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Cameras: another option for pork producers’ technology tool kits

Cameras are all around us. Phones, iPads, computers, Ring doorbells, all have become a part of our everyday lives and it’s difficult to imagine life without them. One Iowa State University faculty member is looking at how cameras in hog barns can help producers recognize sickness and behavior changes.

Joshua Peschel, associate professor in agricultural and biosystems engineering, is conducting research on cyber-agricultural systems that could assist farmers. He said consistent, reliable, accurate, and cost-effective health and behavior understanding of pigs is one of the biggest challenges faced by the swine industry today.

“My research emerges from the critical need for new and innovative tools that expand precision livestock farming for production-scale swine operations,” he said. “My students and I create new technologies, data sets, and computational models for sensing and sensemaking. In other words, we come up with new data sets, using only video, to better manage pigs.”

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Why U.S. Soy consistency defines swine profitability

Video: Why U.S. Soy consistency defines swine profitability

When pigs face respiratory disease or summer heat, producers know what’s coming: uneven growth, reduced feed intake and the logistical headaches of variable market weights. Behind those challenges lies a question of consistency, not just in management, but in feed formulation itself.

For Dr. Tom D’Alfonso, Worldwide Director of Animal Nutrition at the U.S. Soybean Export Council (USSEC), the solution starts in an unexpected place – a U.S. soybean field.