Drought drives Australian livestock tech Agscent to launch in UK

Australian company Agscent has launched in the UK, demonstrating its livestock sensing and analytics technology on a British farm for the first time as drought puts grass, feed supplies and farm productivity under pressure.

The company showcased its Agscent GHG + Optiweigh system at Tetchwick Farm near Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, as it targets livestock producers looking to improve feed efficiency while also measuring methane emissions.

Agscent is targeting both beef and dairy producers. For grazing cattle, its methane sensors can be paired with Optiweigh’s in-paddock weighing technology, while in dairy systems the sensors can be integrated into existing infrastructure such as robotic milking systems and feed troughs.

The UK push follows an exceptionally dry summer that has put pressure on grass growth and forage supplies across England, forcing some livestock producers to draw on winter feedstocks early.

For Agscent founder and managing director Bronwyn Darlington, an Australian livestock producer herself, those conditions have highlighted a challenge familiar to farmers in the company’s home market: when feed becomes scarce and expensive, knowing which animals are converting it into weight most efficiently can have a significant impact on margins.

“The drought spurred the look at how our technology could help the UK,” she told AgNavigator.

“In Australia we prepare earlier for drought than I found UK farmers were preparing because it hasn’t been common for you, but [it] will be more common going forward. So it accelerated our desire to do something in the UK.”

Turning methane into an efficiency metric

Agscent is pitching its technology on economics as much as emissions.

The system demonstrated at Tetchwick Farm combines Agscent’s GHG methane sensing technology with Optiweigh’s in-paddock weighing system, allowing weight gain and methane measurements from individual animals to be analysed together.

Agscent argues methane can act as an indicator of how efficiently an animal is converting feed into energy. That potentially allows producers to identify cattle achieving strong weight gains relative to their methane production and, conversely, animals delivering poorer performance.

“The key component here is that two animals can gain the same weight on very different amounts of feed,” said Darlington.

That information could then inform decisions over which animals to retain, sell or breed from, particularly before farmers commit to the expense of winter housing or supplementary feeding.

“When you sell or you take out the bottom 12 to 20% of your herd before you put them in the barn, you can take out the feed-inefficient ones,” she said.

Darlington said useful efficiency data can be generated within about a month, potentially giving producers another metric alongside conventional breeding traits.

“We want to manage what we have in our hands. And what we have in our hands is genetics,” she said.

Drought changes the calculation

The proposition takes on greater significance during drought, according to Darlington.

She said Agscent’s own Australian farming operation had spent around A$1 million on feed during a previous drought, making variations in feed efficiency between individual animals financially material.

“We need to know which animals are more efficient when they eat, because the feed cost is the biggest cost once you’re in the barn, the feed cost is the biggest cost in dairy, and the feed cost is the biggest cost when drought hits,” she said.

That gives Agscent a broader UK pitch than drought resilience alone. For grazing beef producers, the company sees value in identifying efficient animals when grass and forage are under pressure, while for dairy producers it argues that better information on feed efficiency could help tackle one of their largest input costs.

That experience helped convince Agscent that its technology could have a role in Britain following this summer’s severe dry conditions.

The company also believes its proposition extends beyond periods of drought. Identifying more feed-efficient animals could potentially lower feeding costs during normal housed periods, while methane measurements give farmers emissions information increasingly requested across agricultural supply chains.

“This is a rare moment where a climate metric actually is a productivity and profitability one for livestock,” Darlington said.

First UK trial flags underperforming animals

At Tetchwick Farm, 23 cattle were given access to the technology for eight days before Agscent’s demonstration event.

Darlington said the cattle recorded 1,107 visits to the unit during the period, generating 725 methane measurements, with an average of 32 valid visits per animal.

Combining those readings with weight data highlighted differences between animals, including several outliers that had lost weight during the week.

While the system did not diagnose why those animals had lost weight, Darlington said it gave the farmer an indication of which cattle warranted closer investigation, whether for a health issue, problems with a calf or another cause.

Agscent ultimately wants producers to use the data over longer periods to establish baselines and identify consistently efficient and inefficient animals.

The company also sees potential for a cooperative model in the UK, where individual livestock herds are generally smaller than on its Australian operations. Darlington said groups of farmers could potentially share systems, using them for several months at a time to benchmark their animals.

“Once we started looking at the value proposition for the UK, we realised that actually the smaller farm, the cooperative model, actually is probably the best way and the technology is really suitable for that,” she said.

NASA-linked diagnostics to come later

Agscent is meanwhile developing a broader suite of sensing technologies, although these are not part of the initial UK launch.

Among them is its forthcoming Breath technology, which uses sensing technology licensed from NASA to analyse chemical signatures in animals’ breath. Agscent is exploring potential applications including pregnancy and disease detection.

For now, however, the UK commercial focus is the Agscent GHG technology, including its combination with Optiweigh for grazing cattle, and demonstrating that better knowledge of individual animals can translate into a financial return for livestock producers.

Darlington said the potential savings stem from the amount of feed energy effectively lost as methane. With between 6% and 12% of an animal’s gross energy intake lost through methane, she argues that identifying cattle that convert more of that energy into productive weight gain could help farmers lower feed costs.

That may prove critical to adoption. Darlington said the overriding question from farmers attending the Buckinghamshire demonstration was straightforward: “How do I convert this into cash?”

Her answer comes back to feed. As an illustration, she asked farmers to consider the potential financial impact of animals that were 12% more feed efficient.

“If you had animals that were 12% more feed efficient, what would that do to you?” she said. “That’s a calculation you do in your head.”