Data everywhere – but how to use it?

“How do we deal with the data produced from technology at farm level as farmers?” was the question he posed at the Dairy Network Conference in Invercargill late in March month.

“There’s data collection, data management and data interpretation. Data collection we’ve done well in terms of the technology sector for the last 10 years – we’ve developed tools that produce a number; but for our own farms we need to consider the scale of that appropriate to our business.

“We also have to consider whether we have the management capability to use that information on-farm. For example, take land: do I measure something at farm level, at paddock level or in the paddock?

“When we look at animals – do we look at the whole herd as an average, in terms of groups, individual cows or now – within those cows – individual quarter measurements.

“The technology is possible to do any of these, so it’s not so much the technology, it is how we deal with the data produced from that technology on farm.”

The farmer’s ‘digital house’ should be organised, Lawrence says. If you are doing weekly pasture measurements around your farm, is the form always the same, is it the same the location and who has access to the information?

“Get your digital house in order. Think about how you report the different things on farm and how you disseminate that to your staff.

“Data interpretation is probably the key to the whole system and it is probably the thing we do least well. You can measure and manage data to your heart’s content but unless we actually use that data on farm to make informed management decisions it is all a waste of time and money.”

We are getting better at handling data from single point sources: if we measure something we can make decisions from that, Lawrence says. “But the real opportunity for New Zealand agriculture is taking data from multiple data sources on-farm and making whole farm reporting systems.

“That has its issues and most of them start at industry level. 

“The big problem we have now is that the data standards between competitors are not always the same. That is something we have to work on and make sure at industry level we are all producing at least the same type of data.”

In research organisations we need to spend more time on how systems could work and the opportunities for working differently rather than trying to prove new technology is wrong, Lawrence says. “We spend a bit too much time on bagging new systems and how they don’t work rather than how they could work into the future.”

He also says the industry needs to ensure that data collected on-farm is in the ownership of farmers and it must decide who has control over it and who accesses it. 

He says his challenge to farmers is to get their digital house in order and use data interpretation to make better on-farm decisions rather than having a data set sitting on computer. The industry must consider what form of data it wants, reporting at what level, who distributes it and who owns it.

Lawrence holds a PhD in precision agriculture systems from Massey University, is the developer and patent holder of a rapid pasture meter system, co-owner of precision agriculture start-up company Spatial Solutions and is dairy farming in Taranaki in an equity partnership.