By Sunny Um and Seo Jeong Yun WIRED Korea

What would Korean farms be like when state-of-the-art technologies find their way into their management? Here is a glimpse into a future pig farm envisioned by Animal Industry Data Korea (AIDK), a Seoul-based company developing farm plans and healthcare solutions for livestock with the use of animal genetics and biometric data analyses.

Before leaving the house in the morning, a pig farm owner takes out his smartphone and opens an app. He takes a short farm tour on the screen, with videos sent from cameras installed at his indoor farm. Then he takes advice from the app, which lays out an entire healthcare plan for pigs.

The author of this plan isn’t a human, but an artificial intelligence-powered software.

AIDK introduced an AI-powered farm management plan, “Farmsplan”, at the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute in Daejeon on January 16. The plan was designed to have farmers increase the number of pigs that are sold.

Korean pig farms have had a chronic problem of piglets dying before they reach the weight appropriate for sale. The number of sold pigs per sow in Korea is far lower than in many other countries. It stands at 18 in Korea, 29 in the Netherlands, and 31 in Denmark per year, according to the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board.

The low productivity in pig farms is due to a lack of helping hands and the absence of an effective management system that quickly responds to or prevents an outbreak of deadly viruses or diseases, the Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) says.

AIDK says it has developed Farmsplan to put pig diseases under control. Farmsplan uses AI-powered algorithms and big data in devising to-do lists for farmers to keep their pigs healthy.

Farmsplan’s work cycle consists of four steps. First, farmers regularly draw blood from each pig and send them to AIDK. Then veterinarians and animal experts conduct blood tests and evaluate pigs’ immunity against viruses. They write to-do lists with the help of AI-powered algorithms analyzing test results and data. Veterinarians check the lists again, add more detailed diagnoses and make treatment recommendations. Lastly, the lists and recommendations are sent to the app installed on farmers’ smartphones.

Farmsplan is useful in particular to farmers breeding a large number of pigs. In Korea, one farmer takes care of more than 1,000 pigs in average, according to MSIT. It is not an easy job to find a sick pig among the herd. The job is now made easier with Farmsplan, part of which is about installing security cameras that monitor the farm. Farmers can access video data with their smartphones anytime, anywhere.

“With Farmsplan, farmers can check current conditions of their pigs and how their immune system would change over time based on big data,” says AIDK, adding that their immune systems will be able to fend off diseases when action is taken as suggested by its to-do lists.

Until now, the farms that adopted this plan used only one-fourth of antibiotics they used before, says AIDK.