Precision livestock farming applied to grazingland monitoring and management—A review

• Published in: Agronomy journal Vol. 116; no. 3; pp. 1164 - 1186
• Main Authors: Bretas, Igor L., Dubeux, Jose C. B., Cruz, Priscila J. R., Oduor, Kenneth T., Queiroz, Luana D., Valente, Domingos S. M., Chizzotti, Fernanda H. M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 01-05-2024
• ISSN: 0002-1962; 1435-0645
• DOI: 10.1002/agj2.21346

To meet the expected demand for food while protecting animal welfare, environmental sustainability, and profitability, animal production efficiency must improve. Improvements in grazinglands management techniques can impact livestock production efficiency. The current stage of artificial intelligence development, mainly machine learning techniques, remote sensing (RS), and precision agriculture technologies, automatizes data collection and raises the monitoring capacity to support on‐farm decision‐making. This literature review presents current developments in precision livestock farming (PLF) applied to grazinglands monitoring and management, demonstrates some knowledge gaps, and discusses potential solutions of grazinglands management issues. Although the implementation of precision technologies in grazing systems is advancing rapidly, challenges, such as lack of reliable reference data and low variability of datasets used to calibrate models, are examples of constraints to be addressed in future studies. More effort in terms of relationship strengthening between farmers and researchers, benefits elucidation, cooperation among professionals with different expertise, and software or app development must be directed to make the knowledge accessible and largely implemented in field conditions.
Core Ideas
Description and general perspective about grazinglands management practices are supported by precision technologies.
We discus main knowledge gaps and challenges about precision livestock farming (PLF) in grazinglands.
We suggest further research to overcome the main issues related to precision livestock farming in grazinglands.
We present a summary of the potential and main usefulness or shortcoming for on‐farm implementation of technologies.