News in brief: John Deere and DeLaval have collaborated to launch the Milk Sustainability Center (MSC), a digital ecosystem aimed at helping dairy farmers improve efficiency and sustainability by providing comprehensive data analysis. This cloud-based tool will enable farmers to monitor nutrient use efficiency and carbon emissions.
Heavy machinery maker John Deere and DeLaval, a Swedish-headquartered dairy integrated solutions provider, partner to launch the Milk Sustainability Center (MSC). The MSC will be a digital ecosystem designed to help dairy farmers improve the efficiency and sustainability of their operations.
According to a press release, the tool will be open to partners. The goal of this joint venture is to provide farmers with the data they need to get a holistic view of their dairy operations.
Dairy farmers will be able to use the MSC to monitor nutrient use efficiency (NUE) for nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), and carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) for their entire farm, specific fields, or their herd, a news report surmised.
With the MSC, they can calculate, benchmark, simulate, and optimise NUE and CO2e for sustainable and profitable decision-making. It is designed to be independent of farm machinery brands and herd management software.
Dave Chipak, director of dairy and livestock production systems at John Deere, noted that dairy farming is a complex agriculture business and lacks system integration between crop and animal performance. Instead, they have to use up to five to seven different software solutions that are not connected to try running their business.
To reduce the need for manual data input and ensure quality, a farmer can give authorisation for data to be pulled from DeLaval Plus and John Deere Operations Center into the MSC.
Ultimately, it will help the entire farm systemâfields, cows, employees, advisors, machines, and other assetsâwork together more efficiently, DeLaval’s press statement reads.
The MSC will be cloud-based for desktop or mobile devices and is built and powered by Dairy Data Warehouse BV (DDW), a Dutch software company provides comprehensive dairy farm data, reports and modelling help farmers to make the best decisions for their farm for the past 10 years.
Additionally, dairy farmers, consultants, dealers, and other partners can also be invited to view their data in the MSC.
Lars Bergmann, executive vice president of digital services at DeLaval, said the tool is timely because dairy farmers are looking for ways to decrease their environmental footprint and improve sustainability.
He expressed the hope that the MSC will help dairy farmers achieve their goals and address growing needs in the sector.
The John Deere/DeLaval partnership will be a key focus in the John Deere booth at the AGRITECHNICA 2023 trade show which takes place from November 12 to 18 2023 in Hanover, Germany.
