Rising Trends in Technology for Animal Agriculture

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

Most of the agricultural technology that we cover on this report has to do with crops, but there are actually some very interesting animal related technologies developing as well. Merck Animal Health Ventures team lead Stephen Murray is seeing a shift toward digital monitoring.

Murray… “In each species we see clear value around monitoring. And that's our sort of core proposition. But that's going to be in partnership. You're going to be in an ecosystem. You're not on your own. And the ecosystem is what we're seeing as a lot of interest by it might be retailers wanting to utilize or tap into your monitoring as something that adds value to their brand.”

These monitoring systems provide a base layer of data that will be helpful for future innovation. Similar to crops, carbon is also a hot topic.

Murray… “You know, there's a lot of talk about carbon these days and what that might mean. We're watching that space. We think that how that plays out, what it means. It's still early to know exactly how that's going to play out. And I think people get a little bit over-hyped on some of these things. There's real things to do here, but how they play out at, you know, in a real market is, is still evolving.”

Murray thinks we’re still in the very early innings of innovation for animal agriculture.