What revolution can the drones bring to the livestock sector?

Last week, i joined the workshop on Animal Health Delivery in pastoral zones. I have been asked to discuss how geospatial technology can bring change into this industry. Here is the power point presentation i gave :

Geospatial Technology in Animal Health Delivery from Catherine Pfeifer

The workshop brought together government representative, NGO and private sector to discuss what are the challenges and opportunities to bring animal health to pastoral zone, an area that has cope with low infrastructure, low and moving populations.

The biggest constraints identified  were :

• The negative perception of pastoralist towards vaccine, it is seen as an emergency solution and not as prevention. This leads to no vaccine demand. Many pastoralists live in very basic condition with poor health and hygiene themselves.
• vaccine quality is low, and often ineffective
• In emergency, government roles out big vaccination campaigns, but there is no coordination among the different stakeholders and the is no post check on the effectiveness of the campaign.
• there are insufficient trained human resources  on the ground, despite of the fact that there would be sufficient trained vets available.
• NGO budget often end up in offering free services at the wrong moment, distorting market and effectiveness
• there is the understanding that animal health should be governmental, therefore the government constrains the market too much (i.e. not allowing for imports)  

 

The biggest opportunities identified were :

• allow for vaccine import, Kenya is not producing sufficiently and the right time
• there is a potentially big and untouched customer base
• There is scope for  more user friendly vaccines, i.e. vaccines that do not per se need highly trained staff for administration or vaccine that are termo-stable (that do not need cooling)
• In the short term, there is a need for a cold chain, keeping vaccines cold and therefore maintain their quality
• Investigate effective way for public private partnership 
• further develop infrastructures such as roads and mobile networks

It was a fascinating workshop : it will lead to an in deepth study to understand these limitations and opportunities better, including trying to work with drone data. Definitely interesting work deserving a follow up!