Technology Innovation in Dairy Farm Management

Abstract

The Farm Tourism Event project is based on a larger CSR project entitled, “Scaling-up Dairy Farmers of Malaysia from Low Yield to High Yield Income via Capacity Building: Proposed Dairy Farm Tourism & Application of Technology Innovations”. The task involving Taylor’s University for this project is divided between two schools. The School of Computing & IT is responsible for developing apps and Web portal for farm management. The School of Hospitality, Tourism and Culinary Arts is responsible for developing the dairy food products as well as developing dairy farm tourism product. From our discussions and interviews with the farmers, there were a couple pain points which they have highlighted to us with regard to knowledge and improved process of services as listed below.

• 1. Knowledge Base—The farming industry is a booming industry, and it has much potential in Malaysia. There is a need for new methods and ways in farming industry, and there is also much research done by local and foreign universities with respect to the farming industry. How these information and knowledge are to be shared with the rural folks who actually need such information for improvement.

• 2. Supply Availability—Today, the way the farmers get orders and very manual and there is much pain from not just the farmer side but also retailers looking for supply. There is no way to check which farmer has the supply and as such the retailers would have to make many calls just to get supply.

• 3. Retailers Inventory—It is important for farmers to have an inventory list that could indicate daily supply information and also provide reports for future reference. The list can be used as a gauge for cases, whereby there is an oversupply or less supply of their farming products.