# Can Livestock Farming Benefit from Industry 4.0 Technology? Evidence from Recent Study
## 5 Discussion  
Livestock farming, in principle, offers good potential for Industry 4.0 technologies and concepts. Livestock farming almost completely takes place in buildings. Most machines have a fixed location and may be connected to a computer network via a cable. Mobile machines may be connected by local radio systems with limited extension such as Wifi. Processes are highly standardized and repetitive. External factors such as weather induce much less impact in animal barns than in crop production. Even with the focus of this paper on in-barn production at medium- and large-size farms, it should be noted that digital tools and Industry 4.0 potential also exist for very small farms and for pasture husbandry. Portable sensors, the GPS positioning of animals (e.g., Alptracker), and various software apps allow digital progress in these domains of the livestock economy as well. The degree of automation and digitalization is already high in many large- and medium-size farms. Machines from different manufacturers often lack interconnectable standardized interfaces. Only part of the machines in livestock farming is digitally interconnected or connected to a central FMIS. This may be the biggest obstacle for further digitalization and the achievement of Industry 4.0 benefits. There is no standardized digital bus system in livestock farming. Technical solutions generally work well as long as the farm uses technology from only one manufacturer. Specialized big manufacturers for dairy farming or big 'fulliners' for poultry livestock farming technology are dominating their sectors. Only they offer fully integrated solutions including an FMIS. On the other side, there are some approaches available to interconnect multiple manufacturers, e.g. the software 365 FarmNet, which was expanded to dairy farming. In the pig sector, there are many small manufacturers that are not highly interested in the technical collaboration of their systems. In this sector, the need for action is greatest. Precision livestock farming (PLF) or smart livestock farming is an ongoing trend for 20 years [123; 124]. PLF is principally based on the automatic online sensing of animal states and behavior by various sensors. In dairy farming, sensors may be attached to the cow because (a) the cow can bear sensors with heavy batteries, (b) the cow tolerates sensors attached to the body, and (c) the cow stays in the barn for a long time. In pig and broiler production, sensors are typically attached to the building infrastructure. Even in cases where the sensor is neither mounted directly at the animal's body nor equipped with an Internet address, these sensors approach the Industry 4.0 idea of the Internet of Things (IoT), connecting the animals (individuals or groups) to the farm's digital network. As described in Sections 4.2-4.4, the introduction of meaningful sensors, particularly for animal behavior, is still at a very early stage. Many research and development projects are dealing with such sensors. As related to sensing biological objects, the discrepancy between research claims and practical use seems bigger in livestock farming than in crop production. The application of pedometers for the heat detection of cows was pushed only from the moment when it was integrated and offered with automatic milking systems. The current state of livestock farming is characterized by only little digital data exchange, not only between processes but also along the value chain. First approaches such as the HIT database for cows exist [73], but this database was first enforced by legal requirements, and thereafter, the sector recognized the potential of HIT besides its official use. The lack of digital data exchange induces a lack of information transparency and widely the absence of a digital process view, while the production itself, e.g., in broiler production, has a clear process orientation.