Precision Dairy Farming, Robotic Milking, and Profitability in the United States

Modern precision dairy farming, including a wide array of sensors, data analytics, and automation technologies, help operators implement cow level—rather than herd level—management practices. Use of one or more of these technologies can reduce average costs and increase milk yields per cow. USDAʼs Agricultural Resource Management Surveys show that U.S. adoption of precision dairy technologies increased steadily between 2000 and 2021. This report provides aggregate estimates using detailed data from a representative sample of U.S. dairy farms to understand the profitability impacts of adopting precision dairy technologies. We overview and classify precision dairy equipment into three sets of technologies (non-robotic milking, breeding, and data systems), as well as robotic milking, while documenting their increasing use relative to conventional technologies and the characteristics of operators and farms that use them. Building on this information, we develop a model to estimate the impacts of precision technologies on dairy profitability, controlling for farm size and infrastructure, demographics, high speed internet access, and other factors. This analysis is the first to quantify how the adoption of more than one class of precision dairy technologies, including robotic milking, affects dairy net returns.