

How Big Data Transformed the Dairy Industry - altrus
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/05/the-perfect-milk-machine-how-big-data-transformed-the-dairy-industry/256423/

======
Falling3
I realize I'm coming at this from a different angle than a lot of other HNers,
but for me this is good science gone wrong.

Dairy cows are some of the most mistreated and unhealthy animals in the
agriculture system. This push for efficiency has created a large group of
animals with very little genetic diversity. They are kept on a stream of
antibiotics because one bad outbreak can take down the entire group. They
often develop mastitis and cancer is common by the they are 5 or 6
("retirement age") due to poor nutrition, over-milking, and living conditions.

This kind of science really excites me, but the applications are almost always
depressing and we should absolutely not be lauding squeezing out every last
"inefficiency" in an animal based industry.

~~~
rmason
My guess is that you haven't spent any actual time on dairy farms. Early in my
career I worked in the fertilizer business and a large part of my customer
base were dairy farmers.

I worked with dairy farmers with as few as 100 cows and as many as 1200. These
were family farms and they cared well for the animals. Antibiotics were only
used on sick cows and not as a daily regimen. I really respect those guys,
most of them are far better businessmen than the tradesmen in town.

The few times that I saw animals mistreated were farmers who weren't very long
for the dairy business.

~~~
mumrah
As with most agriculture in the US (assuming you're talking about the US),
family farms are the exception - not the rule.

~~~
mikebike
"In 2010, of all the farms in the United States with at least $1 million in
revenues, 88 percent were family farms, and they accounted for 79 percent of
production." -- [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/the-
triu...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/the-triumph-of-
the-family-farm/8998/)

------
fghh45sdfhr3
A high degree if genetic selections is a high risk thing. For a long time you
just get a lot more of what ever you want, milk, eggs, etc. And then a virus
appears and kills 99.9% or more of your animals because they were all so
closely related.

The free market rewards the up side of closely related species but does not
cost you anything for the potential catastrophe. Day to day the probability of
a catastrophic disease is near 0, but in the very long term it is near
certain. Our free markets have no smart way of pricing that kind of stuff.

That's why we've already lost several varieties of banana to diseases.

~~~
pm90
Hey, I found your comment on bananas interesting. Where can I read up more
about it?

~~~
fghh45sdfhr3
This is a good start: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gros_Michel_banana>

Many wild, seed packet bananas exist, but all (as far as I know?) bananas that
we eat have no seeds and are actually all clones. Thus they are all under the
extinction by disease threat.

Someone could in theory continually keep developing new strains of bananas in
case of future diseases. Practically however there is no profit in that. You
could argue a charity or NGO should do stuff like this.

~~~
ajross
This book (pop science kind of thing) was a lot of fun too:
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1594630380>

Note that the Gros Michel isn't extinct. It's still grown as a boutique item.
But the blight is apparently persistent in fields, and thus it can't be grown
in quanitity without huge risk to the plantation.

------
edhallen
This is a great addition to the unfortunately too limited category of articles
about how big data / analysis changed actual decision-making.

That said, the definition of big data used by this article doesn't strike me
as what I would think of as big data. Based on what it says, the dairy
industry was changed by analysis and data collection but nothing that couldn't
be stored on your typical phone. The article hints at big data (via greater
genetic analysis) transforming the dairy industry in the future, but the
massive changes in cow DNA so far are seemingly due to "small" data.

This confusion of big data with just solid analysis and decision-making
happens a lot, but does a good job of highlighting how much progress there is
to be made in using data to drive decisions (independent of how much data we
use).

~~~
huggyface
You've written what I was planning on posting. This is classic data
aggregation and analysis. while Big Data is a trendy term, I see and perceive
nothing in it that qualifies as even a particularly large set, much less what
most see as Big Data.

------
Volscio
Just a note: published May 1, 2012

