Alibaba, JD.COM launch tech to access pig health

China’s big tech giants of Alibaba Group Holding and JD.Com have lined up to have their piece of the smartening agricultural technology pie with the launch of Smart Brains to access pig’s health. 

Alibaba’s “ET Agricultural Brain” is an AI programme that uses facial, temperature and voice recognition to assess each pig’s health. 

The technology can tell whether a sow is pregnant by following its sleeping and standing positions as well as eating habits, and has been already adopted by a number of leading pig farming growing enterprises in China. 

The programme will also be able to detect sick hogs and minimize accidents, such as protecting piglets from accidents through the introduction of voice recognition technology. 

Multiple meters are installed to collect data to optimize the environment for the herd to grow, as well as reducing human errors in the farming process. 

Beijing’s JD.Com has also launched a facial recognition system, designed for swine. The three modules of Shennong Brain, Shennong Internet of Things Devices and the Shennong System, help monitor pig’s weight, growth and health status. 

The system will reduce pig farmers’ labour costs in the range of 30 percent to 50 percent, and lower the need for feed, as well as shorten hogs’ lifespan by five to eight days by optimizing animals’ growth conditions, based on the firm’s estimate. China could save CNY50 billion ($7.5 billion) if it applied the system to all pig farms nationwide.  

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