The sustainability agenda has been part of the debate within Irish agriculture (both north and south) for many years.

The Origin Green sustainability programme, developed by Bord Bia in 2012, was arguably the global forerunner in terms of setting out an ambitious, co-ordinated plan to achieve sustainability within the food supply chain.

Yet for farmers, many felt a key component was missing in the Origin Green sustainability programme – namely the economy sustainability of the primary producer.

Irish food exports have surged over the last decade yet many farmers, particularly in the beef sector, feel they have not benefitted from this expansion.

Northern Ireland ag-tech company Cattle Eye uses AI technology to give cows scores on mobility and body condition.

Indeed, farmers rightly argue that there is no such thing as real sustainability unless it provides a viable income for the primary producer. And with food prices never cheaper for consumers, this is no simple task.

However, solutions to this age-old problem are emerging through new technologies.

Cattle Eye monitors dairy cattle as they leave the milking parlour via a standard camera

One such example is Cattle Eye, a startup ag-tech company based in Belfast.

Co-founded by entrepreneur Terry Canning, who is no stranger to the ag-tech world, Cattle Eye is a cattle monitoring system that uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-learning technology to help farmers keep a closer eye on the health and breeding cycles of their cows.

In simple terms, Cattle Eye monitors dairy cattle as they leave the milking parlour via a standard camera and uses AI and machine-learning algorithms to give the farmer detailed information straight to their smartphone on the cow’s body condition score as well as providing early detection of lameness in cows or those coming into heat.

Cattle Eye also uses a form of recognition technology to identify individual cows as they pass without needing to read tags.

Technology

It’s early days for this technology but Canning believes his Cattle Eye technology will be able to save farmers up to £350/cow per year (€400/cow per year).

On a 100-cow dairy farm, this would equate to an annual saving of £35,000 (€40,000).

The important part of this type of innovation is that it occurs within the farmgate and allows the farmer to reap its benefits.

It’s not even a year since Canning established Cattle Eye, along with his business partner Adam Askew, but the company is off to a fast start.

Having founded Cattle Eye in September last year, Canning and Askew were able to raise £0.5m (€0.6m) in seed funding from Belfast-based Techstart Ventures and have also received grant money from Invest Northern Ireland.

Canning says they started off by developing the technology using the 90 cows on his father’s dairy farm in Co Armagh.

From there, Canning says they continued to trial the technology on other farms, including three research dairy farms run by the University of Liverpool that had more than 1,600 cows as well as a 5,000-cow dairy farm in Dorset in the UK.

Northern Ireland ag-tech company Cattle Eye uses AI technology to give cows scores on mobility and body condition.

Cattle Eye technology is now data harvesting body condition scores and mobility scores from over 8,000 cows across the UK. Canning says the company is already working with one of the large UK retailers to introduce autonomous mobility scoring for dairy herds that are directly contracted to supply milk to the supermarket chain.

The benefit of the technology for the supermarket is that it takes away human error in mobility-scoring cows and allows for claims around improved animal welfare standards.

There is a potential saving of €400 per cow from using Cattle Eye technology

As the platform continues to build capacity and improve its machine learning, Canning expects to raise further capital from international ag-tech investors later this year to help grow Cattle Eye further.

Track record

Growing Cattle Eye further should be no problem given Canning’s track record in the technology sector.

Having worked for many years in Silicon Valley and the tech sector in Beijing, Canning returned to Ireland in the early 2000s with the belief that farming was ready for cloud computing.

In 2004, Canning started Farm Wizard, which he says was the world’s first livestock management platform.

He developed this business over 12 years before eventually selling to UK ag-tech investment firm Wheatsheaf as part of an £8m (€9.2m) transaction.

The Armagh-native is very clear that he now wants to build Cattle Eye into a really big business over the coming years.

When he was building Farm Wizard, Canning says there was very little interest from investors in ag-tech at the time.

Today, the story is very different. Almost $20bn (€18.5bn) of venture funding was invested in food-tech and ag-tech last year with investors now eager to pile in behind new startups.

With his track record in the sector and a cutting-edge new technology, Canning now hopes to build a new company that can solve the final leg of the sustainability puzzle and help farmers to improve their bottom line.