# Can Livestock Farming Benefit from Industry 4.0 Technology? Evidence from Recent Study
## 5 Discussion
State-of-the-art FMISs often lack meaningful evaluation and interpretation algorithms, so that even stored process information is not evaluated and presented suitably for high-level decision support. The consequence of missing digital process representation and meaningful process evaluation and presentation is the disability of automatic learning and automatic optimization. Although the farmer receives detailed information about their products (milk, carcasses), they are hardly able to connect these output data to the process data for automatic learning and optimization. The lack of powerful livestock sensors and a broad digital data exchange restricts animal welfare and labor easing. Such industry 4.0 technologies have the potential to boost animal welfare and health. The PLF approach enables the development of globally accepted health and welfare standards [125]. This may be contradictory to public opinion with its doubt that technology may promote animal welfare. A digital process control and process view may contribute to more sustainability in all its aspects, including resource efficiency, labor easing, and economic success. As shown in the literature section above, the transfer of Industry 4.0 technologies and concepts to agriculture has been discussed since about 2018. Most of the published work addresses this topic by describing how several Industry 4.0 technologies may or already do improve livestock production, e.g., [125; 126; 14]. [PERSON] et al. mentioned that Industry 4.0 may enable innovative business models in agriculture within the context of the value chain [12]. [PERSON] et al. introduced the idea of evaluating Industry 4.0 implementation options (benefits) for agricultural use cases. They found that livestock farming in current value chains has little need and options of flexibilization and demand orientation, while these benefits play an important role in industrial use cases [17]. The present study, with a deeper look into three livestock farming sectors, could confirm the lack of market demand for individual and changing product parameters and for the flexibility of livestock production within current value chains. On the other side, this study introduced the concept that in livestock farming, individualization and demand are not only driven by customers but also by the individual living animals or animal groups within the production system. Therefore, when discussing Industry 4.0 benefits in livestock production, the terms individualization and demand should be interpreted with both meanings. Digital individualization promises further advantages: Processes and animals may be tracked and documented. This allows more information for the consumer, and in some cases, even extended business models. Recently, [PERSON] et al. published their work about Agriculture 4.0 benefits in this journal [127]. They derived benefits from the literature about smart agriculture effects and categorized them into four clusters: effectiveness, efficiency, environmental benefits, and social benefits. As such, it can be seen that when accessing Agriculture 4.0 from a smart agriculture viewpoint, sustainability, with its three pillars, is the central benefit of Agriculture 4.0. On the other hand, when looking from an Industry 4.0 point of view at livestock farming as in the study presented here, more relevant benefits become visible such as collaboration competence, automated learning, and animal health and welfare. Another big challenge in this context is farmers' knowledge and open-mindedness for digital systems and an Industry 4.0 view of the processes. For the full use of digital systems on the farm, the farmer already needs a lot of knowledge that should be acquired in vocational education and in further training. Managing a farm at the Industry 4.0 level needs an understanding of the virtual representation of the processes, objects, and systems. [PERSON] et al.