High-tech may be the new reality for today by Madeleine Baerg
May, 2010
There is a whole lot of technology available to beef producers these days. It can be challenging to decide what technologies are necessary for your individual farm, which ones will provide good return on investment, and which should be ignored.
From conception to trough to grocery shelf, the beef industry is continuously being reshaped by technology. Scientific and technological advances are necessary in order to meet the global requirements for food production given our rapidly expanding human population and decreasing farm land. And, given that today's trade system is truly global, technology is necessary to ensure our local industry can compete with global counterparts.
That said, as a culture, we've come to believe that progress and innovation are positive in and of themselves. Yet, so-called advances are only improvements if they provide more benefit than cost.
As Alison Sunstrum, Vice President of GrowSafe Technologies (a research and innovation firm in Airdrie that specializes in feed intake and behaviour monitoring technologies), explains, "no technology is worth the money unless there's a proven return on investment. In our company, we don't put out any technology unless there's a 3 to 1 return [for the purchaser]. Unfortunately this industry has really been hit by companies that haven't done the research necessary to prove themselves. The worst part of it is, I could give you lists of companies that have made money selling technologies that don't offer any return on investment."
While technology is a vital component of agriculture, it's very easy to forget that high-tech isn't a cure-all. Producers need to be discerning and informed in order to make the right choices for their individual farms.
The first step is to recalibrate exactly what you expect of technology.
So... what has technology done for you lately?
Your cattle operation is more efficient than it would have been fifty years ago when producers didn't have the benefits of nearly as much agricultural technology. Advances in animal science and veterinary medicine allow you to raise faster growing, better quality, healthier animals. Agronomic advances have created higher yielding, higher nutrient animal feed crops. Processing and shipping technology allows Canadian beef to hit markets all over the world.
But, the heart of the question still remains: what has technology done for you lately? Does the now high-tech beef industry offer you better quality of life over what your grandparents enjoyed? Has the existence of so much technology improved your financial or social state? Has it decreased your work load, offered you more time off or resulted in your feeling less work-related stress compared to past generations of beef producers?
Though the beef industry has the benefit of all sorts of cutting edge technology, it seems that the basic job - and the stresses and limitations that go with it - have remained fairly static over the generations. Producers still put in long hours to earn relatively low returns. Technological innovation has decreased certain tasks and increased some production efficiencies, but that freed up time and money is generally quickly consumed by new demands.
As each producer's ability to improve his own production increases, the market adjusts its quality, quantity, environmental or perceived 'safety' expectations correspondingly upward. Therefore, the producer today who sends a larger number of very high quality cattle to market - with the help of computer software, AI, cloning, electronic IDing, antibiotics, high-tech feed, enhanced feed efficiency, etc - is no richer, more relaxed or less over-worked than the farmer who produced fewer head of lower quality animals fifty years ago.
And, to keep up with increasing technological requirements, today's producers suddenly have much longer job descriptions. In addition to being good traditional ranchers (with all the animal husbandry, handyman and business management skills that job has always demanded), most successful producers now depend on computer, data analysis, digital technology, and research skills that were not part of the job just a generation ago. Few other occupations require such a breadth and cross section of knowledge and skills.
So, rather than jumping on the bandwagon of a new beef technology simply because it's new, a producer needs to have reasonable expectations of what that new innovation or product is going to be able to do given his unique circumstances and operation.
Sunstrum explains that "there is some technology that is just a cost of doing business in the beef industry, unfortunately. Either you have it or you're not in the game." However, when it comes to choosing which additional technologies and innovations to adopt, she recommends that producers focus exclusively on proven technologies that will result in guaranteed benefits to your bottom line.
"The opportunity to make money [in the beef industry] is getting really squeezed. It's getting very difficult to increase the value of products," she says. Since prices aren't going up, the only way to improve your operation's revenues is to reduce input costs.
"The last USDA audit said there is roughly $258 of lost opportunity cost from raising beef," she says. Therefore, she recommends that producers only consider adopting technologies that "reduce labour costs or other input costs in order to maximize your potential revenue." |
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