ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE HELPS CHINESE PIG FARMERS

Chinese farmers will soon test a new artificial intelligence system that uses a combination of artificial vision, voice recognition and temperature sensors to track the movement, health and welfare of pigs.

China has the largest pork herd in the world with about 700 million head. Herd management is currently done using RFID tags. Despite its reliability, this technology is expensive and poorly adapted to such large scales. Indeed, each animal must be equipped with an RFID tag and tracking requires an individual reading. One can imagine the magnitude of the task when it comes to managing millions of animals each year.

But things will change thanks to artificial intelligence (AI). Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce giant that is investing heavily in this area, recently announced an agreement with pig farmer Dekon Group and food manufacturer Tequ Group to develop a new monitoring system.