Rangeland Grazing
Livestock grazing is the primary economic use of rangelands. To maintain these lands' productivity and health, especially in a rapidly changing climate, effective management is essential.
This includes incorporating automated devices, using conservative stocking rates, varying grazing systems, strategically distributing water, and actively managing vegetation and soil. These practices help livestock producers adapt to climate events and ensure the long-term viability of their rangelands.
Methodology
Continuous Grazing: This technique is the traditional way to graze cattle on rangelands where cattle can graze a pasture for an extended period, with little rest for the pasture. This method reduces costs on fencing, reduces daily management requirements, and provides adequate animal gains when the correct stocking rate is used. This traditional method is effective when forage is highly available. If stocking rates are too high, continuous grazing can lead to overgrazing.
Rotational Grazing: This is a method which aims to mimic natural grazing patterns. Pastures can be divided into smaller grazing areas and grazed in systematic rotation to manage pasture consumption. Allowing grazed pasture to rest and regenerate for future grazing rotations. For animals, rotational grazing can help improve productivity, milk production, and weight gain. For pasture, it can reduce land erosion, extend grazing periods, and increase soil fertility.
Land and water management: Adequate vegetation coverage can prevent erosion by reducing impact of raindrops and slowing the flow of rain. Using grazing techniques to reduce overgrazing can reduce soil erosion. Water monitoring systems can help identify water leaks before significant loss occurs, and ensure water is managed year-round to increase animal health and performance.
Incorporating automated devices: Technology such as virtual fencing is seeing rising adoption in rangeland grazing; particularly on ranches with challenging terrain or brush cover. Virtual fencing can help rangeland farmers adapt better to variable conditions by containing animals within a desired area or move them across the land without the need for physical fences and manual labour.
Key Benefits
- Pasture management: Grazing techniques, such as rotational grazing, can extend grazing periods, increase forage production, reduce overgrazing, and provide consistent monitoring of cattle and pastures.
- Product quality: With increased forage, animal crops, and cattle weight and performance, farmers can deliver quality products to consumers.
- Animal Health: Ruminant animals grazed on pasture compared to feedlots typically have lower health and welfare issues.
- Efficient management decisions: Ranchers who adopt precision pastoral technology can track livestock movement and make management decisions remotely, reducing the need for constant human intervention.
- Combined practices: Ranchers who adopt a flexible approach experience better adaptation to variable environmental conditions by using traditional and modern practices.
- Reduce Costs: Ranchers who keep track of resources like water and food, minimise wastage, and optimise resource allocation, can save costs. Practices like rotational grazing can result in reduced fertilizer use, further reducing output costs.
Key Challenges
- Rainfall erosion: In periods of heavy rainfall, rangelands are prone to soil erosion, which can lead to poor soil structure, loss of nutrients, and in extreme cases, land and stock loss.
- Overgrazing: When rangelands are grazed continuously, for long periods of time, or grazed heavily, overgrazing can occur. Overgrazing can lead to the decline of rangeland resources such as soil erosion and nutrients, plant diversity, and desertification.
- Climate adaptability: Changes in the current climates could lead to increased droughts, wildfires, and extreme rain events. These can contribute to increased heat stress in cattle, soil erosion, and reduced forage quality and quantity. Strategic grazing, water, and land management can help increase resistance to various environmental events by increasing soil structure, water retention, and extending grazing periods.
- Invasive species: The invasion and spread of invasive plant species can occur from several situations, such as overgrazing. Control of these weeds is costly, and they can negatively impact forage quantity and quality, poison cattle, and deplete water and soil resources. Cheatgrass is one of the most environmentally and economically impactful species in the US. It grows rapidly in large numbers, competing with native species for water and nutrients. It dries out earlier than native species, providing fuel for wildfires and lengthening the wildfire season.
Global Context
Rangelands make up about half of the world's land area and are commonly used for livestock grazing due to their soil and vegetation characteristics. Grasslands alone cover a quarter of the Earth's surface, making livestock grazing the largest use of agricultural land globally.
Case Study
Within Australia, arid and semi-arid tropical areas are frequently used for extensive cattle grazing. In Eastern and Southern Australia, grazing management is often used to maintain pastures in an optimal composition and to alter the quantity and quality of forage needed for grazing animals.
Rotational grazing is now considered an effective grazing management technique in Australian grasslands, in combination with other practices such as pasture improvement, native grass use, and fertilisation.
The benefits of rotational grazing on rangelands include the protection against soil erosion, enhanced diversity, and productivity aboveground and increased microbial activity. This practice reduces the tendency for preferred species to be grazed and the rest periods allow for plants to replenish their root reserves, and better tolerate periods of drought, leading to enhanced soil structure and land conditions.
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