|
Photos
|
|
With a greater mix
of pasture species and a longer recovery period, the pasture on the
right is remaining productive in dry conditions despite the lack of
litter cover between plants.
How does a pasture remain productiive when the neighbouring pasture
with better ground cover appears to have stalled?
|
|
Longer plant
recovery from severe grazing allows plants to develop a stronger root
system
which then helps them buffer drought, wet, and cold.
|
This riparian area
is fenced off to protect the water way from grazing animals. The
local council has removed willow trees and cleared the river bank,
yet what is now happening? Can it be that brush species are
appearing
necessitating the need to mechnically clear streams on a regular basis
because of overgrowth problems?
|
|
Grazing is the
only tool that can restore biodiversity, regenerate soils, and feed
people at a regional level. No current or envisioned technology
can do this, nor fire.
|
One side of this fence is the
result of land management that draws from all the knowledge, wealth,
and
power that the government brings to bare on resource management, the
other
side of the fence is the result of greed, ignorance and the stupidy of
some
farmer. Which side is which?
|
|
Does it really mater?
For all intents and purposes they are pretty much the same. The
left side has no animals on it. The right does have animals but
at very light rates. Both practices create the same "patchy"
landscape because the lack
of animal impact produces overrest resulting in plants with lots
of
space between them.
|
The pasture cover here
averages 2,500 kg DM/ha. Yet what are the first plants any animal will
eat if let
loose in this pasture - the emerging lucerne and chicory seedlings.
Animals eat the freshest, tenderist plants of any species.
Pasture mass says little about pasture health.
|
|
Pasture probes cannot
distinguish between a seedling and a mature plant. The plant age
structure of
your pasture tells you whether it is healthy or about to burn out.
Without this knowledge pasture renovation will remain a perpetual
annual expense.
|
The spraying of gorse is a
never ending battle, but does spraying prevent the establishment of
gorse in the first place - no.
Grazing management provides the circumstances for the gorse seedlings
to establish and thrive, usually through overgrazing and creating bare
earth for the seedlings to germinate.
|
|
What does this mean for the
eradication policies imposed by regional councils?
How do you feel about paying for spraying contractors who's services
are not addressing why gorse is establishing, but also turning their
service into
a neverending annual expense?
|
What in this photograph alerts
you to the productivity of the land?
It is generally agreed that productive
soil has good fertility, structure, drainage, organic
matter, biology, and tilth.
The health of the soil influences the health of the animals that graze
it
and the humans that eat the animals.
|
|
Ploughing compacted soils
seldom
attracts flocks of seagulls because there is no food source in the
soil.
Without microscopic soil life no worms or arthropods would thrive and
be
a food source to higher life forms. The more soil life, the greater the
capacity
the soil has to buffer flood, cold, drought, and erosion.
Biodiversity determines
productivity
|