A more quantitative approach to pasture renewal
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33584/jnzg.2015.77.460Abstract
On New Zealand dairy farms the level of pasture renewal has been estimated at 6% and 8%, with one analysis suggesting greater levels would benefit the economy. There is little research on how farmers set a renewal level, but we suggest five main drivers: crop requirement, historical, an event response, development and cost/benefit driven. This paper presents a case study using a cost/benefit approach to pasture renewal for Willsden dairy farm in Canterbury, which has renewed 28% and 38% of the property in the last 2 seasons. On this farm spray-drilling Italian ryegrass has shown an estimated 1.7 t DM/ha/year extra yield in the season of sowing, with a net value of $1090/ha, suggesting a payback period of around 5 months and a 198% return within the season of sowing. This case study shows there is a significant opportunity for dairy farmers to profit from better use of weekly pasture cover information to plan pasture renewal, to better assess the success of any renewal, and for pasture management software developers to provide automated analysis options to support a cost/benefit pasture renewal strategy. Keywords: pasture renewal, spray-drill, spraycultivate, perennial ryegrass, Italian ryegrassDownloads
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Rights granted to the New Zealand Grassland Association through this agreement are non-exclusive. You are free to publish the work(s) elsewhere and no ownership is assumed by the NZGA when storing or curating an electronic version of the work(s). The author(s) will receive no monetary return from the Association for the use of material contained in the manuscript. If I am one of several co-authors, I hereby confirm that I am authorized by my co-authors to grant this Licence as their agent on their behalf. For the avoidance of doubt, this includes the rights to supply the article in electronic and online forms and systems.
