2023 Nexus Award winners announced at PDPW Business Conference
Plus, new study reveals efficacy of barn ammonia sequestering technology
Five innovative companies were announced as Nexus Award winners this week at Professional Dairy Producers of Wisconsin’s Annual Business Conference. The companies explained their innovations for 20 minutes on stage to conference attendees during the two-day event.
The following companies (listed in alphabetical order) are the 2023 award recipients. (These short videos were submitted with their applications to the nominating committee and briefly explain their technologies.)
Arm & Hammer Animal Nutrition for Certillus for dairy bedding
Glori Enterprises for The Fodd
Nedap for the SmartFlow Milk Meter
SmaXtec for the TruDrinking feature
Zinpro for IsoFerm
Watch for more in-depth coverage of each of these companies’ innovations coming in Progressive Dairy magazine and on the Progressive Dairy Podcast. See previous Nexus Innovation Award winners and how to apply for the 2024 program here.
Cloud-based carbon marketplace picks up seed investment
One of the world’s largest food companies recently invested in a new cloud-based carbon marketplace for the livestock industry. Tyson Ventures, the venture capital arm of Tyson Foods, recently announced a seed investment of an undisclosed amount in Athian. The startup now has investors that represent farmers, packers, processors and animal health companies.
Paul Myer, CEO of Athian, says the company will launch an “insetting platform” in the second half of 2023. Carbon insetting allows farmers to get paid for their carbon sequestration and methane reduction efforts from within the livestock industry, instead of selling their efforts to companies outside of the livestock sector. That practice is known as carbon offsetting.
“While no single company can solve the challenge of climate change alone, we can work together to make meaningful impacts,” Myer said in a statement following the funding announcement.
The company says its key mission is to help the beef and dairy value chains capture and claim carbon credits earned through sustainability efforts by aggregating, validating, and certifying, greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions, and monetizing those reductions through the sale of carbon credits.
“Our vision is to be the platform that enables the livestock industry to meet its sustainability goals by empowering producers to implement on-farm practice changes that will move the needle on climate change,” Myer said.
Read more about this cloud-based carbon marketplace for livestock.
New study reveals efficacy of ammonia sequestering technology
The Dutch government recently published its results after studying Lely’s innovation to separate cow urine and crystalize it – an innovation known as Lely Sphere. The report states the emission factor for farms with the technology is 3 kg of ammonia per barn per year, a 77 percent reduction in ammonia emissions compared to barns that commingle manure and urine (which they found emit 13 kg of ammonia per barn per year).
The company’s innovation launched in 2020.
The company says it has since installed the technology on 10 test farms, but it has been waiting for the Dutch government to certify nitrogen emission in the test barns with the system before continuing further commercial sales.
Duckweed-growing startup on life support
A startup aiming to use livestock wastewater to grow duckweed and then feed it back to cows as a livestock feed recently announced it desperately needs more funding to continue development.
“Over the past two years, we have pitched to dozens of investors, industry partners, and advocacy groups … Unfortunately these pitches, accelerators and trade shows have exhausted our operational capital and we can no longer commit unpaid time to grand filings or investor procurement,” Lemna announced in a LinkedIn post last week. “This post serves as notice that without additional funding, Lemna will be closing down operations within the year … We are interested in opportunities that may provide a future for all that we’ve built, and will entertain reasonable offers made to continue with Lemna.”
Learn more about the company here.
Another company announces partnership with Si-Ware Systems
Rock River Laboratory recently announced it is collaborating with Si-Ware Systems. The agreement will give the family-owned laboratory’s network of nutritionists, feed mills and farms access to Si-Ware’s NeoSpectra platform, which includes handheld NIR devices for testing feed on-farm, a mobile app and a cloud data portal. Global feed company Cargill also recently announced a similar collaboration.
“The decision to adopt the NeoSpectra platform is part of Rock River Laboratory’s continuous commitment to lead advancements and bring the latest technology in feed analysis to our customers,” said Don Meyer, president and owner of Rock River Laboratory. “After trying many different solutions, we have found NeoSpectra to be one of the best platforms for our needs thanks to the variety of feed parameters it can measure.”
Read previous coverage from The Cow Tech Report about Rock River Laboratory’s own nutrition and testing innovation program.
Milking robot manufacturer announces investment to increase production capacity
DeLaval recently announced plans to increase production capacity by 2024. The company said it aims to increase its ability to produce VMS V300 series milking robots by 50 percent. Rising customer demand is the reason for the change, the company said.
“The high demand we have seen over the past years and the future expected demand allows us to make this investment,” said Paul Löfgren, president and CEO at DeLaval. “With this investment we will be able to meet the growing customer demand and increase our production capacity while shortening lead times.”
Dairy profit projections from ZISK
Projected profitability for the next 12-month for two dairy herd sizes HAVE INCREASED in recent profit projections from ZISK.
ZISK is a profit-projection smartphone app that tracks individual dairy farm profitability based on current CME board prices. Projections for a 1,000-cow dairy producing an average of 80 pounds of milk per cow and a 2,500-cow dairy producing an average of 85 pounds of milk per cow are provided.
12-month dairy farm profit projections (as of March 16, 2023):
1,000-cow dairy = $322,700 (UP about $82,200 since the first of March)
2,500-cow dairy = $1.564 million (UP about $130,000 since the first of March)