How one IoT company is improving dairy production

When Alisa Gusterer tells farmers that her company’s technology can flag that their cows are getting sick before it actually happens, the most common response is happy disbelief. But it’s not fortune-telling—it’s just science, with some help from artificial intelligence. SmaXtec, an agtech company that offers livestock monitoring services, rolled out a new AI-based disease-detection capability in October 2023 that applies data analysis to determine which cows will develop illnesses like mastitis days before they’d show clinical signs. For a cow to be brought “online,” it first has to swallow a capsule-like sensor—much like taking a pill, which transmits health data to SmaXtec’s cloud server for analysis. Farmers can access the data on SmaXtec’s computer interface and mobile app, adjusting a cow’s care plan based on the results, ideally preempting the need for antibiotics or other forms of medical intervention. While strong internet connections can still be scarce in rural areas, Gusterer noted that SmaXtec rarely encounters customers that don’t have enough connectivity to support the wireless data transmission.