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Grasslands – and the grazing livestock they support – have been fundamentally important to Scotland’s people for millennia. Some of this is easily quantified: grazing livestock are, for example, an important source of employment in rural areas, providing vital economic opportunities in some of the country’s most fragile communities.
Meanwhile, there are fewer but larger pasture and grazing operations, reflecting broader national trends. Fewer But Larger Pasture and Grazing Operations Pasture and grazing land serves as an important part of the national conservation picture. million acres, the amount of cropland used for pasture has steadily declined.
Some roam through pastures testing bunches of fescue, a cool-season grass, for the sweetness the frost brings. When farmers are able to control how, where, and when their animals move between pastures, they can more easily accomplish ecological goals that might include increasing soil carbon, reducing water pollution, or incorporating trees.
s DEFENDER has done us all a wonderful service by shining the light on the plethora of pharmaceutical efforts to create mRNA vaccines for livestock. The important thing to realize is that the popular backlash against off-the-shelf livestock antibiotic use came to a halt in 2021; these medications now require a veterinarian’s prescription.
Photo: Ansel Klein In this episode, we learn about integrated crop livestock management from two Northern California Farms. Ken Walker of Pasture 42 in Guinda, CA then walks us through how they incorporate sheep and poultry into their orchards, which were designed with animal integration in mind.
The Center for Grazinglands and Ranch Management is a coordinated, system-wide effort at Texas A&M aimed at safeguarding the ecologic and economic resiliency of grazing-land resources and ranching operations. She and Darron are co-leaders of the Southern Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education’s Soil for Water Texas Working Group.
The disorder, fescue toxicosis, costs the livestock industry up to $2 billion a year in lost production. Fescue toxicity is the most devastating livestock disorder east of the Mississippi,” said Craig Roberts, a forage specialist at the University of Missouri (MU) Extension and an expert on fescue.
However, as with all social-ecological systems , change in any part of the system necessarily requires or causes change in other parts of the system. Who manages land determines which scientific perspectives, crop choices, traditions, and skills shape the landscape, with profound implications for its ecological sustainability.
Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association (OEFFA) has announced its 2024 Farm Tour and Workshop Series. This annual series of public tours and workshops encompasses 24 events, featuring organic and ecological farms in Ohio and Michigan, plus several educational workshops. Most scheduled events are free and open to the public.
Ecological farmers may not agree on everything, but one thing we all agree on these days are these 5 essential elements: 1. The devastation among Florida’s orange groves and the diseases attacking coffee trees are symptomatic of one thing: violating all of the above ecological pillars. Let’s go to the heart of the matter.
He lives in a small, strawbale house, built in the trees next to the main pasture. He admits that wolves will present challenges for livestock producers, but he added, “There may be some interesting new opportunities that come up for ranchers and for all of us here in western Colorado. It’s the key to human survival,” he said.
Agroforestry is a sustainable land management approach that can be integrated into existing traditional crop and livestock systems. Silvopasture integrates trees into livestock production for pasture and animal health. has always been ecologically minded. Savanna Institute is an ideal partner to help implement this work.”
“Farmers are some of the best-placed people to help protect the ecosystem services found in healthy ecologies,” said Jared Phillips of Branch Mountain Farm who spoke on the panel alongside his wife Lindi Phillips. The Phillips’ farm, nestled in the Ozarks in northwest Arkansas, raises livestock.
Many of you realized that this is not what I’m advocating instead of pasture, but some folks jumped to the conclusion that I had all of a sudden abandoned outdoor chickens in favor of indoor protocols. I didn’t say to quit pasturing chickens. Nothing could be further from the truth. Folks, slow down and look at what I’ve said.
We talked about fake meat and the anti-livestock craze to save the planet from incinerating. Livestock must go. Let’s preach it loud and preach it long: authentic pasturedlivestock mimics historical abundance; eat and enjoy. How are your kids holding up to this “no livestock” narrative?
In its place, ‘agroecology’ was more explicitly recognised as a broad moniker for a range of practices that are grounded in biological / ecological farming; this has made the term more distinct in its definition. Kumar calls for “a new trinity for an age of ecology which has wholeness, integrity and cohesion”.
Few habitats are as anti-ecological as sterile conventional suburban and urban spaces. As a pasturedlivestock farmer, do you know how much I covet clover? It’s the queen of forages, favorite of all domestic livestock, including chickens. Our several open sheds contain countless barn swallow nests.
Practices That Sequester Carbon and Increase Resilience Within EQIP and CSP in particular, the practices that receive funding through the IRA tend to accomplish multiple ecological goals. Perennial livestock systems have similar capacities to reduce vulnerability to climate impacts.
Before RiCharde and his wife, Anna, took over Good Wheel Farm outside of Asheville in 2019, he managed the livestock operations for another farm in Western North Carolina. He’s still in the livestock business—cows, chickens, and goats all graze across Good Wheel’s 42 acres. And everywhere he looked, trees had leafed out.
