The StockCropper Helps Farmers Incorporate Livestock

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

If the future of agriculture is in farms that can produce more with less, it’s worth exploring the question of how do we replace all of those nutrients that we harvest. One logical explanation could be in incorporating more livestock, says Dawn Equipment CEO Joe Bassett.

Bassett… “We're never really going to succeed with ultra low input corn production, without having animals in the equation somewhere.”

This not a new concept, but how do you do this in a large scale commercial farm that is growing corn? Bassett and others have found part of the answer in developing the StockCropper - an autonomous moving pen for animals that can travel between rows of crops.

Bassett… “Imagine a field where you had like four rows or six rows of 30 inch corn. Then you had four rows or six rows of cover, and so on and so forth. Where you're sort of maximizing the sort of light accessibility of the plans. But then you're using these solar powered robots, the StockCropper robot to move between the rows. They're eating the cover crop, making a healthy saleable meat product, ideally. Or a poultry product or eggs. And you're just creating that closed loop for the manure and the animal byproducts inside of the field.”

Learn more at www.TheStockCropper.com.