“Small Data Becomes Big Data When You Think about This Thing Distributed over Millions and Millions of Farms and Animals”

The Resonance Test 68: Sidhant Jena

Data and dairy. You might not link these two words together—unless you’re Sidhant Jena, Co-Founder and Director of FaunaTech. In this conversation with our Duncan Freake, Jena explains his mission to bring “precision farming” to small farmers all over India (“probably the largest dairy producer in the world”) and, perhaps eventually, the globe. Jena is obsessed with solving the last-mile problems of dairy farmers, and he’s using the smartphone as a diagnostic tool to measure the quality of milk and health of the cows that deliver it. Freake says: “Last-mile measurement enables last-mile interventions,” and Jena compares what he’s doing to our recent experiences with COVID testing: “You need to do testing, and testing leads to tracing, and tracing leads to isolation.” Listen and learn about dairy data aggregation and sharing, the nuances of milk pricing, collaborating with government regulators, EHRs for farms, the quantified cow, and more. Intrigued? Pull up a stool and hit the play button.

Host: Kenji Ross
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon