Computer competence: the key to success in modern milking

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Danish experience is showing that, faced with static prices and increasing cow welfare pressure, the key to profitability is management skills and, in particular, computer know-how

by NORMAN DUNN

No country reflects the relentless change in European dairy farm structure more accurately than Denmark. There, consolidation into fewer, much larger milking herds is continuous. So is the increase in milk yields per cow and uptake of every technological aid to efficient production. Back in the 1960s, Danish farmers were at the vanguard of the wholesale changeover to loose housing with cow cubicles and herringbone milking parlours. Up until 2011, they also led the world in adoption of automatic milking systems (AMS) with over 20 per cent of farms working with robots in this respect.

AMS acceptance there has changed dramatically in the last year, however. Trine Barrett, advisory manager with the Danish Knowledge Centre for Agriculture (DKCA), notes that the number of farms with milking robots climbed steadily from the start of the millennium to reach 244 by 2008. By the end of 2011, this total had soared to over 800. But at that point the market seemed to collapse.

Barrett reckons that only 10 Danish farms had new automatic systems built in 2011. Expert opinion cites lack of margin in milk production as well as difficulty in getting credit as major problems behind the change. Some farmers changing over to AMS have also had to cope with reduced milk quality: higher cell counts, more free fatty acids.

"But there are many AMS farms where profitability is quite acceptable, even with today's prices and input costs," Barrett points out. "There are also plenty with no milk quality problems. What we are seeing now is the gap between farmers with a feel for high technology and computers and those who don't completely understand this approach.  Management via computer is a different skill. You've got to have a 'feel' for it."

There are technical solutions for the AMS milk quality problem, of course. Just last November in Denmark, one of the country's leading milking equipment companies, Agrima, brought onto the market a new inline AMS cooling system, the FMC 200,  that reduces temperature of milk to around 10 C immediately after milking and before pumping to the holding tank. Research indicates this reduces free fatty acids compared with non-cooled AMS production.

The Agrima development system can handle continuous flows from two robot milkers and the stand-alone process, according to Agrima managing director Johannes Jensen, also stops bacteria growth in the milk. "Whether the cause of increased free fatty acids, it's been established that rapid and immediate cooling following milking reduces FFA levels."  

But getting back to computer competence in farming, the need for printout analytical skills will grow along with herd size. In Denmark, there were 35,000 individual dairy farms in 1984. Now there are only 4,000 left and the herd average is just over 160 head. "By 2030, we expect the number of dairy herds to have halved, and herd size to have at least doubled," reckons Barrett.

Average yield from Danish cows is the highest for Europe at 9,300 kilograms, 1,300 kilograms more than the Netherlands and 2,000 higher than the U.K. figure.

Denmark's dairy farming sector hasn't been so successful at cutting costs, though. The drive for increased efficiency, while still bowing to cow welfare pressure, calls for more than the usual contortions.  

For instance, Europe's milk lovers like to see their cows out on pasture and 82 per cent of Denmark's milking herds are now outdoors during summer, yet another factor that has helped stack investment costs to the highest in Europe. Last year, the Danish government calculated that the average farmer investment cost per 100 kilogram of milk produced was the equivalent of just under C$250, four times the investment for the same amount of milk in the United States, although yields are about the same level.

These costs can only grow. The welfare pressures mentioned above have pushed in a new law for 2014 that requires a cubicle for each cow in the milking herd and a barn floor space of at least eight square metres per animal. Meanwhile, the producer price for milk stays relatively static at around the equivalent of 44 cents a litre. And as with computer competence, this separates the top managers of the future from the others.

As Barrett says: "Some farmers wring a margin out of this. Others cannot break even. The difference is in management skills. The frightening thing is that the gap between the two groups is growing wider all the time." BF

Norman Dunn writes about European agriculture from Germany.