Farm Progress

DeLaval, Deere co-launch Milk Sustainability CenterDeLaval, Deere co-launch Milk Sustainability Center

The cloud-based interface is set to launch this summer.

Andy Castillo, Editor of Farm Equipment and Machinery

May 28, 2024

2 Min Read
Courtney Schlichte (left) and Joaquin Azocar are helping to promote the two brands’ new Milk Sustainability Center.
COLLABORATING: Courtney Schlichte (left), manager of small ag marketing for John Deere, and Joaquin Azocar (right), market solution manager of farm management systems for DeLaval, are helping to promote the two brands’ new Milk Sustainability Center, which is launching this summer.Andy Castillo

DeLaval and John Deere have co-launched a digital ecosystem to help dairy farmers become more sustainable and efficient. The cloud-based Milk Sustainability Center is a brand-neutral interface that lets producers remotely streamline their operations by monitoring nutrient-use efficiency for nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium and carbon dioxide equivalent.

“We’re creating a center that can collect data from different systems,” says Joaquin Azocar, market solution manager of farm management systems for DeLaval. The two brands are collaborating with a Dutch company, Dairy Data Warehouse, “which specializes in capturing data from different sources and making it standardized,” Azocar says.

Practically, the Milk Sustainability Center, which was first announced in September, lets producers make sustainable and profit-driven decisions. The interface can identify improvement areas by comparing a farm’s performance with other benchmark values.

The program can give recommendations to reduce nutrient losses. It also can simulate theoretical scenarios using new technologies or strategies, outputting projected nutrient-use efficiency, carbon footprint and profitability.

Data can be viewed from a desktop or via a mobile app. Farmers can curate data by selecting the entire farm, specific fields or a particular herd. They can choose to share it with consultants, dealers and other partners.

“DeLaval brings data from the barn and the dairy cattle operation. Deere can bring data from the field,” says Courtney Schlichte, manager of small ag marketing for John Deere. After authorization, data from DeLaval Plus and the John Deere Operations Center can automatically be pulled into the Milk Sustainability Center. Barn or equipment data also can be put in manually, and the center is notably open to collaborating with other brands.

Its long-term goal, Schlichte says, is to bring the dairy sector closer to being a net-zero emissions industry. She says the initiative aims to help “farmers continue to be good stewards of the land by making sure, when we talk about nitrogen-use efficiency, that we're increasing that to benefit for the longer term and reducing the CO2 equivalent as well. The end benefit for farmers here is the information.”

The inaugural version of the Milk Sustainability Center will be released this fall in North America and select European Union countries, and it will be free.

About the Author

Andy Castillo

Editor of Farm Equipment and Machinery, Farm Progress

Andy Castillo started his career in journalism about a decade ago as a television news cameraperson and producer before transitioning to a regional newspaper covering western Massachusetts, where he wrote about local farming. Between military deployments with the Air Force and covering the news, he earned an MFA in creative nonfiction writing from Bay Path University, building on the English degree he earned from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In his role at Farm Progress, Castillo covers agricultural technology, new machinery and the constantly evolving farm equipment marketplace.

Castillo splits his time between the open road and western Massachusetts with his wife, Brianna, a travel nurse who specializes in pediatric oncology, and their rescue pup, Rio. When not attending farm shows, Castillo enjoys playing music, snowboarding, writing, cooking and restoring their 1920 craftsman bungalow. You can find Castillo at farm machinery shows across the country.

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