 days to 40 days without changing its taste or nutritional value. Back home in India, IIT Guwahati scientists have developed a smart phone app aided paper sensor kit that can test the freshness of milk and inform how well it has been pasteurized. This kit can come quite handy in large kitchens, milk collection centres and milk bars.

Pedometer

It is a kind of pedometer usually put in the left leg for ease in handling. It also utilizes 3-axial accelerometers for measuring activity, oestrous, health of farm animals. A gravitational tilt from either axial position of the cow is measured in form of data. Generally cows are seen with high activity of discomfort during oestrus. Whenever these changes happen, a prediction may be done in advance for the stage of estrus in dairy animals. Discomfort activities such as increased standing time, reduced rumination, decreased milk yield, more leg activities, etc., are seen when cows are in oestrus.

Infrared-thermography

Infrared-thermography is non-invasive technology for early diagnosis of potential physiological changes such as mastitis, oestrus and lameness without contacting target animal. Wherein, different colour lights observed from surface temperature of target animals have different and specified temperature range. These light wavelengths are invisible to humans and they fall in the range of 2-14 μm wavelengths. A high corroboration among SCC and udder skin surface temperature was investigated in dairy animals. A temperature rise of 1ºC than that of normal udder skin of cow was considered as a cut-off value for the predictor of mastitis cases in dairy animals.

Vocal cues based oestrus detection

Data generation based on vocal cues used to estimate the different conditions of animals such as pain, estrus, weaning response, hunger, age determination, hierarchy of animals. However, the practical intricacy of the ambient noise may make it difficult for these acoustic sensors to function correctly. But newer software and sensors in audio recording devices might have excellent sensitivity and specificity.

Tail-head RFID chip

Heat Wath II, Cow Chips employs a RFID chip for detection of standing oestrus of dairy animals when some other animal mounts over it. Pressure sensitivity of this device is considerable to be used for standing heat detection of a cow. This RFID chip is placed over the tail-head region of animals and the information is sent automatically to the system. However, it may give no information about the animal which mounted, and a chance to understand about the mounting animal may be missed. The mounting animal might be in pro-oestrus phase. Another device i.e. Celotor utilizes two gadgets. One device for attaching on tail-head part of female dairy animal and other one over teaser bull for detecting oestrus condition in dairy females for proper timely artificial insemination. Presence of a teaser bull becomes necessary in this case. In this case also, the understanding of homosexual behaviors of the cows’ may not be such effective. Efficiency of the teaser bull also affects the working of this management system. Hence proper sex ratio in the herds needs to be taken care.

Lameness detection

Lameness is still a major issue at many dairy farms and has a wide range of implications on both production and health metrics. For dairy cows, early detection of lameness and remedial action are therefore required. The sensors built into this apparatus detect the contact between cows’ hooves and the apparatus. Dairy cows’ positions and postures have recently been imaged using 3D vision cameras, and based on those images. Standardized data are entered into the system and, if needed, they are compared to the standard set of data and biological models, which leads to an evaluation of the current animal condition’s hoof health.

Cow Manager

These days, ear tags come equipped with a number of versatile technologies. These ear tag gadgets use 3-axial accelerometer technology to not only locate target animals but also measure movement, feeding, and health of farm animals. For the identification and retention of ear tags in dairy cows, they proposed that a combination of visual tags and RFID chips would be more useful. Additionally, they warned of the possibility of serious ear necrosis in cases where animals’ ear tags are fitted incorrectly.

Automated Cattle Traffic Management

Automated cattle traffic management system has computer-controlled gates which opens and closes electronically. These gates can sort the livestock on the basis of their readiness to milk. The livestock ready to be milked is moved to the milking area while the others are either put in the waiting area or returned to the barns. Companies like Delmer, Bump Gates, Full wood Packo and Lely are known for their automatic cattle traffic systems.

Feed Management system

Feed monitoring solution can help design customized diet for each cow based on the assessment of their body weight, milk quality and yield, and thereby improve fertility and productivity per cow. The feed requirement of cattle depends on their health and weather. For example, a sick or pregnant cow may need more nutrition. Hot and humid weather means that cattle need more glucose in their feed. There are a number of feed technologies that produce formulated feed additives, supplements, premixes and base mixes to maintain optimal milk production throughout the year. There are also digital feed monitoring solutions which can help farmers detect the quality of feed, manage feed inventory and understand cattle’s feeding pattern. In fact, Some of the companies providing feed management solutions are Godrej Agrovat, DeLaval, Dairy Margin Tracker, etc.

E-commerce Market places

Several online B2B market places such as Agro-Star and Gold-Farm have been launched in India to make modern equipment and advisory services available at the door step to farmers and dairy manufacturers on their smart phones. Farm Link have also emerged at a rapid pace they pick fresh produce from farms and deliver them at the doorstep of retail customers, hotels, restaurants and cafes.

Supply Chain Technology

The Indian dairy industry is unorganized and fragmented also adds to the supply chain woes. However, a number of technological innovations are taking place in the dairy supply chain in India. Take, for example, India-based supply chain start-ups such as Stell apps, Milk Man Apps and Trinetra Wireless. Under supply chain, cold chain technology is expected to progress by leaps and bounds.

Farm Management Technology

Farm management software can help automate and digitize end-to-end production and operations activities. It can give a holistic view of all farm activities, manage records, generate reports and detect inefficiencies. Stell apps, Milc Group, My Dairy Dash board and Nedap are some of the smart farm management solutions that exist currently.

Dairy Biotechnology:

The potential of dairy biotechnology lies in the areas such as increasing disease resistance in livestock, scientific feeding of cows, embryo transmit technology, artificial insemination, development of new molecules and vaccines for prevention and disease management of animals, dairy enzymes/ proteins/probiotics, food grade bio-preservatives, etc.

Conclusion

Technology will play a crucial role in augmenting sustainability by way of data collection, analysis, and adoption of tools than can leverage the chain’s maximum benefits, starting with the dairy farmers. Dairy farming in India is unorganised, and therefore, technology penetration is low, but nonetheless, a few start-ups have popped up in this field in the previous five years. Innovation & Digitalization have a significant impact on the value chain’s ‘Milk Production’ component, health monitoring, and reproduction status in Indian dairy sector. The government of India has facilitated the dairy farming infrastructure & innovation through its initiatives such as the development of the National Dairy Plan, a sustainable development-focused framework for the sector, along with general empowerment schemes such as the Jan Dhan Yojana and the Startup India initiative. Hence, by implementation of innovative technology, our country will achieve a highest peak in terms of livestock health, productivity & reproductive efficiency and it will also helpful in transforming the Indian Dairy sector.

References