TECHNOLOGY FEED & ADDITIVE MAGAZINE January 2026 71 frameworks such as CSRD, and creates opportunities for product differentiation and value creation.” Armin Pearn focuses on the impact of big data and AI on efficiency and sustainability. Pearn says: “Farmers have been collecting farm data for decades enabling them to take strategic, data-driven decisions together with their consultants as well as to drive operational implementation via scheduled tasks and to do lists. Simple benchmarking against standard thresholds or data from a group of like minded farm colleagues allowed to identify key areas for improvement. Today, thanks to DDW and other companies specializing in farm data processing, a large amount of data is transferred and stored in the cloud allowing the creation of big data sets, which in turn can be used to train artificial intelligence models. Artificial intelligence, once trained on big data from thousands of dairy farms and hundreds of thousands of animals, has unmatched capabilities in detecting anomalies in individual farm and animal data sets. This allows us to predict with unprecedented accuracy future milk production, inventory evolution, conception probability, feed conversion rate, disease events or losses due to heat stress events. Knowing with a high degree of certainty what the future will bring if the farm continues the current path can drive changes in farm strategy in time to ensure future optimization of farm profit and environmental footprint. For example, predictions of future inventory in a dairy farm allow to determine the number of replacement animal conceptions that need to be produced in any given month while the remaining open animals can be inseminated with beef semen driving reduced heifer raising costs, increased sales from calf sales as well as significant reduction of the environmental footprint of the given farm operation.” Emphasizing that big data and AI are fundamental to achieving meaningful progress in precision nutrition and sustainability, Ian Mealey shares: “Precision nutrition depends on understanding not just nutrient requirements, but how animals respond to feeds, environments, and management practices. Data affecting feed formulation, such as ingredient quality, markets, production data and past feeding outcomes, can now be collated and analyzed more efficiently than ever before. It is vital to ensure its quality and apply appropriate analysis. Then, in combination with application of the latest nutrition research and genetic advances, it offers the prospect of more precise, consistent outcomes. By aligning nutrient supply more closely with animal Photo: Shutterstock | TORWAISTUDIO
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