A Kiwi brought you the electric fence, what future local technology leaps will change the way farming is managed?

Seaweed feed additive can reduce methane production – the future is…almost here

Studies have shown that the red seaweed Asparagopsis can inhibit methane production when given as feed additive to cattle, and it has been hailed as a product that will save the planet.

However, says Johan Svenson, science and group manager for algae and bioactives at the Cawthron Institute, despite media hype about it, this seaweed still needs to be studied at a number of levels and a commercial solution is some way off.

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Critical to being able to reduce methane is the amount of a compound called bromoform in the seaweed. This compound acts on the microflora in the rumen of cattle and understanding it and the production of Asparagopsis is key to producing feed supplements that will one day live up to the expectations.

Lab results and feeding trials are promising, but there are a number of barriers to overcome, says Svenson.

Bromoform is not an easy compound to work with as it is volatile and prone to evaporation and breakdown.

“It is important to have systems in place that allows not only production of seaweed with a certain level of bromoform to start with, but it also has to be able to assure a maintained concentration of bromoform during feed production, transport, and storage, so that the end product fed to cattle has stable concentrations,” he says.

Reproduction of the seaweed is another challenge. “We are probing the likelihood of it being a technology that can be scaled up and industrialised. A lot hinges on biomass generation. It’s a horrible oversimplification but we are trying to figure out how to get Asparagopsis to make babies in different ways, and make lots of them on demand,” Svenson says.

Currently seaweed is grown in a laboratory hatchery and then moved into the ocean to grow. The challenge is to get seaweed in the proverbial “mood”, says Svenson.

“We need to be able to effortlessly induce the desired life stages. Seaweed reacts to different parameters of light, temperature, salinity, and water flow. If we reproduce the ideal conditions we can generate sustainable seed stock,” he says.

The seaweed needs to be harvested and processed in a financially viable way and needs to be distributed to farmers who must have robust methods of dosing or providing it to cattle. Ideally cattle should also find it palatable,” he says.

Studies have found that as little as 50g (dry biomass), or up to 1 per cent of daily feed intake, per-animal-per-day could reduce methane production per animal by 98 per cent.

Although 50g seems little, up to half a kilogram wet weight is needed to process into such a small amount.

“There are millions of animals in New Zealand. It would be a lot of seaweed that needs to be produced to service them all,” Svenson says.

PRUNE – the future is around the corner

A virtual reality (VR) training simulator designed by the University of Auckland’s Maaratech project will be used to train staff offline in the skills needed to fine prune grape vines.

“The horticulture industry is faced with the challenge of not having enough labour, but quality labour with the ability to perform certain tasks precisely and reduce inconsistencies creates a lot of value for growers,” says Professor Bruce MacDonald from the University of Auckland Centre for Automation and Robotic Engineering Science.

The simulator training unit is made up of a VR headset and a controller unit that is held in each hand of a trainee. By pushing a button on a controller a trainee can cut vines.

A user will be able to see in a VR headset if they cut the correct vines. Correct cuts are indicated with a vine displaying green, a red vine indicates to a trainee that they have made an incorrect cut.

A user can also switch between training for either vine or spur pruning. The simulator runs tutorials, which means trainees can train with minimal supervision.

Correct pruning has a major impact on fruit production as it translates into optimum fruit loading for the next season.

“Pruning influences the amount and quality of grapes. If one prunes too much it can lead to too much growth and subsequently labour will have to prune again. The same counts for apples in an orchard, if you get the fruit loading wrong the plant suffers and may not produce enough fruit,”’ MacDonald says.

The tool can greatly benefit seasonal workers in the horticulture industry that enter New Zealand under the Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme.

“Growers want experienced teams. This system can be used in the off season to retrain groups,’ MacDonald says.

The project evolved when the Maaratech team were researching an augmented reality tool that would allow someone to stand in a real vineyard and have layers projected over real vines.

“When industry players saw this they asked for a similar tool that can be used offline, and the virtual reality project was born,” MacDonald said.

The project has since been handed over to a commercial entity who is trying to get it into the market. Though there is always some resistance to technology MacDonald believes as VR tools are already used for training in other industries this new tool will be readily accepted.

Virtual fencing with Halter – the future is now

The Halter smart collar automates cow movement and saves time on a farm.

According to Halter the collar uses sound and vibrations to gently guide cows to and from milking sheds, or between paddocks. Vibrations signal to a cow that she is on the right path, and sound lets her know that she is moving towards a boundary. Cows move at their own pace with our system removing the need for stressful management techniques.

Waikato dairy farmer Pete Morgan has fitted over 600 cows with Halter and says since using it he has let go of many practices that he thought were integral to his farming system, but were only constructs that were necessary to make old systems work.

“We took a large number of fences out. Paddocks were only there to make it easy to be on a round or rotation length. I now have flexibility in how I manage animals.”

“I thought I needed to hyper-organise my day. But now I can plan animal movement and break sizes the day before and leave animals to move on their own. I have become disconnected from pushing them around all the time. I used to think the most important time of day was during milking or while moving cows to the milking shed where I could observe them. Now movements are independent of me but I spend more time with them and go out three times a day and observe my herds,” Morgan says.

The way Morgan manages pastures since using Halter has changed drastically. Having let go of the idea that animals should be in one area or paddock, he now assesses optimal feed areas and lets animals graze high fertility feed for the first few hours of the day, with Halter remotely moving cows to lower grazing fertility areas later in the day.

“I can now take time and assess pastures to see if cow allocation was done exactly right. You can add another 1kg or 2kg to a cow by simply touching your phone and the cows just quietly go and access for example another 20m² each. You would never do that with an electric fence,” he says.

Saving time is one of the biggest wins since using Halter, with every person on the farm consistently saving three to fours hours per day. This time is now used by each member of the team to make high level management decisions, Morgan says.

Clear sound cues indicate to a cow that she is moving towards a virtual fence, gradually becoming louder if she continues moving beyond a boundary. Should a cow ignore these audio cues, the system uses a short pulse to stop her from exiting the break.

“At no point does any third-party or farmer have control over the strength or frequency of sound, vibration, or a pulse. This is standardised by Halter, after years of research conducted with the approval of the Ruakura Animal Ethics Committee,” Halter says.