Digitalisation and data-driven operations are transforming traditional agriculture, and the Kanava II system delivered for The Finnish Poultry Association is an excellent example of this development. Improving productivity and traceability, ensuring animal welfare, and guaranteeing quality are all key reasons for digitalising the entire poultry production chain.
“The world is changing, and primary production must change with it,” summarises Veera Lehtilä, Project Manager of the Kanava project at the Finnish Poultry Association. While the core mission of the industry remains putting food on the table, today’s consumers expect production chains to be ethical, transparent, and trustworthy. These values are difficult to deliver without high-quality information systems.
Poultry Production Under Control
The Kanava system is a solution developed to support poultry production operations and data collection, funded by the Finnish Food Authority and industry stakeholders. The system is owned by the Finnish Poultry Association, which acts as a cooperative organisation for industry players and a key developer of poultry production in Finland.
At the heart of Kanava is food safety, animal welfare, and productivity. The system is used to record both mandatory regulatory data—such as salmonella samples—and production results, including feed and water consumption, egg production, mortality rates, and environmental conditions. The resulting data ensures safety, for example, enabling Finnish eggs to be safely consumed raw and allows living conditions, growth, and productivity to be monitored in a truly data-driven way. The services cover the entire poultry value chain.
“Data-driven operations help identify situations that may compromise animal welfare,” explains Lehtilä. For example, a significant drop in water consumption within a flock may indicate that something is wrong. While paper-based production records can reveal issues to a diligent investigator, ready-made visualisations generated from digital data make observation much easier whether analysing individual farms or understanding the state of the entire industry.
“Rising living standards are changing how people view primary production. Animal welfare, productivity, and operations must be examined through clear, numerical facts,” Lehtilä concludes.
Self-Service and Collaboration Drive Efficiency
In addition to data, a well-designed information system also supports the development of work processes. Kanava reduces manual work and speeds up everyday tasks for producers. Sample orders, registering new flocks, and other routine operations can be handled automatically through digital workflows, making them faster and easier to complete.
Regulatory oversight also benefits from electronic collaboration. Poultry farmers can authorize their veterinarians to access farm data digitally. As a result, legally required salmonella inspections become significantly lighter: veterinarians can review flock sample results electronically even before visiting the farm. Inspection reports can also be forwarded along the production chain to egg packing facilities when needed.
An important background objective is the collection of a broader dataset for industry-wide development. Kanava plays a key role in advancing the data economy of the poultry sector.
“The more data-driven the industry becomes, the easier it is to support political decision-making with facts,” Lehtilä notes. Proven high quality also has trade policy significance. When the results of the salmonella control program can be reliably demonstrated, it provides a competitive advantage in trade.
A Long History in the Cloud
The Kanava II modernisation project, completed in 2022, expanded the system, previously focused on salmonella monitoring, to cover the entire poultry production lifecycle. At the same time, the runtime environment was updated to leverage the latest cloud services.
The renewal also addressed evolving fieldwork needs. The new Kanava system is available on mobile devices, and data can be collected even without an internet connection. As a web-based application, further development is fast and cost-efficient. Connections to on-site equipment, such as label printers in offices, have been implemented by running parts of the application locally. Azure’s versatile data integration capabilities make this hybrid model straightforward.
As is typical with tailored business systems, the project required deep domain understanding, close collaboration with users, and careful implementation. Once completed, such systems are usually highly cost-effective and reliable. During Kanava’s more than 10-year journey on Azure, there have been no significant disruptions, and maintenance requirements have been minimal. This is precisely the promise of PaaS solutions: focus on solving business problems and leave platform maintenance to others.
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