Agriculture and Natural Resources
Brett Chedzoy, [email protected]
If I collected art, my house would be full of paintings showing peaceful pastoral scenes from some by-gone era. Reality and experience has taught me that whereas images of farm animals lazily grazing about tree-spotted meadows may be aesthetically pleasing, it probably won’t be profitable. There’s nothing wrong with this type of hobby grazing as long as paying for itself doesn’t rank high on the list of priorities.
About twenty years ago, Idaho rancher and now retired extension specialist Jim Gerrish coined the term: “Management Intensive Grazing”, or “MIG”. This was a radical shift in thinking from the traditional status-quo of allowing livestock to graze extensively for long periods in minimally-managed pastures. Through research and case studies, Gerrish and others showed that “intensive” management was key to making a grazing system as productive and profitable as possible. The increased level of labor inputs (management) by the grazier was spent primarily to rotate livestock more frequently to allow pastures to better rest and recover between grazings. The resulting pastures are, on average,
more lush and nutritious as compared to those that are continuously picked-over by fussy herbivores.
Related work was done in the 1970’s at Cornell where Darrell Emmick (retired NY NRCS state grazing specialist) showed a strong correlation between pasture subdivision, rotation frequency, and measurable outputs. The conclusion: the costs of increased pasture subdivision and rotation was a sound investment because the increased benefits (more meat and milk) outweighed the costs (more labor and fence).
Over the past decade, MIG has evolved into an even more intensive grazing system known as “ultra high density” grazing, or “mob” grazing. As the term implies, livestock are maintained in tighter groups and moved more frequently across pastures. Grazing animals are still managed to eat the best part of what’s available, but under the higher densities will trample and fertilize most of what’s left. This strategy largely eliminates the need to spray, mow and fertilize to control weeds and maintain pasture quality.
The Power of Livestock on the Landscape