1. Sustainable Grazed Pasture
19th June 2019
Yoshitaka Uchida

2. Today’s goals
Students can answer following questions to understand the sustainability of “intensive grazing system” at various scale.
How can a farmer observe the whole paddock to understand the sustainability and why?
Is the diversity of grass species related to the sustainability of the grazed pasture systems? Explain.
Is height of the grass related to the quality of grass? Explain.
Fill the answers using the form at

3. Grazing – importance in agriculture
60% of agricultural lands -> grazed grassland
Supports our demands for “high quality” food.
Meat
Milk
Management is not simple (arguably).
Use of animals
Less cultivation/renewal of plants
Contour
Sustainability of the system
Farmers can maximize the productivity of the land while minimizing the environmental impacts
Not only in short-term but also in long-term…

4. Paddock scale evaluation
Visual observation of the whole paddock
Patchiness
Eating habits of animals – leftover?
Reproductive stages of grass?
Dung and urine patches

5. Grass species diversity
Identification
Survival of the sown seeds.
Quality of the pasture, estimated from the diversity.

6. Grass species diversity
Weeds
Elymus repens (シバムギ)
Kentucky bluegrass

7. Clovers
White clover
Red clover

8. Pasture quality/stability and diversity
Quality as feed?
Clover > Sown grass > Weeds
Climate tolerance
Timothy for frozen soils
Perennial ryegrass for intensive grazing
Cocksfoot -> generally drought tolerant
Mixed pasture
Resilient against various stresses
Hard to manage?

9. Pasture height and quality
Understand the concept of “tillers”.
Green leaves > Soft stems > Hard/mature stems > Dead leaves!
>15 cm – more reproductive/stem growth.
<5 cm – hard for animals to eat.

10. Summary
Observation of the whole paddock is very important to understand the large scale pasture quality.
Pasture species diversity is another factor but depends on the farmer’s management strategies.
The height and growth stage of the pasture have to be controlled by grazing.
Please complete the answers for the three questions (mentioned in the lecture), at
Do it now… (before lunch) one-two sentences/question is ok.