Needs, challenges and opportunities of digital livestock farming in a cheese supply chain

Digitalisation in agriculture represents a transformative change towards the exploitation of advanced technologies to improve the productivity and sustainability of farming practices. This paper explores the needs, challenges and opportunities related to the implementation of digital livestock farming in the context of Pecorino Toscano PDO cheese production, focusing on improving the efficiency and sustainability of sheep farming practices in Tuscany. Using a Living Lab approach, stakeholders collaborated to design an FMIS prototype and assess its suitability to address the specific issues of this sector. This tool supports agricultural operations and improves data-driven decision-making, embedding functionality for herd management, veterinary assistance, livestock performance monitoring and agronomic support. The use case methodology led to defining goals for improving farm-level operations and supervising the supply chain, leveraging secure data collection, integration and sharing between stakeholders. Challenges include cultural resistance to innovation, data privacy concerns, and technical and economic barriers. Opportunities include operational advantages, technology appeal, market demands for product traceability, and institutional support for digitalisation. This work suggests that digitalisation can offer promising paths to modernise sheep farming practices in specific territorial contexts, mitigate environmental impacts and improve overall farm management in the Pecorino Toscano PDO supply chain, and looks at addressing issues through collaborative approaches to trigger change.