Websites and technology

Websites are a funny animal now. They used to be the only place online where your products or brands could be displayed and interacted with. Now, it’s Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, newsletters and Facebook where you can look at items related to your industry, and inspect people’s animals and gardens, and reels about cats and dogs. At least, that’s what tends to show up in my newsfeed. There is a household ban on adopting any more cats (half human, half current feline-imposed), but left to my own devices, our place would be packed with all the adorable strays who need homes.

However, websites still have a purpose. There’s nothing more irritating when you’re trying to look at a company and the website is ancient. It’s one’s shop window, really. With that in mind, we have redesigned our website, so please take a look at it and let us know what you think.

Meanwhile, dairy itself is going digital. In the plants, people are developing digital twins for their physical plant, to try out new technologies and production systems, in the digital world before they implement them on the actual floor. Turns out dairy processors have to get with the technology as well, while their cheeses gently ripen in a time-honoured fashion.

We can use tech to improve the outcomes for the cow, and to make her life more comfortable and her output more productive. We can also use it so we are making the most of the product she delivers to us, and to upgrade industry participants’ experience of the process. Using apps to get money to smaller farmers in markets such as India, or employing them to help improve soil quality for silage, are really helpful outcomes for tech. At the end of the day, technology has to be our servant, not our master, here in the real world. But like everything, it needs to be updated.

• Suzanne Christiansen, editor, Dairy Industries International.
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