15 Apr 2019
First "Smart Farm" Purchase
On April 15, 2019, the official ceremony of Smart Farm’s first contract signing took place at CARD Foundation’s main office.
Officials from the RA Ministry of Agriculture, Armenian National Agrarian University, representatives from international and local organizations, regional director of DeLaval Company, as well as farmers from different regions were present.
The Smart Farm’s became a reality with funding from the Austrian Development Agency, and later with FAO’s support. The design has been implemented by T.A.H.G. GRIG company, through joint efforts with DeLaval. The farm got the name “Smart”, because the conditions of internal saturation and the territories provided for animals, comply with international standards and requirements. During the projection of the farm, all the details were taken into account, in order to keep the animals on the farm all year round. All the conditions ensuring cows’ comfort were also taken into account (clean air, water, lighting, the height of the ceiling), and they, in turn, will contribute to the increase of milk production. The design of the farms has been developed for a free-range keeping of 12, 27 and 42 animals.
The innovation is the fact that these farms are built on the base of greenhouse constructions, enabling the saving of time and money during the construction, and the correctly selected height of the ceiling provides for clean air and proper ventilation. Due to the penetration of the covering, proportionate lightning and lack of shades are provided inside the farms, which prevents the presence of stress during animal locomotion. The milking process is carried out automatically at the milking parlor adjacent to the farm.
Aram Grigoryan from Geghashen community is the first lucky farmer, who is willing to invest financial resources and have two adjacent farms simultaneously (for 70 cows). He was the first who installed stationary milking system for his farm, in remote pasture. By the way, Aram decided to implement the idea even before the approval of subsidization of “Smart Farm”s investment program, by the government.