Join the Newsletter

Stay up-to date with food+ag+climate tech and investment trends, and industry-leading news and analysis, globally.

Subscribe to receive the AFN & AgFunder
newsletter each week.

Organic Valley
Image credit: Leon Ephraïm / Unsplash

Brief: Organic Valley pilots satellite-backed grazing management to improve pasture management

February 2, 2021

  • Farmer-owned US dairy cooperative Organic Valley is piloting a new satellite photography tool to provide real-time feedback about pasture health and nutrition on its farms.
  • If successful, the tool will be scaled to all Organic Valley operations during 2022. The co-op says its farmers have over 189,000 acres of pasture under management.
  • Organic Valley — which describes itself as a champion of regenerative agriculture — markets its cows as spending more time outside grazing than 95% of dairy animals in the US, making pasture health a priority.

Why it matters:

When it comes to regenerative agriculture and livestock production, managing grass use more intensively is a central concept. The practice of rotational grazing is aimed at better mimicking natural systems. But knowing when to move to a new paddock, what size it should be, how much forage to leave behind, and when a rested area is ready to graze again is a detailed science.

Organic Valley’s new satellite-powered endeavor is an effort to take some of the guesswork out of rotational grazing. The thinking is: the more automated the process becomes, the more likely a grazier will stick to the program.

Other initiatives using technology to make these methods more accessible for farmers include San Francisco-based Pasture Map, which helps cattle producers create, evaluate, and record grazing management plans. Australia’s MaiaGrazing is another software-based tool that focuses on maintaining the right stocking rate and getting recommendations to farmers in real-time. The University of Montana‘s Rangeland Analysis Platform uses satellite data to help ranchers monitor vegetation and bare ground cover over time.

Join the Newsletter

Get the latest news & research from AFN and AgFunder in your inbox.

Share on email
Share on twitter
Share on facebook
Share on linkedin
Share on reddit
Share on whatsapp
Share on skype
Join the Newsletter
Get the latest news and research from AFN & AgFunder in your inbox.

Follow us:

Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
AGF_ReachAds2.jpg
Join Newsletter