Naturalised pastures across the higher
rainfall (>600 mm) perennial pasture zone of south-eastern Australia are
less productive than they were, while sown pastures fail to maintain their
initial levels of production. Several factors have contributed to this,
including lack of knowledge of suitable grazing practices, weed invasion,
increasing acid soils, rising water tables and poor management practices
during droughts. A key issue in each case is the decline in perennial grass
species which is both a cause and effect of the decline in productivity and
sustainability of these ecosystems. This paper introduces a volume devoted to
the largest collaborative study done to evaluate tactics for better grazing
management and to improve the sustainability of perennial pasture ecosystems.
Grazing practices to manage the composition of pastures have been largely
neglected in pasture research, but are an important first step in improving
pasture sustainability. This paper also outlines a new, open communal grazing
experimental design which was developed and used across 24 sites on farms in
New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia, to evaluate tactics
for grazing management. The general aim across these experiments was to
maintain (if adequate) or enhance (if degraded), the proportion of desirable
perennial grasses in the sward to achieve more sustainable pastures. The
results will provide the basis for building more sustainable grazing systems.