Farmer Focus: Farm software – are we giving away too much?

We started the new year with a 21st century decision that I think we will be making more and more in the years to come. 

Zoetis has launched (or bought out from a start-up) a web-based cost management software system.

If you read any of my articles, you’ll know that I think being obsessive about costs is the best way to make a living in agriculture. 

This system has clever features. Each feed batch is tracked real-time by a Bluetooth-enabled scale head that talks to a tablet in our truck.

If you aren’t paying attention and put 40kg too much corn in a ration, the programme knows immediately, and the added expense is put against the exact animals that ate it. 

See also: Farmer asks ‘am I wrong?’ to be suspicious of data sharing

About the author

Daniel Mushrush

Livestock Farmer Focus writer

Daniel Mushrush is a third-generation Red Angus breeder in the Flint Hills in Kansas, US. The Mushrush family runs 800 pedigree registered Red Angus Cattle and 600 commercials across 4,856ha, selling 200 bulls a year and beef through Mushrush Family Meats.

Read more articles by Daniel Mushrush

If you treat an animal for a sore eye, the medication cost, and the time it took to work, can be added against its individual profit and loss in the income statements of that entire group of cattle.

Even interest rates against leveraged purchases are accrued in a way that is easy to track, and with interest rates skyrocketing, that is good to know. 

So, if the software is that good, why did we have a difficult choice to make? The answer is data. Because the line between customer and product is getting very blurry.

Like I said earlier, Zoetis eagerly snatched this up, polished it and got it to market. Just think of the information I am giving them to use against me.

What is my break-even price? And how does that impact on how Zoetis prices its products?

How are its competitors pricing similar vaccines to their own to a mid-level producer in central Kansas?

All they need do is log into their system and see that I’m using a competitor’s vaccine product to know down to the penny how much it cost me.

Are we creating a monster that will know more about our operations than we do ourselves?

I signed up for about £1,600 because I think the short-term gains of the information trump my longer-term worries. I also thought that other ranchers would be giving the same data away.

Did we make the right choice? Have any of us? Truth is, I don’t know. What do you think?