Building an Application Programming Interface to make data collected on livestock farms available for analysis and decision making related to competitiveness and sustainability

Lead Applicant: John Cant

Research Priority: Competitive Production Systems

Program Type: Tier 1

Funding Cycle: 2025/2026

Research Centre: Ontario Dairy Research Centre

Research Summary: The market for technologies that track individual farm animals is growing rapidly, offering producers valuable tools to manage livestock. Integrating this data across the farm can unlock even greater benefits, such as improvingfeed efficiency, tracking carbon footprints, and supporting sustainable practices. This project will develop an open-source API that allows farmers, researchers, and advisors to securely access and work with farm-collected data. A library of scripts and hardware will help connect on-farm systems to the API. All software will be shared publicly on GitHub for users in Ontario and beyond, with training workshops to support adoption. By combining data and AI, the project will help farms become more efficient, competitive, and sustainable.