Pasture-Based Dairy Systems in Temperate Lowlands: Challenges and Opportunities for the Future

Abstract

Improved efficiency in dairy systems is a significant challenge for the future, to meet increased food demand while competing for inputs, adapting to climate change, and delivering ecosystem services. Future grazing systems can play a major role to supply healthier foods within systems with a reduced reliance on fossil fuels and chemical inputs, while also delivering environmental, biodiversity, and animal welfare benefits. Can we design lower-input systems that deliver efficient levels of output in a positive environmental context? Lower-input systems will have a lower reliance on concentrates and inorganic fertilizers, and an increased reliance on extended grazing seasons and high quality forage. Multiple strategies will be needed to maximize nitrogen use efficiency, including a strong reliance on legume-based swards that displace inorganic nitrogen fertilizer. Expected environmental benefits include a reduction in GHG emissions and nitrate leaching, an increase in C sequestration and a reduced reliance on the use of herbicides and pesticides. In comparison with confinement feeding systems, the relatively low energy density and high climate sensitivity of grazing diets requires both effective pasture management and robust and adaptive animals. The appropriate cow for grazing systems must be able to harvest pasture efficiently by re-calving every 365 days to efficiently utilize peak pasture supply, achieve large intakes of forage relative to their genetic potential for milk production (i.e., aggressive grazers) and be adaptable to fluctuations in feed supply. Legume-based multi-species grassland mixtures can maximize the use of symbiotically-fixed nitrogen, and displace the use of inorganic N fertilizer. There is a need for system-scale experiments that use legume-based mixtures within paddocks, and in grassland leys within crop rotations. Moreover, lower-input systems will need a combined focus on research and knowledge transfer for rapid testing and implementation. New opportunities and requirements will arise as policy, society, and the markets demand a higher level of environmental sustainability from food systems and products. This raises the possibility of public-private partnerships for the demand and reward of provision of environmental benefits. To deliver these benefits, future food systems will need to be redesigned to incorporate the enhanced supply of a range of ecosystem goods and services, which should be better incentivized through the market price returned to producers.

Influence of Climate Variability and Soil Fertility on the Forage Quality and Productivity in Azorean Pastures

“…Pastures are multifunctional areas as they provide goods and ecosystem services, such as the maintenance of biodiversity, feed and shelter to animals [6]. However, several Monthly rain played significant positive roles on the concentrations of five nutritive parameters-namely, CP, Ash, DMD, OMD and EE.…”

“…Pastures are multifunctional areas as they provide goods and ecosystem services, such as the maintenance of biodiversity, feed and shelter to animals [6]. However, several factors contribute towards the quality, quantity and reliability of pasture production, and these include species [40], plant part, stage of maturity [41], soil type [42], altitude [43] and climatic variables [44].…”

“…These biodiversity erosion drivers particularly impact island ecosystems [5]. Adding pressures on ecosystem services are the major pressing global environmental challenges, while land cover and land-use change are leading contributors to habitat fragmentation, habitat loss and reduced biodiversity [6]. Forage pastures are the main source of nutrition for most ruminant livestock, contributing greatly to milk and meat production [7,8].…”

Review: Dairy Farm Electricity Use, Conservation, and Renewable Production—A Global Perspective

“…In a North American study, Belflower et al (2012) reported that a confined dairy had more than twice the per cow milk production of a pasture-based dairy (roughly 11,000 kg cow -1 y -1 vs. roughly 5,000 kg cow -1 y -1 ). As described by Delaby et al (2020), the high genetic potential for milk production of Holstein cows are unable to meet their potential in a grazing system without feed supplementation. This lower production rate is also observed in African and New Zealand dairies, many of which adopt a lower-input, lower-production farming strategy (Nacer et al, 2016;Podstolski, 2016).…”

Analysis of milk solids production and mid-lactation bodyweight to evaluate cow production efficiency on commercial dairy farms

“…The design of a grass-based model within global dairy production systems is indeed peculiar due to its high dependence on natural forces (such as climate) for the production of perishable feed, and grazing animals for the autonomous management of feed quality and utilization (Delaby and Horan, 2017). It is widely acknowledged that the overall integrity of this model of milk production is based on high productivity grassland management in combination with genetically elite animal genotypes capable of compact seasonal calving while efficiently converting grazed grass to milk fat and protein (milk solids; MS) (O'Sullivan et al, 2019ba;Delaby et al, 2020). Within such systems, opportunities to increase animal feed efficiency are limited and the amount of milk produced from a given amount of feed is a key measure of both the efficiency and environmental impact of the system (Grainger and Beauchemin, 2011).…”