As a renowned environmentalist, his cattle farm coupled with ornithology give him unique authenticity in the ecology-farming debate. An avid lover of grassland wild birds, over the years he has developed credible protocols for grazing, mowing hay, or clipping pastures in a way that preserves grassland birds.
Are you interested in how to have a more ecologically and economically enriching grass farming experience? Three of our urban patrons will talk about why they buy pastured meat and poultry. Finally, beloved alternative veterinarian Will Winter will talk about how to have healthy commercial livestock without pharmaceuticals.
Hans Herren, Barbara Gemmill-Herren and their daughter Gis è le Herren spoke about how they utilize their combined studies and experiences in ecology, biological control, entomology, and nematology to guide the operation of their small farm. We kicked off the event with introductions from the family.
Honorable Mention for the “Most Economically Beneficial Innovation” went to the Livestock Yield, Pricing & Margin Tool, created by Olivia Tincani & Co., a simple tool that helps farmers record (or simulate) livestock harvests.
Graves looks at how the country-wide shift from traditional mixed farms with carefully managed infield-outfield systems to mass livestock farming – primarily of sheep – has taken its toll.
We decided to call the farm ‘Redtail Farms’ as an ode to my father and his love for birds and ecology — and the way he farmed as closely with nature as he could,” says Griebel. They are committed to farming with nature, not against it, and restoring the natural grassland ecology. Pigs can’t survive on pasture alone,” he explains.
And energy- and livestock-intensive farming methods since then have continued to raise the sum of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, the goals for soil health receive more focus on grass-based livestock systems and nutrient budgeting. These two challenges, however, can be addressed by the same suite of solutions.
Local residents have been working to restore and conserve the deforested land through sustainable, ecologically-oriented farming methods. We began to divide up pastures, create agroforestry systems where we have vegetation that provides shade and food for the animals, and we began to rotate the cows in the 52 lots that we have today.”
Advocates of agroecology, including farmers and growers that use organic, regenerative, biodynamic, nature-friendly and pasture-fed practices, argue that a more profound change is needed – that the status quo, with its entrenched interests and problematic power structures, cannot persist.
But as we understand ecological systems better, we have come to realise that, while they can be very resilient, at some level of degradation they reach tipping points at which they flip into new states far less conducive to human life. We have also found that cattle are ideal for grazing our wood pasture sites.
Removing livestock for even 10 years from this land can cause an ecological disaster in grassland communities.” Grassland foliage relies on the grazing and trampling of livestock to keep the soil aerated and the plant community growing. Fencing, for example, may be needed to protect water systems from livestock.
Today, Rod and family raise Angus cattle and a flock of Katahdin sheep on open native and annual forage pastures. Cattle + Crops for Soil Health & Protecting Vital Watersheds One of the strategies implemented at Valley View Ranch is integrating livestock management with crop management, says Rod.
Sheep and cattle are their primary livestock, but they also have layers for eggs. Brent and Anna and their family raise pork and chicken on pasture. They have also raised other livestock and poultry through the years. Most of their meat sales are sold through their on-farm store. In this video, Brent shares who (i.e.,
About once a month, I gulp when I pay £24 or thereabouts for my bird, which justifies its steep price tag because it is reared to the strictest legal ‘traditional’ and truly free-range standard, a slow-maturing variety fed on pasture and cereals, killed at 81 days. How often have you heard that said?
xxxiii] This is largely due to ammonia emissions from heavy fertiliser use and intensive livestock farming. For example, modelling studies suggest the adoption of silvopasture (integration of trees and livestock) on 10% of the UK’s grassland area could sequester 5.477 to 13.39 25 and 60% of the UK’s total current livestock emissions).
Date: Wednesday, December 7th, 2022 at 1:00PM Presenter: Dr. Jillian Bainard, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada Cost: FREE Producers rely on grazing native, tame perennial pastures or stockpiled feed to typically feed their livestock.
Excessive proposed cost-share payments for livestock feed management. improving irrigation efficiency, restoring pasture, cover cropping, or nutrient and pest management). Retargeting two-thirds of the 50 percent EQIP set-aside for livestock practices towards advanced grazing management.
We’ve spent a couple of generations exiting historically normal tasks and behavior, from integrating livestock and crops, growing gardens, buying locally and cultivating domestic culinary arts. Our farm participated in a pastured egg nutrient study several years ago. Compare that to our pastured poultry model which requires 10 ft.
Altogether, more than 159 million poultry livestock in the U.S. What does that mean for pasture-raised poultry, which spend most of their lives outdoors and therefore are at greater risk of contact with contagious wild birds? In December, some 13.2 In the first six weeks of this year, 23.5 million have already died.
SFT Content Editor, Alicia Miller, provides an overview on this year’s Oxford Real Farming Conference, including one of the SFT’s sessions, Grazing for Good, which took a closer look at the integral relationship between livestock and the biodiversity it supports. The Sustainable Food Trusts session on Grazing for Good?
Against the backdrop of a carefully managed perennial pasture, the gathering focused on legislative approaches to promoting regenerative farming and ranching practices, which the group believes can galvanize support across partisan and rural-urban divides.
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