Resilience in Forage and Grazinglands

Abstract

The current reality of population growth, resource scarcity, and climate change requires resilient agroecosystems to sustain food production and protect the environment. This manuscript reflects a combined effort of speakers at the 2017 C6 Forage and Grazinglands Division Symposium, which was titled “Resiliency in Forage and Grazinglands.” The symposium brought together speakers representing a diverse cross‐section of forage systems across the United States. Each speaker discussed resilience‐related topics from their specific region, including: the importance of diversity and use of complementary forages in grazing systems, how grazing and defoliation affect resilience, the importance of soil fertility and pest management, and development of decision aids to evaluate resilience in grazinglands. Several themes emerged that we propose would help improve the resilience of forage and grazingland systems: (i) identifying moderately diverse, site‐specific mixtures (grasses–legumes) for use in specific regions of the United States, (ii) greater use of complementary forage species such as C3 and C4 grasses to lengthen the grazing season and provide a buffer against weather variation, (iii) adoption of moderate defoliation intensities to help stabilize forage production and species composition, (iv) more attention to maintaining and improving soil fertility to improve the productivity of desirable forage species and reduce weed pressure, and (v) increase adoption of assessment tools to evaluate the relative “health” and potential resilience of forage‐livestock systems. An integrative management approach that combines many of these elements would help improve the resilience of forage and grazinglands to sustain high productivity under increasingly erratic and extreme weather.

Resilience, Stability, and Productivity of Alfalfa Cultivars in Rainfed Regions of North America

“…In this paper, the focus was on the genetic factor (i.e., differences among cultivars), but to design more sustainable forage systems, it is highly relevant to evaluate the relationship between resilience and the other factors (Lin, 2011;Oliver et al, 2015;Tracy et al, 2018). In this paper, the focus was on the genetic factor (i.e., differences among cultivars), but to design more sustainable forage systems, it is highly relevant to evaluate the relationship between resilience and the other factors (Lin, 2011;Oliver et al, 2015;Tracy et al, 2018).…”

“…Stability and resilience are concepts less understood, sometimes confused, and their evaluation is not straightforward (Urruty et al, 2016). 1c) is the ability to withstand a short-term crisis, perturbation, or shock, like a drought, by absorbing the perturbation and reorganizing to retain the same function, (Grimm and Wissel, 1997;Walker et al, 2004;López-Ridaura et al, 2005;Dawson et al, 2010;Tracy et al, 2018), also referred as resistance (Loreau et al, 2001), and robustness (Picasso et al, 2011, 2013, Sabatier et al, 2015Urruty et al, 2016). 1b) is the minimal variability of yields over time under normal conditions (Marten, 1988;Dawson et al, 2010;Urruty et al, 2016), also referred to as constancy (Grimm and Wissel, 1997;Picasso et al, 2010), reliability (López-Ridaura et al, 2005), or the inverse of variability (Loreau et al, 2001).…”

“…Stability (Fig. Resilience (latu sensu) comprises two complementary dimensions (Hodgson et al, 2015): the ability to withstand a crisis and not deviate during the perturbation (i.e., resistance), and the ability to recover from a crisis and the speed of this recovery (i.e., recovery or resilience strictu sensu; Isbell et al, 2015;Oliver et al, 2015;Tracy et al, 2018). Resilience (Fig.…”

Nutritive value and yield of reduced‐lignin alfalfa cultivars in monoculture and in binary mixtures with perennial grass

“…Alfalfa‐grass mixtures have been traditionally grown in the northern regions of the USA. A general conclusion from a recent symposium (Tracy et al., ) was that identifying grass‐legume mixtures for specific regions in the USA was a primary method of improving resilience of forage and grazingland systems. Increasing diversity in cropping systems helps to balance profitability and environmental concerns (Davis, Hill, Chase, Johanns, & Liebman, ), can increase yield (Bélanger, Castonguay, & Lajeunesse, ) and also reduces weed invasion (Finn et al., ).…”

Cattle select against the invasive grass tall fescue in heterogeneous pastures managed with prescribed fire

“…Our results show that tall fescue is underutilized relative to other forages, and thus maintaining high levels on pastures may be counterproductive to production goals in the Midwestern United States. We do not urge tall fescue eradication, given its cool-season productivity and resilience under stress (Tracy et al, 2018), but we suggest that ensuring that other forages are highly abundant on pastures may improve forage quality. In particular, warm-season grasses may enhance summer grazing (Paterson et al, 1994;Tracy et al, 2018).…”