The interpretation of dairy farm data using interactive visualization.

INTRODUCTION Information has a major role to play in the day-to-day management of farms (van Asseldonk et al., 1999). This process can involve the combined analyses of economic, genetic and phenotypic data (with the last of these being categorised simply as management and environment). The limiting factor is usually not the amount of information, but rather its accessibility, its interpretation and its efficient use. The task of retrieving relevant information for analytical purposes can be quite frustrating for producers, given the abundance of different organisations that collect it, as well as the variety of devices (both on and off farm) that have the capability to capture it (Pietersma et al., 1998).