TECHNOLOGY 70 FEED & ADDITIVE MAGAZINE January 2026 DDW removes the complexity by collecting, cleaning, and harmonising all that data in the cloud. The result is a seamless data flow into the consultant’s own tools, enabling faster, smarter decision-making on farm.” Ian Mealey shares Datacor’s data infrastructure and the process of transforming data into usable insights: “At Datacor, our data infrastructure is designed to turn complex, high-volume data into practical, usable insight. Our formulation platforms—Ara® Formulation, Brill® Formulation, and New Century—serve as the central intelligence layer for feed formulation operations. Ara is our flagship formulation platform built to manage formulation data at scale. It consolidates ingredient libraries, nutrient matrices, constraints, costs, regulatory rules, and historical formulations into a single, structured environment. This allows nutritionists to work from a trusted data source, that enables enterprise-wide visibility and control while reflecting local specifics. We apply advanced optimization methods to evaluate thousands of formulation possibilities simultaneously, identifying solutions that best balance cost, performance, and constraints. Powerful tools help nutritionists identify patterns and opportunities that would be difficult to detect otherwise. This enables better, more confident decision-making.” PRECISION NUTRITION AND SUSTAINABILITY WITH BIG DATA AND AI Precision nutrition and sustainability are among the most critical agenda items in the animal nutrition sector. Unlike traditional feeding approaches, precision nutrition aims to feed animals according to their individual needs—based on variables such as age, yield level, physiological state, health, and environmental conditions—rather than herd averages. At the core of this approach lies a decision-making process based on accurate, continuous, and meaningful data. It is impossible to implement precision nutrition practices effectively without real-time data. When large datasets collected through sensors, automated monitoring systems, and digital records are processed with AI and advanced analytical tools, they enable the dynamic optimization of rations, increased nutrient utilization efficiency, and the prevention of performance losses. Sustainability offers a broader framework that encompasses the precision nutrition approach. Through accurate feeding strategies, feed conversion rates increase while waste nutrients, emissions, and the environmental footprint are reduced. This contributes both to increasing production efficiency and limiting the environmental impact of livestock production. Big data and AI-supported precision nutrition practices are playing an increasingly decisive role in establishing the balance between performance enhancement and environmental sustainability. “Big data and artificial intelligence are redefining precision nutrition,” says Luis Valenzuela from dsm-firmenich, explaining: “Instead of relying on average assumptions, nutrition strategies can increasingly be adapted to real production conditions, accounting for disease challenges such as coccidiosis, environmental stressors like heat stress, antimicrobial resistance pressure, and economic constraints related to feed cost volatility.This shift is also fundamental to sustainability. Sustainability starts at the farm. Highly efficient production systems, where animals convert feed effectively and reach their performance potential, inherently have a lower environmental footprint per unit of product. Once efficiency is optimized, environmental impacts can be significantly reduced.” Valenzuela exemplifies this through Sustell™, dsm-firmenich’s life cycle assessment (LCA) platform: “Data plays a central role in achieving this. With solutions such as Sustell™, producers can assess their footprint across 19 standardized environmental impact categories, including but not limited to carbon emissions. By quantifying Scope 3 emissions and linking them to purchased animals, rations, farm operations, and resource use, producers gain transparency and independence. This enables credible sustainability reporting, supports compliance with
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