Integrating agentic artificial intelligence into pasture-based dairy systems: Applications, governance, and future directions

Abstract

Digitalization and artificial intelligence (AI) provide opportunities for improved management of pasture-based dairy systems. Agentic AI, where autonomous systems can perceive and act independently of humans, are potentially transformative. This mini-review explores the potential use of agentic AI to address key challenges in pasture-based dairy systems. Applications include autonomous grazing animal health prediction, environmental modeling, and virtual assistants. Agentic AI can integrate multiple data sources to support real-time, farm-specific decisions. It also presents opportunities for employee training, enhanced advisory services, and digital twin modeling. However, deployment of agentic AI introduces governance, ethical, and socio-technical considerations. Issues of data ownership, transparency, explainability, and trust must be addressed. The experiential and tacit knowledge of farmers must be integrated into AI systems through hybrid intelligence (human and AI). Oversight models ranging from Human-in-the-Loop to Human-in-Command are necessary to ensure safe and responsible use. Future research should focus not only on technical AI development, but farmer-centered design, robust assurance frameworks, and inclusive and responsible innovation ecosystems that align technological progress with dairy sector, civil society, values, and needs.