Farmers, RFID and Palm Pilots

Filed in archive Implementation on April 25, 2004

Consider this picture: A business owner attends a seminar put on by several experts. At the seminar, the business owner learns about setting up computer databases, using palm pilots in the field to gather information, and using RFID to track inventory.

What kind of business might this be? Manufacturing? Retail?

The answer: farming.

That's exactly what happened recently in the midwest United States, where a group of 50 livestock producers attended one such seminar covering databases and RFID.

Farming in the developed world (U.S., Canada, U.K., Europe, Australia, etc.) is becoming increasingly sophisticated. And in the world of livestock farming, RFID tagging and tracking is becoming an important way for cattle producers to ensure consumer confidence in the face of issues such as Mad Cow disease.

However, according to experts there are several issues limiting the usage of RFID by livestock producers: (1) the performance of RFID tags and readers in the field varies greatly, (2) there is not a lot of software designed specifically for certain segments of the livestock industry, and (3) the cost of implementing RFID is still too high for most small producers, since the typical herd size is less than 40 head of cattle.

To help farmers and livestock producers analyze RFID implementation costs and make an RFID buying decision, the site www.beefstockerusa.org has a useful, downloadable RFID cost spreadsheet. According to the spreadsheet, the average cost of implementing RFID for a herd size of 250 is US$8.34 per head.