Thinkmilk
Thinkmilk develops devices to monitor vital signs of cows and check milk substances rate and diseases, using machine learning to predict potential losses and allowing Brazilian farmers to prevent epidemics and reach international milk quality standards.
Problem description
In 2050, the world will need to produce 70% more food to feed an additional 2.3 billion people on the planet. Natural resources are limited and poverty is one of the biggest causes of environmental impact in the world. In the world, 570 million small and medium farmers don’t have enough money or technical skills to manage the quality of their products. Therefore, the milk harvested by them contains high rates of bacteria and somatic cell count, what makes it unfit to be consumed and so rejected by dairy cooperatives, causing the waste of thousands of liters of milk per day in the world, enough milk to feed the 795 million hungry people “Zero Hunger” UN’s goal aims to. Moreover, small and medium farmers represent 58% of the gross worth of Brazilian dairy industry, evaluated in US$ 7 billion. Improving their revenues would bring incomes to 50 million of poor people in the country, helping the country to be closer to accomplish UN’s 9th goal, “Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure”. On the other hand, laboratories control bacteria and somatic cells in milk samples using chemical analysis. This method is expensive (weekly tests are done using samples from each cow’s milk), slow and produce laboratory waste. Considering 90% of the drinkable water in the world comes from aquifers and Brazil has several problems to manage its waste, Thinkmilk is focused on bringing technology to achieve responsible production in milk harvesting, as UN expects with its 12th goal, “Responsible Consumption and Production”.
Solution
Thinkmilk exports the Swiss quality and efficiency to improve the productivity and profits of dairy industry in Europe and in South America. The technology consists in an embedded system composed by two modules: first, a portable device to check the milk substances rate (fat, protein, lactose) and the presence of zoonoses (mastitis, tuberculosis and brucellosis) in milk samples. Second, a wearable device resistant to environment conditions used by cows to check their geolocation and vital signs (heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature, stress, heat, etc.). All the collected data is stored in the cloud and can be easily accessed by the farmer or by the authorized veterinarians using an intuitive and easy to use app for smartphones. It also generates analytics and graphs that can help the farmer to improve the quality of the milk and to quickly prevent the herd in case of risk of diseases and epidemics in the region. Thinkmilk innovates by offering an intelligent and physical technique that reduces laboratory waste produced in traditional analysis, being safer to the environment and allowing data gathering to generate instant diagnostics and forecast by matching milk diseases and vital signs of cows with the use of machine learning.