As part of the DLG Agrifuture Insights Survey for Winter 2025/26, dairy farms were asked about their planned investments. These investments focused on structural improvements and various technical areas on the farms.
At the time of the survey, the top priority was the construction, renovation, or expansion of barns. This demonstrates a willingness to invest and a commitment to further developing their operations. Currently, this is likely to involve primarily barn renovations and expansions rather than the construction of new barns.
AMS with highest significance regarding Milking Technology
In milking technology, automated milking systems (AMS) dominate investment decisions. The main reasons for this are reduced labor requirements—and the growing difficulty in finding qualified personnel for milking. In this case, the robot takes over a task that accounts for a large portion of routine work hours on a dairy farm and for which it is becoming increasingly difficult to recruit qualified staff.
The situation is different when it comes to feeding technology: Here, farms are primarily planning investments in conventional technology—that is, traditional feed mixers rather than automated feeding systems. The reasons are multifaceted: Investing in automated feeding systems is considerably more expensive than in feed mixers, requires a specific barn layout, and, depending on the system, makes subsequent retrofitting virtually impossible.
Cameras and AI: Significant Growth Expected
Camera and sensor technology are on the investment list for about 20 percent of farms each. Sensor technology is already widely used in dairy farming—consequently, the immediate need for investment in this area is lower. Camera technology, on the other hand, is a technology of the future: large amounts of training data are required for powerful AI-supported analysis. The potential of this technology is high—its economic maturity for widespread practical application and a wide variety of use cases is only a matter of time.
AI-based data management remains particularly exciting. Fifteen percent of farms intend to invest in this area. The market offering has room for growth; farms generate a vast amount of data across various systems, which has so far rarely been consolidated into a single evaluation system for analysis and decision-making. Yet this is precisely where the potential lies—in no other area is the momentum likely to be as great in the coming years.
DLG-Agrifuture Insights – a comprehensive view on agricultural development
DLG-Agrifuture Insights is the DLG knowledge brand and platform for international trend analyses in the agricultural sector. It examines the business environment in agriculture in Germany and worldwide. For this purpose, farmers and people from agribusiness, science and consulting are surveyed annually on their assessments of the economic situation and development of agricultural businesses, as well as technology trends and innovations in the individual business sectors. A total of 1,772 people took part in the current survey in winter 2025/26.