Introduction

The main goal of this system is to track and evaluate the economic performance of dairy farms of various sizes, with the aim of identifying the top 25% of the industry within different management systems. The system delves into the reasons behind their success, verifying best practices, and pinpointing elite animals within the top quartile. This helps farmers make informed selection decisions (such as breed and strain) and allows for the development of a local profitability index for cows, their families, and future bull teams.

The system consists of eight core modules: Benchmarking/Farm KPIs, Soil Benchmarking, Plant Benchmarking, Farm Master Data, Livestock, Herd Performance, Operating Toolkit, and Farm Technical Support.

The Operating Toolkit includes three sub-modules—Soil, Pastures, and Animals—each featuring a series of “How To” guides that explain farming processes. These guides have been adapted from a New Zealand context to cater to the dairy industry in tropical regions, and they are made available online within a database structure. Over time, these guides will be further customized for the Tanzanian context.

FarmBuilder-HerdBuilder (FB-HB) software streamlines the monitoring and management of extension officer services for farmers. It reinforces the concept of “farming as a business,” encouraging farmers to adopt efficient business practices.

Design Considerations for Scalability and Extensibility

To enhance the scalability and extensibility of the application, the following measures have been taken:

• Minimize traffic between the browser and web server.
• Separate the presentation layer from object iterations.
• Provide APIs for each application object.
• Maximize the use of compiled and optimized code in the system core libraries.
• Externalize business logic into server-side scripts that do not require compilation before execution.
• Limit database calls by running atomic operations directly from the database manager.

Wide Range of Customers

FarmBuilder software, hardware, and liveware solutions have been developed to support emerging dairy industries, with a primary focus on small to medium-sized producers, while also accommodating the needs of larger-scale farmers.

Primary Objective

The main objective is to guide farmers in enhancing farm profitability by improving dairy genetics, selecting the best fit for the local weather, maximizing pasture energy use, and minimizing costs.

Benchmarking Farm Performance

The system’s primary function is to benchmark farm performance, identify the top 25% of industry performers, analyze the factors contributing to their success, and capture best practices. It also identifies top-performing animals within the top quartile, aiding farmers in making selection decisions and formulating a local profitability index for cows, cow families, and future bull teams.

National-Level Deployment

For national-scale deployment or in the case of a data warehouse setup, FarmBuilder recommends an architecture that includes an Oracle database cluster operating on a SAN (Storage Area Network). This configuration should support multiple interfaces to accommodate various users.