John Deere and DeLaval have joined efforts to create the Milk Sustainability Center (MSC), a digital ecosystem to help dairy farmers.
The aim of the MSC is to improve the efficiency and sustainability of dairy farm operations.
The ecosystem will be open for partners to join, with the objective of providing farmers with data needed for an holistic view of the dairy operations.
Milk Sustainability Center
Dairy farmers will be able to use the MSC to monitor nutrient use efficiency (NUE) for nitrogen (N), phosphorous (P), potassium (K), and carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e), for their entire farm, specific fields, or their herd.
The MSC will also provide data to allow dairy farmers to compare their performance to other dairy operations and identify key areas for improvement.
The MSC aims to serve dairy farmers independent of farm machinery brands and herd management software.
Dave Chipak, director, dairy and livestock production systems at John Deere said: “Dairy farming is perhaps the most complex agriculture business today with no system integration between crop and animal performance.
“Dairy farmers often use five to seven different, non-connected software solutions to run their business.
“The MSC will enable dairy farmers to calculate, benchmark, simulate, and optimise NUE and CO2e for sustainable and profitable decision-making.”
After farmer authorisation, data from DeLaval Plus and John Deere Operations Center will be automatically pulled into the MSC.
Manual data input will be reduced, ensuring high data quality, and ultimately helping an entire farm system – fields, cows, employees, advisors, machines, and other assets – work efficiently together, according to the companies.
MSC is cloud-based for desktop or mobile devices, built and powered by Dairy Data Warehouse BV (DDW), a Dutch company in operation for the last 10 years offering data solutions for sustainable dairy.
Dairy farmers, consultants, dealers, and other partners can also be invited to view their data in MSC.
Also commenting on the partnership Lars Bergmann, executive vice-president of digital services at DeLaval said: “Dairy farmers are seeking ways to decrease their environmental footprint and improve sustainability.
“The MSC will help dairy farmers achieve their goals and address the growing needs of dairy processors, retailers, government, and ultimately, consumers.”
The launch of the John Deere / DeLaval partnership will be a key focus in the John Deere booth at the AGRITECHNICA 2023 trade show, from November 12-18, in Hanover, Germany.
The initial version of MSC will be released in summer 2024 in North America and selected European Union countries and will be free of charge.
A premium version with extended capabilities will be released at a later date.