Globally, dairy consumption will increase several-fold over the next five decades as the human population expands beyond 10.5 billion people. Climate change will cause dramatic shifts in where dairy farms are located, particularly where availability of water becomes rate-limiting. Average size of dairy herds and production per cow will more than double worldwide, but number of dairy cows will decline. Greatest advances in use of technology will be in largest herds, but some technologies will jump from lower levels to higher levels, such as resistance to tropical diseases as climate warms. Sensors, automation and robotics will allow continuous monitoring and management of a farm’s animals and ecosystems. Time of ovulation will be detected automatically, and cows will be inseminated, or embryos transferred by robotic systems. Managing the epigenome to improve fertility and health will accelerate because cloud-based data, accessible through Blockchain systems, will provide ways of rapidly accessing temporal relationships between environmental events and biological responses. RNA-based technologies and novel complexes of microbes will replace many of today’s hormonal or therapeutic procedures. Several consecutive generations of breeding will be done routinely in vitro before selected generations of embryos are released for transfer. There will be distinct lines of cattle derived from global Holstein populations with genes from other breeds, and these lines will populate approximately five latitudinal regions globally. Major advances will be made in understanding why health and productivity differ among herds within common physiographic settings. We will learn how cows within a herd communicate, and our robots will communicate with cows in their herd. Milk and dairy products will be much more specialized, with greater emphasis on fatty acids, bio-active nutrients and amino-acid sequences in order to feed the global population most efficiently.
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