Dairy 4.0: blending tradition with technology

Traditions. Heritage. Legacy. These words are the foundations of our industry, laid by our ancestors — the American dairy industry, built by hardworking families throughout generations, constructed to be the penultimate in the world. There is another unique quality to American dairymen and women that has been instrumental to our success: innovation. Dairy farmers have always and continue to innovate, persistently building on our strong history of dairy farming in America.

Our dairy roots are deep, like many other families across America. Our great-grandparents were immigrants who came to this land to build a better life, bringing with them the skills, work ethic and vision to build a community and a farm that would stand through the generations. They milked cows by hand until electricity was strung to the farm. They added tractors, milk machines, pipelines, bulk tanks and cooling compressors; built silos with unloaders; and purchased a combine, hay baler and skid loader. Our father’s generation added artificial insemination, reproduction programs, vaccine programs, freestall facilities, genomics, sexed semen and milking parlors with automated milking equipment and utilized computers for record keeping. And now, as we continue on the path of innovation in dairy farming here in America, our generation is set, poised to embark on a new era of dairying, an era of dairy farming with artificial intelligence.

As we reminisce with our family in regard to the legacy of dairy farming in central Minnesota, we are reminded of an often-overlooked aspect of change in the industry. The feeling of immense change isn’t unique to our current generation. Every generation has felt the same at one point or another, that the dairy industry is changing rapidly, and the speed of those changes seems to be ever increasing. Innovations on our farms occurred because each generation looked to increase their profitability and better their lifestyle, and that is exactly what the artificial intelligence transformation of the dairy industry aims to do.

The emerging AI revolution has only begun to gain momentum in the last two years. We are closely waiting to witness it unfold and revolutionize the dairy industry in the next decade. That being said, one small aspect of the AI shift has already made its way onto our dairy — more specifically, into our pockets. It is an advanced AI-powered answer engine and AI research assistant called Perplexity. Perplexity is an app on our phones that uses a combination of web searching and large language models to process user-defined questions and generate responses. Perplexity is fundamentally an AI-powered search engine designed to fetch up-to-date information from the web.

Every answer includes direct citations from credible sources — such as academic papers, reputable news outlets and established websites — allowing users to verify facts and trace information back to its origin. A quick question typed or spoken into the “ask anything” box will generate responses with links to sources and suggestions for follow-up questions should the user require more information. Clicking on the sources will bring users to the webpages for further investigation into the requested topic. Be aware, however, that Perplexity is learning about users as they continue to ask questions and will tailor its responses to what it thinks the user would like to learn about. Perplexity is free to use and doesn’t currently contain ads.

Our team has been using Perplexity to learn about various areas of management on our dairy. A quick inquiry, “Tell me about colostrum management in dairy calves,” will give an excellent summary with specific facts and figures on the keys to colostrum management and links to sources for more information. When a new herdsman cannot remember how to generate reproduction reports on DairyComp on our computer, a quick, “Tell me how to use Bredsum,” gives a summary of all the customizations of the report. Perplexity has turned days or weeks of reading, researching and investigation into an unveiling of that information in seconds. Another task made easier and information, when implemented, leads to the increased profitability of our dairy.

And so, as we move forward through this new era, change continues for our industry, and with it, technology that is making our lives easier and dairies more profitable. We, as the generations before us, are attentively looking forward to our future, knowing we are held strong by our foundations laid behind us.

Megan Schrupp and Ellen Stenger are sisters and co-owners of both NexGen Dairy and NexGen Market in Eden Valley, Minnesota. They can be reached at [email protected].