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from the what-will-they-think-of-next dept.
Australian farmers managing cattle stations as large as some European nations will soon be able to monitor their cows and pastures from space as part of "groundbreaking" technology, scientists say. The technology, developed with government and private funding, taps into a satellite passing overhead to record the weights of herds daily while monitoring pasture conditions—a task traditionally impossible due to the stations' vast sizes and harsh, remote locations. Some stations, such as Newcastle Waters in the Northern Territory, span 10,000 square kilometres (3,861 square miles)—an area larger than Cyprus—and home to 55,000 cattle.
The technology exploits the stations' semi-arid conditions, which means there is little access to surface water with cattle having to walk to man-made watering points each day. A weighing platform that the cows—which each have an electronic tag—must step on is placed at the watering points and powered by solar panels, with the data fed to a satellite and then to a station manager's computer.
http://phys.org/news/2015-10-australian-technology-cows-weights-space.html
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Hyperturtle on Saturday October 24 2015, @03:16PM
I'm guessing the products made from these cows are not going to be from farmers that took an interest in the cow's well being, considering they launched something into space to save them the effort of actually inspecting the cows. Oh well if the value meal drops 10 cents then this demonstrates we need to find even better ways to exploit the animals bred to feed us.
Before long and they'll start doing this to people! Dissident 7 has just walked into plaza 5's pedestrian area, commence neutralization. Collateral damage is approved; no VIPs located in area.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Saturday October 24 2015, @07:57PM
What's truly bizarre is that we are just trading meat now. Here in Canada, I can only find Australia and New Zealand frozen lamb, even though we have a bunch of sheep farms [as well as cattle], but our lamb is sent to...Australia and New Zealand.