Forage Fantastic

By Brenda Frick, Ph.D., P.Ag.

Forages have huge potential benefits both to the organic farm and to the environment. Forages are plants eaten by livestock. This includes everything from native pasture, to timothy/brome/alfalfa mixtures, oat/pea mixes for silage, alfalfa for pellets, to weedy crops cut for feed. Forages can be grazed directly or cut, baled, or ensiled.

Of course, before cultivation much of Alberta was grassland, and provided forage to vast herds of livestock, both above and below ground. Today, pasture provides an economic alternative to cultivation of “marginal” land; a way of getting value from grasses we can’t digest ourselves. Feeding livestock with forage based diets increases the levels of conjugated linoleic acid, omega-3 fatty acids, beta-carotene and alpha-tocopherols in their products: meat, eggs and milk. All are associated with human health benefits.

Rotational grazing systems can improve forage quality, keeping grass young and green. Tame forages may be needed to allow plants to rest during critical periods.

Many tame forage mixtures are grass and legume combinations. Legumes have the advantage of capturing nitrogen from the air, and moving it into the soil. This improves the protein potential of future crops. Grasses provide more biomass in the form of carbohydrates. The combination provides food and housing to microbes, the soil’s livestock, adding fertility, reducing erosion and enhancing soil quality. It also provides for larger livestock above ground. If the crops are grazed, rather than cut and removed, both types of livestock can benefit.

Forage production makes weed management easier. Perennial forages can be very competitive, and because they are cut early in the season, they offer few opportunities for the weeds to mature. Alfalfa is particularly useful in eliminating tough weeds like Canada thistle. Likewise, including an annual silage crop in rotation greatly reduced annual weeds in trials at Lacombe. The benefit was primarily the result of cutting the weeds before they set seeds. Livestock producers also have the option of cutting a crop for green feed if it becomes too weedy. This reduces the weed potential for future crops, but still gives a useful product off the field that year.

Most weeds are themselves useful as forage. Swath grazing can utilize nutritious weeds that escaped management, or came up late in the season. Seeding a crop such as fall rye or late seeded oats for winter grazing can provide cover in the fall or spring when land is most prone to erosion.

Growing forages can increase an organic producer’s management options. For producers without livestock, perhaps partnership with livestock producers can bring the same benefits on a more regional basis.

 

Brenda Frick, Ph.D., P.Ag., is the Prairie Coordinator for OACC (the Organic Agriculture Centre of Canada) at the College of Agriculture and Bioresources, University of Saskatchewan. She welcomes your comments at 306-966-4975 or via email at brenda.frick@usask.ca.

Source
Forage Fantastic Spring Issue 2007 GO network newsletter

 

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Posted July 2007