Justin Dickens is driving his truck along the edges of his farm outside the town of Orange in New South Wales. Lifting both hands off the wheel, he gestures to a group of calves in a field. They are going to make “good eating”, he says, checking their weight gain in an app on his phone.
Dickens and his wife Amy, first-generation cattle farmers, rear Speckle Park cattle — a breed that produces fewer carbon emissions and less methane than rival breeds in Australia, they say. And now they have the data to prove it.
Their farm is all about the numbers, Dickens says: they have installed Australian-made sensors across the farm that monitor how much each cow is eating, which pastures are more productive, whether a specific animal is struggling, whether anything unusual is going on with the water tanks.