Farming 2030 had a diverse range of speakers beginning with Stephen Howell of Microsoft. He spoke of what is possible with data collection sensors in agriculture.

Giving an of example of Japanese farmer who in conjunction with Fujitsu collected data on a dairy cow herd. Using pedometers they were able to predict a cow being in heat to 95% accuracy. They also noticed that the timing of when a cow is AI’d in heat cycle influenced the sex of the calf.

Bernie O’Brien of Teagasc, Moorepark gave a run down on robotic milking and automated grass measuring. They have recently begun a trial into virtual fencing in Moorepark. Precision technology would traditionally be more common in crops but is appearing more and more in animal production systems.

Drinagh co-op representatives Caroline Buttimer and Tim O’Regan gave a run through of their website and what was available to customers. Milk supply and financial transactions are all available, allowing a farmer to go through their account in their own time rather than waiting on a monthly statement. All information on a farmer’s milk production is available on one page, with breakdowns of various production figures available. Farmers could also benchmark their performance against the co-op average.

Brian Cahill works for Nimbus as programme manager for the Mallow Systems Innovation Centre. He believes that the technology currently available in farming there should be no need for interaction with paperwork in this industry. He called for a change at agricultural education level, stating that “we’re not taught diversity. Agricultural education seems to be designed to have a plan ready for a bank manager”.

John O’Brien, former Chairman of Carbery Milk Products, encouraged the audience embrace technology and not be afraid to lead the way. He reminded the audience that in the 1950s, there were meetings opposing the installation of electricity. “You can't stop the tide,” he said.

Conor Beirne of Dairymaster previously worked on an 80,000-cow herd in Saudi Arabia. He saw first-hand how technology had to step in when staff proved harder to come by.

Fabien Peyaud of Herdwatch welcomed the concept of the conference and congratulated those behind it. “Farming and technology as one topic is how it should be,” he said.

Peyaud noted that mass adoption of technology for farmers is possible and smartphones are driving this. People are connected all the time. “Farm-to-fork traceability through smartphones is going to give farmers a competitive advantage in time,” he said.

Sean Coughlan, CEO of ICBF, was the final speaker of the day. Based in a disused bull shed in Bandon, the ICBF have become world leaders in data collection. He said the organisation is ahead in terms of convergence with data collected centrally and shared out to the various co-ops and breed societies, which he put down to cooperation between organisations.

Awareness of data has grown since ICBF was founded. Coughlan highlighted that the value attached to data collection now had to trickle down to farm level.

“Nobody knew we had a fertility problem in Ireland until we had the data,” he said. “Once we knew it was an issue we could fix it.” According to Coughlan, we can put ourselves in a position to breed out health issues – we just need to stay ahead. He added that ICBF hope to have a tissue sample tag ready by 2017 to collect DNA samples at birth.

Farming 2030 was held as part of the National Digital week in Skibbereen and was organised by the Ludgate group. Ludgate is a not-for-profit initiative aiming to create employment through digital technology in the Skibbereen area.