Agriculture 4.0

Agriculture 4.0 is characterized by the use of data to improve agricultural efficiency and provenance or transparency of food supplies. Data are created both by sensors in automated systems such as milking parlors and by humans performing animal husbandry and veterinary tasks. In farm conditions, the means of reporting complex data such as the diagnosed animal health conditions and the associated thousands of treatment names and methods of application mitigate against accurate data recording. An old adage of computing is GIGO, and inconsistencies in spelling and lags between treatment and data entry mean that much farm saved data are unsearchable and thus unusable for monitoring and control purposes. We describe here the new market paradigms that create the need for systems such as distributed ledgers to give transparency to data flows. We also describe the development of the VirtualVet methods that reduce the amount of data needed on farm to five items of animal treatment, and these can be collected by messaging app methods in the milking parlor or animal treatment area. Farms benefit by automated treatment records and supply chain can audit treatment data remotely thus reducing travel times.