The Aberdeen-based farmers’ co-operative Aberdeen & Northern Marts is to introduce an electronic auctioning system under which potential buyers bid via a computer terminal in their own homes or offices, rather than attending a cattle market: while such a system may well reduce livestock health risks and stress, its scope for raising stress levels among farmers seems immense as it speeds the bidding process up to stock exchange timing; it also offers a challenge to all expert systems programmers, for can a computer truthfully assess livestock form if it relies on information from the seller? If only Gabriel Archer was still around to give a pithy comment…
