Forage Management

Post by Clemson Undergraduate Charles Ruth

This second section has really focused me on the problems and struggles that ranchers across the state deal with every year. Some of the presentations at the TNC/Matador Ranch Symposium focused on these issues, like rangeland health and ranch ownership. The first MSU group focused on the rangelands in transition, detail what has been happening over recent years. Woody plant expansion in the Great Plains is causing the area to shift in ecosystem structures, where there were once open grassy prairies there could one day be fields filled with woody shrubs and trees.

Now someone from my initial perspective would not see this as a negative, more of a boon in fact. Many people have spent a lot of time and resources expanding and improving forest quality in the south, so of course a southerner in the Great Plains would initially wonder why ranchers are so interested in preventing this. But the MSU presenters showed that “through drivers like increase in atmospheric CO2, precipitation, and fire suppression”, this expansion of woody plants is taking one of the rancher's most important, and valuable, resources; space to graze their cattle. Ranchers need lots of usable grazing lands so that they can continuously have their cattle on grass throughout the growing season between winters. Dr. Matias Aguerre explained to us how important the efficient use of hay is to ranchers each year and how climate affects this. If they can maximize grass time and minimize the amount of non-winter hay they feed, then they are not spending as many resources before the resource taxing winter. Hay is a very finite limited resource between what ranchers can produce and what they can afford to buy. Changing climactic conditions could also affect the harvest of hay, changing the timing when hay is cut and thus available for use. Wetter conditions in particular affect both when hay is cut and how it is stored, because the wetter areas get, the more effort must be put into keeping hay dry to prevent spontaneous combustion or the growth of mold.

The greener trending landscapes means that while plants are able grow better and take in more Carbon, the amount of Nitrogen they carry will decrease. Cattle may be able to physically eat more forage, but the food resource quality will decrease, providing less total nutrition, which is needed to bulk up for winters and for sale. I had heard about this trend that is made possible in areas experiencing climate changes, where warmer temperatures and higher CO2 counts allow for more plant growth but less nutrition from consuming the plants, but I had never thought about how that would really affect such a large part of our lives. I had just assumed vegetables and fruits just wouldn’t be as effective at providing us with calories, but the effect it could have on meat and dairy production is likely much more detrimental.

We also spoke with John Pfister, an extension agent working for MSU, and he gave us some interesting perspectives on working with people and trying to understand and critique information we are given. He described himself as “growing up with a love for agriculture”, and this was quite evident in the positions he took towards management and interacting with ranchers. For the most part, I agree with his idea that to formulate effective policies, and to effectively get people to listen and buy into your ideas, you must approach things with balance. What he meant by this he explained using the political spectrum, where you shouldn’t be too far left or too far right. I do think that relying solely on one’s ideology is ineffective and not conducive to finding the best possible solution to problems, but I also don’t think that all ideology should be eliminated from this discourse.   Sometimes we need an extra guiding hand to keep our ideas focused.

 Mr. Pfister also presented an interesting bit of information to us regarding the grazing patterns of animals and the types of forage vegetation that are impacted by grazing. He explained how most species will preferentially graze on the more tender and succulent “increasers”, which is the newer and preferred growth of the forage. Once an area is cleared of this “increase” then the grazers forage on the “decreasers”, which is the hard, less tender growth of the forage. If they choose to not forage the decrease, then the grazers will move on to find new increase growth. Mr. Pfister used this to show how wildlife often forage around livestock herds because a correctly managed grazing of increase forage can allow an effective rotation of preferred forage. This explanation struck me as important and made me think back to the Paradise Valley situation where elk are amassing in the ranching valleys instead of dispersing back and forth between the park areas and the lower valley areas. Perhaps the elk have decided that not only do the valleys offer them protection from predators, but they also provide a reliable source of increase forage because the cattle also prefer this forage. I suspect it is not so much the amount of forage available but the amount of that particular type of forage that is helping to make them stay in the valleys.