%)
We are working for a better environment. Through our methods we are able to reduce our dependance upon fertilizers, fossil fuels and increase plant biodiversity. Properly managed pastureland can increase its productivity and serves as a valuable carbon sink to help reduce greenhouse gasses.
Moderate-intensity grazing encourages plant biodiversity and mimics the natural prairie.
A team of researchers from Colorado State University led by Richard H. Hart studied plant communities in an area of Colorado that had been either protected from cattle grazing or grazed lightly, moderately, or heavily for 55 years. According to the investigators, "plant species biodiversity was greatest on the moderately grazed pasture. It had more kinds of plants than the lightly or heavily grazed pastures and was not as completely dominated by the most common species as the ungrazed enclosures. Diversity was least in the ungrazed enclosures, which were overrun by plains prickly pear cactus." The researchers went on to say that "Range land today, moderately or heavily grazed by cattle, looks much like the same range land looked in the 1800s, before the Great Plains were settled." (Learn more by reading Plant Biodiversity on Short grass Steppe after 55 Years of Zero, Light, Moderate, or Heavy Cattle Grazing.)
Management-intensive grazing (MIG) is grazing and then resting several pastures in sequence. The rest periods allow plants to recover before they are grazed again. Doubling the forage use on a given acreage is often possible with the change from continuous to controlled grazing.
In an "intensive grazing" approach, we try and manage the grass growth, staying in a phase two growth stage. During phase two, plants are neither taking energy out of the root system, nor spending energy in the plants reproductive cycle. Toward the end of this growth phase, forage growth is near its peak, and it is of high quality. This lush and abundant forage is ideal for grazing.
To ensure an effective strategy and to have forage available year round. Several different types of forage plants need to be used to make sure the cattle receive proper nutrition all year. (For more information see year around grazing management by Bruce Anderson)
Most fertilizers are produced with oil as the base. It takes ten tons of oil to produce one ton of fertilizer. We have interseeded clover into our pastures to fixate atmospheric nitrogen, providing nitrogen for other plants. This not only eliminates nitrogen runoff from our fields, which has contributed to a dead zone in the gulf of Mexico, but also removes nitrogen from the atmosphere a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. There is an abundant supply of nitrogen in the earth's atmosphere - nearly 79% in the form of N2 gas. However, N2 is unavailable for use by most organisms because there is a triple bond between the two nitrogen atoms, making the molecule almost inert.(3)
Fertilizer production in the US require 92 million barrells of oil and a considerable amount of natural gas. Most of the grain in the United state is grown for animal feed. Returning livestock to where they belong, the grass, would greatly reduce oil and natural gas consumption in the United States.
References:
(1) Kole, Glenn. 1992. We compared herds in confinement and herds that graze. Hoard's Dairyman. Vol. 138, No. 2. p. 47.
