Digital dairy looks for marginal gains on the farm

Even the untrained eye can see how important the dairy industry is throughout south-west Scotland and north-west England.

Look around you and you will see grass - and cows - all over the place.

It has made the area a key player in the production of milk, cheese and other foods.

A new project which has just secured £50,000 of seed-corn funding hopes to unlock up to £20m to take that role to the next level.

Green grass of home

The initial support has come from the UK government's Strength in Places Fund.

Now the scheme, proposed by a consortium led by Scotland's Rural College (SRUC), has less than 100 days to work up its bid for more significant backing.

According to the college's Richard Dewhurst that could help to transform the industry in the area.

"What they are trying to do is develop research and innovation in regions of the country away from the Oxford-Cambridge-London golden triangle and find industries that are important for particular geographical regions," he said.

"We have defined an area which is basically south-west Scotland plus Cumbria.

"That's really on the basis that it is a pretty good area for growing grass and milking cows and historically that has been an important industry in the region."

There are also big factories - First Milk, Arla, Lactalis and Muller all have sites in the region.

In addition, there is the more artisanal production of ice cream, cheeses and yoghurts.

Time and moo-tion

"That's the plus side, the negative side is that dairy farming over time has been making less money and there have been fewer farmers," said Mr Dewhurst.

"What we want to do in this project is basically try to make more money out of that chain from grass through to products."

Some of that would be helping smaller producers to scale up their operations.

The bigger part of the proposal, though, is working with the larger companies on the digital dairy concept.

The use of sensors in factories is well established, said Mr Dewhurst, but there is an "increasing amount" going on on the farm too.

'Value chain'

"Farmers are monitoring their cows, their housing environment, the grass, the water, the temperature in the house, the milk in the milking parlour," he said.

"There are a whole range of sensors around monitoring cow welfare.

"The idea is to take that digital value chain that would normally just be in the factory and extend it back to the farm.

"By having much more information about what is going on in the farm and when the milk is being transported to the dairy, we can improve the product and the processing."

That could result in longer shelf lives, better yield and also more information for consumers about a product's carbon footprint.

Big cheeses?

It is also hoped the project could produce more jobs in an area that may have "lagged behind" in the past.

"It is not buying shiny equipment for the college, it would be putting stuff into factories to help them monitor what they are doing and help them help their farmers monitor what they are doing," explained Mr Dewhurst.

It might also see changes to what is being produced.

"We are exporting quite a lot of cheddar but then we are importing quite a lot of French and continental cheeses," he said.

"There could be product innovation that we can use with our own milk to make higher value cheeses."

The clock is ticking, though, with a 25 November deadline for the next stage bid.

Its success would be likely to have a big impact on an industry still so influential in such rural parts.