So far we have covered the drivers for RFID in the manufacturing and retail environments, but what does the technology hold for the farmer?

Local meat processors such as PPCS and Progressive Enterprises have already launched RFID pilot projects, and it will only be a matter of time before technology and standards mature to the point where RFID will start linking up the supply chain from the farm gate to the restaurant plate – and every point in between.

Spurring development
Like manufacturers, farmers face the prospect of mandates from supermarket retailers but in the meat industry, adoption of RFID is also being spurred on by increasing end user demand for traceability. Epidemics and food scares such as foot and mouth disease and mad cow disease have resulted in strict European Union requirements for food traceability due to come into effect in 2008.

The fundamental change in store for the way farms are managed will be the ability to manage individual animals, rather than flock management. Sheep farms should optimally run 10,000 stock units per labour unit, but with so many sheep the difficulty in sighting their ear-tags (see photo at bottom right) at the limited number of measurement opportunities throughout the year means it is simply not practical to manage flocks at an individual level.

RFID eartags will be able to overcome these difficulties because they can be automatically read as sheep pass through gateways and races. Each animal can then be automatically drafted depending on the parameters the farmer is looking to sort by (see figure 1 below).

April 2005

Currently farmers draft stock on age; visual condition and perhaps weight, but by being able to automatically draft sheep individually they will be able to easily gather and record information on parameters such as age, body weight, fat cover, muscling, fleece weight, fibre length and strength, parasite resistance and even reproductive performance.

These parameters could be used as a trigger to separate or ‘draft’ sheep for selective handling. For example, farmers will be able to draft stock based on parasite resistance, so that only those that are not resistant go on to be drenched.

This one parameter alone will save on handling and drench costs, and could help the breeding of parasite resistant flocks. Another potential use is to identify sheep that can be marketed as organic meat for a price premium, as well as helping the farm comply with food traceability requirements.

Some of the other on-farm management differences with being able to manage stock at an individual level rather than a flock level include:

In addition to improved on-farm management, marketing opportunities through improved pricing arise by being able to sort individual sheep so that superior carcasses and fleeces are marketed and priced accordingly, rather than trucked off or baled up with average or inferior produce.

Figure 2 shows the within-flock traits that individual management of sheep will be able to identify to create improved management and marketing opportunities.

A 16 micron diameter fleece for example, could be worth five to ten times more per kilogramme than a 24 micron fleece, but if the wool classer mixes them and samples taken from the bale are from the coarser wool, the price premium for the finer wool will be lost.

RFID tracking will facilitate drafting so that finer fleeced sheep can be shorn separately, with their fleeces marketed at a premium.

Benefits and barriers
James Rowe of the Australian Sheep Industry Cooperative Research Centre, which is leading RFID research across the Tasman, estimates the net benefits from adopting RFID on the farm to be $4.38 per fine wool Merino and $1.62 per dual-purpose Merino.

However Rowe points out that there are quite a few barriers to be overcome before farmers can be persuaded that RFID is a must-have technology.

For starters, ear tags prices will need to drop to below $1 each. Readers will need to be more robust and capable of accurately measure stock passing through gateways at 4 or 5 abreast. Radio frequency standards will need to be adopted and contractors with RFID expertise and equipment will need to be trained.

Farmers will need to subdivide their paddocks for smaller flocks and software applications will have to be developed to handle the increased information and trigger actions based on that information.

As with most technology though, wherever there is a business demand sooner or later the pricing will drop to a point where herd mentality kicks in and it goes mainstream. RFID on the farm looks set to be no different.

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