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Wikiloc
-a free tool to record grazing activitiesSolution name: “Wikiloc”- a free tool to record grazing activities
Aim: To provide a solution for helping farmers who needs to improve their grazing routes, to know more about their routine grazing activities, to memorize the routes, stopovers and to use grasslands more sustainable.
Description:
Grazing is an essential element of livestock production and might be challenging at different geographies. Grazing of animals both on natural and improved grasslands periodically might cause many adverse effects on the natural habitat and is unsustainable. It is also very much risk of contagious disease distribution grazed by various flocks at the same region.
Having said above challenges, a free GPS recording system would be very much help for farmers who wants to control their grazing activities simply with a smartphone. With this free app it is possible to track records by the farmer when, how much and where exactly they graze and keep these records for free to forever. Taking and uploading photos to the route is also possible.
Wikiloc is a free website and application that offers for free GPS trials and waypoints that members (free registration) can upload and share. This mashup shows the routes in frames showing Google Maps (with the possibility to show the layers of World Relief Map (maps-for-free.com), Opens Street Map, the related OpenCycleMap, USG Imagery Topo Base Map and USGS Topo Base Map). The service is also available in Google Earth. There are mobile apps for Android and iPhone. The product is offered in many language (Spainish, English, French, Italian etc.. and has more than 11.6M tracks of dozens of activities in many countries and territories. All the data could be used and transferred on the computer or smart phone.
Topic: Nutrition / Management
Production: Dairy / Meat
Animal Category: All
Issue: Grassland and grazing management (ewe)
Level of Solution: Practical
Country: Turkey
How to implement it
Farmers need a simple smartphone and download the app from the Wikilog website: https://www.wikiloc.com/
- Free register from that website
- Press the record button before grazing.
- Press the finish button when grazing finishes and you have simply the route in your account as fallows;- even with many information’s you can add ( photos that you can take during grazing, pointing a stopover, water source, vegetation etc..)
Expected benefits
- Recording all your grazing route data
- Better management of grazing with zero cost
- Useful communication between farmers
- Better grassland quality- less environmental degradation
- Needs a shepherd to accompany the flock
Cost Benefit analysis
Using wikiloc while grazing will help to benefit more from grassland because they will be able to communicate from the application. The only extra cost involving the purchase of a smartphone is very small, indeed most of the farmers have it nowadays. Because the animals graze all the day they will need less concentrate and forage.
Sustainability analysis
Wikiloc application is a free tool which does not need any extra cost. This application has no negative impacts to the environment. It has a positive impact on grazing efficiency and land.
Prerequisites and/or limits
- Basic technology usage knowledge
- A smartphone
Information Source / Useful links
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