# Can Livestock Farming Benefit from Industry 4.0 Technology? Evidence from Recent Study
## 4 Results
### Dairy Farming
#### 4.4.1 State of Digitalization in the Dairy Sector  
The use of electronic devices has a long tradition in dairy farming, especially in those farms with freestall or bedded pen barns and specialized areas for feeding, milking, and resting. A good overview of the current sensor systems is given by [PERSON] and [PERSON] [74]. These types of dairy barns have increasingly been used since the 1980s. The implementation of computers and sensors started at that time under changing names and aims: monitoring and control systems for dairy herds, e.g., [75; 76], precision dairy farming, e.g., [77; 78; 79], or smart dairy farming, e.g., [80; 81; 82].  
Automation is widespread in dairy farming, promoted by [several factors, such as] the clearly structured and recurring daily processes and the human workload in them. Most important are the Automatic Milking System (AMS), Automatic Feeding System (AFS), and automated cleaning and bedding systems. In addition, there are also multiple sensor-based analysis and decision support systems. Research and development in these topics are comparable with those in other parts of the world [83; 84; 85; 86].  
Animal identification, animal location, heat detection, calving detection, the observation of milk quality, and the monitoring of the barn climate are some areas of sensor development in combination with the use of algorithms to make dairy farming \"smart\".  
A breakthrough in automation can be seen in the automatic milking systems that have seen increasing use since the 1990s. The individual milking process steps are automated. These include identifying the cow via an RFID chip, cleaning the udder, checking milk quality, recognizing and applying the milking cluster to the individual teats of the cow, the flow-controlled milking of the cow, removing the milking cluster, and dipping the cow. Interms of the basic structure of processing individual process steps, AMSs are comparable to machine tools in the area of Industry 3.0. The other systems in the dairy cow barn are to be judged at a similar level of technology. Overall, they offer great potential for an Industry 4.0 level in agriculture. Some of the possibilities are being considered but have not yet been strictly implemented.  
Dairy farming offers good conditions for the networking of the individual systems within the farm and beyond due to its fixed spatial structure. The stable-internal networking can often take place via cables and ends in a star shape in the office. Inside the barn, this is used as a control center. Wireless networks for different sensors on the cow often cause difficulties here since there is no uniform data and radio standard, with the exception of animal identification. Energy supply is another challenge with cow sensors.  
A frequently occurring (German) problem is networking with other participants in the value chain (feed, farm, processing plant) via a telecommunications provider. The data networks in rural regions are often not powerful enough to ensure direct access to data networks in dairy cow barns. Additionally, there are other aspects relevant for successfully integrated digitalization in rural areas [87; 88] and for a sustainable food system [89; 90; 91; 92].