Animal husbandry of the future: Lodi Technology Park presents DairyFarm project

The Lodi Technology Park presented the DairyFarm project, a journey into the animal husbandry of the future. The project focuses on the best innovative solutions for sustainable dairy farming, combining research and application, showing them directly on the farm. Innovating today in animal husbandry means using appropriate feed, having healthy and efficient animals, and turning even factors considered so far marginal, such as biogas, photovoltaics, and waste milk, into resources.

DairyFarm focuses on the 4 key elements that enable sustainable animal husbandry: optimal choice of feed crops; calf and heifer management ; dairy cow management and welfare, the real source of income for farmers; and milk quality and processing.

The main innovations put into the barn include collars to control rumination, fertility and animal welfare, mixer wagons and “precision feeding” technologies, on-farm cough monitoring systems and weather stations to make precise decisions on crop operations in the field.

DairyFarm, in addition to the Lodi Technology Park, counts among its partners research centers, such as CRA, CNR, IZSLER and UNIMI, but above all some of the leading companies that make innovation in the barn their mission: Sivam SpA, Dinamica Generale S.p.A., FIS srl., FRABES SpA, Paver SpA, Sgariboldi s.r.l., Zoetis Italia S.r.l., SCR Europe S.r.l. and Prince Agri Products Inc.

DairyFarm includes both 4 scientific seminars dedicated to: Forage and Seeding: collection and storage; Calf and heifer management; Dairy Cows: nutrition and welfare; and Milk Quality and Processing, as well as 10 guided tours to 6 different Lombardy livestock farms to experience live applications and cutting-edge methodologies.

Among them, the Baroncina experimental farm, owned by the Research Center for Fodder and Dairy Production in Lodi (CRA-FLC), will be the “Demo” farm of the project, in which the various partners and sponsors of the initiative have installed and made available their innovative technologies for “Precision Farming,” or related to the progress and efficiency of the livestock sector.

“DairyFarm,” explained Gianluca Carenzo, general manager of the Lodi Technology Park, “is the natural complement to the Demo Field project. Both aim to put in the field or, in this case, in the barn, all the best innovations already available today for sustainability. The Park wanted to realize it by being the promoter of a project that could unite public and private to design, together, the agriculture of the future and respond to the challenge of Expo2015: Feeding the planet.”

More information is available at www.dairyfarm.it

Chiara Danielli
Newsfood.com editorial staff

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