The Singapore-based startup has built the ‘E-Doctor’ to help farmers track the health and mating of pigs
Fitness tracking may soon be the latest frenzy for an unexpected consumer base — animal farms.
Jumping on board the burgeoning health-wearables industry, an agri-tech startup in Singapore has developed its own ‘FitBit’ for farm pigs, which it is currently testing in China.
Smart Animal Husbandry Care, or SmartAHC, is working with a large-scale farm in Sichuan province in its first commercial trial of E-Doctor — a health-monitoring system that uses a wireless ear tag to collect real-time data on each pig’s temperature, physical activities and mating cycle.
The system then uses an artificial intelligence model to detect when the pigs are sexually receptive, helping farmers decide on when is the best season for mating. Traditionally, farmers have to perform tests manually to determine mating cycles.
By monitoring physical activity, E-Doctor can also alert farmers to outbreaks of illness before symptoms might be visible. For 28-year old SmartAHC co-founder Lan Song, the use of sensors and data science in farming, also known as ‘precision agriculture’, is long overdue.
“Compared to advancements in consumer electronics, agri-tech is far behind. Many pig farmers rely on human labour to monitor the health of their livestock, but the human error causes unstable productivity,” said Lan, whose father previously owned a livestock feed business in China. “We started our research on the device from this pain point.”
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According to a report by market research firm IDTechEx, the global market for wearable technology for animals, including livestock, is set to hit US$2.6 billion in 2025.
Several agri-tech companies in North America and Europe, such as the American Biomedical Group and TekVet, have built similar health wearables for cattle. But the devices used for cattle are cannot be used for livestock more commonly reared in Asia, such as chickens and pigs, due to the different needs of the animals.
This is where SmartAHC seeks to “fill the gap in the Asian market”, Lan noted. Founded in 2014, the startup has received RMB8.2 million (US$1.21 million) in funding from two undisclosed investors in China, as well as S$1 million (US$719,000) in funding from the Singapore-based GreenMeadows Accelerator and SPRING Singapore.
It has also secured about RMB500,000 (US$74,000) in grants and free office space in Shanghai from the Chinese government’s Institute of Science and Technology, which seeks to import promising technology into the country.
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SmartAHC’s entry into China comes amid the country’s shift towards mechanisation in farming. By 2020, the agricultural mechanisation level is expected to hit 70 per cent, according to a report by Euromonitor International.
“As the Chinese keep moving to cities in search of better living conditions and better-paid jobs, the number of farmers in China decreases, increasing the need for mechanisation of manual work,” said Euromonitor Industry Analyst Giedrė Liorančaitė.
After its current trial in Sichuan, SmartAHC hopes to launch trials in about four other farms in China, and is aiming to release E-Doctor onto the market early next year. Eventually, the company seeks to expand into Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines.
Building a new health-tracking device for chickens is also on the cards. SmartAHC has already received requests from chicken farms in Singapore for the fitness-tracking technology, the startup’s co-founder Howard Tang, 31, revealed.
“Our company is the first one making the devices for pigs, and so we hope that it will have a time advantage in expanding within China and Southeast Asia,” said Tang. “Our ultimate vision is to become the biggest livestock health-tracking company in this region.”
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Image Credit: SmartAHC
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