Vermont famers say new technology is changing the state’s agriculture industry

By James Maloney

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    FAIRFIELD, Vt. (WPTZ) — From robotic milking to virtual fencing, new technologies are starting to transform the way Vermont farmers work — potentially cutting labor, lowering costs and boosting productivity.

At Doe’s Leap Farm in East Fairfield, George Van Vlaanderen herds his more than 40 goats with the help of his two border collies.

Thanks to a grant from the Northeast Dairy Business and Innovation Center, their goats have been equipped with GPS-enabled collars that make physical fencing unnecessary.

Before Van Vlaanderen would move the goats around the farm land and would have to use, temporary physical fencing that would have to be set up and torn down as the goats moved and grazed.

“It’s actually a very reliable system in terms of containing goats,” Van Vlaanderen said. “We can draw a fence paddock anywhere on our farm, and transmit that data through the cellular network to the collars.”

The perimeter is drawn through a phone application. When goats approach the virtual boundary, the collar emits a series of beeps, followed by a shock if they continue. The warning sound is loud enough that nearby goats learn to avoid the invisible line — meaning not every goat needs a collar.

Beyond containment, Van Vlaanderen says the technology helps increase milk production by allowing the goats to move to more areas of the farm more quickly, and it gives them more diverse nutrition.

“We can basically identify areas of our farm that have the most palatable and nutritious feed for our goats,” he said.

Van Vlaanderen said the system isn’t perfect and that some goats have managed to slip off their collars. However, he sees it as something that could catch on in the state.

At the University of Vermont’s Dairy Farm, traditional practices of cow raising and milking are taught to students.

Although Agriculture Professor Eric Von Wettberg said the emergence of robotic milking is growing in popularity at commercial dairy farms.

He said the university has considered the technology in some form to be brought to campus, but has chosen to stick with traditional methods for now.

“We view it as essential to have a number of students working in our dairy. That’s part of how we engage growing numbers of students,” he said.

Vermont Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Russ Ingalls believes that adopting new technologies is critical for the future of the industry.

“At the end of the day, we have to figure out what’s going to be best to keep farmers sustainable,” he said, noting the steady decline in the number of farms across the state over the years.

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