Technology, Agriculture and Greater Efficiencies

TAG is a project delivered under the Supply Chain Efficiency Scheme funded by the Welsh Government and the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development.

The aim of the project is to work with 80 sheep producers by introducing new technologies on farm, and evaluating the cost of such technologies and their effect on farm enterprise efficiency. The project will also develop the use of electronic record keeping throughout the food chain and will develop the links between the industry and relevant government policy.

The main benefit of the project to Wales will be the introduction of new technologies into farming businesses which will assist them to produce better quality products for the market as well as recognising efficiencies within the supply chain and resulting in greater financial returns for all partners. The project is aimed at all sheep producers and will work with 80 farmers. The results of the project will be disseminated to all sheep producers in Wales, hence benefiting the whole sheep industry.

The project will work with three tiers of farmers who have varying levels of IT literacy. The first tier will already be IT inclined and we will work with them to fully embrace the concept as well as providing advanced mentoring and facilitation on data collection and analysis. During the lifetime of the project we believe that this group will be fully sustainable and able to develop their businesses using the new technologies that have been implemented. The second tier will partly use the equipment to collect data on farm but will receive the necessary support with inputting of data and interpretation of results, whilst the third tier will use the facility of a service provider who would visit the farm on a regular basis to collect the relevant data. This data will then be processed on behalf of the farmer through a central database and the results communicated back in due course so that he/she can act upon the outcomes. Due to the inbuilt project dissemination of information facility we fully expect farmers outside the pilot project to embrace and adopt the concepts developed during the project lifetime. Sustainability and widespread acceptance of the project’s core aims within the Welsh sheep industry will be a major aim and a measurement of success.