Smart Farming

Dairy Campus actively explores ways to apply big data, precision agriculture and robotics in livestock farming at the farm level. Together with research institutes, businesses, government bodies and livestock farmers, we work on new technologies that will help deliver new knowledge, data and tools for dairy farmers.

By ‘Smart Farming’ we mean organising all the activities that arise on a dairy farm in an intelligent way. Over the past few years, all kinds of existing and new technologies have been used at our centre that, besides lightening the workload or saving labour, also deliver large amounts of data and knowledge. Among other things, we use:

  • Sensor technology at individual cow or herd level
  • Equipment to monitor feed uptake and emissions
  • A high level of automation in the milking process
  • Location detection of animals in the cowsheds
  • Animal behaviour observation cameras
  • GPS technology for field work
  • Drones for field-related activities

These technologies provide us with a lot of data for our research at Dairy Campus, whether at the level of the cow, the herd, the field or even the plant. The more data and knowledge we have at our disposal, the better we can monitor the production, health and behaviour of our animals. Using this data, we can carry out research for customers and develop new applications for use in dairy farming.

Refining innovations

The Netherlands is a world leader in innovation and knowledge in dairy farming. At Dairy Campus, we work with researchers on new developments in the cowshed and the field every day, using existing technologies or developing new techniques. The cows at Dairy Campus produce a lot of data.

At Dairy Campus we actively contribute to finding solutions to practical and research questions that lead to innovations in the dairy farming sector, such as:

  • How can we use new technologies at the farm or sector level?
  • How can we transform the wealth of data into relevant information for practitioners?


Right facilities at Dairy Campus

The correct use and coordination of the latest technological applications in precision agriculture, big data and ro