grassland News
-
Grassland and Muck 2017 is coming soon
Grassland and Muck, the triennial event organised by The Royal Agricultural Society of England, returns to Stoneleigh, Warwickshire on 24-25 May 2017. The two day, 190 acre event has something for every grassland farmer with a wide display of machinery, live demonstrations and grass plots, advice and technical forums. The Volac team will be on hand at stand 444, with advice and top tips to help ...
-
Abandoned wet grasslands can be rapidly restored
Wet grasslands abandoned less than 40 years ago can be successfully restored within a decade, a recent analysis suggests. By examining the findings of a range of studies, it identified the causes and consequences of abandonment and the key factors in successful restoration. Wet grasslands, such as floodplain hay meadows, are semi-natural habitats with either a high water table or regular ...
-
Abandoned wet grasslands can be rapidly restored
Wet grasslands abandoned less than 40 years ago can be successfully restored within a decade, a recent analysis suggests. By examining the findings of a range of studies, it identified the causes and consequences of abandonment and the key factors in successful restoration. Wet grasslands, such as floodplain hay meadows, are semi-natural habitats with either a high water table or regular ...
-
Phosphorus-rich soils support larger invertebrates
In a recent study, researchers have defined the relationship between soil conditions and nutrients with the health of soil ecosystems. The results suggest that organic grassland, rich in phosphorus, is supportive of large populations of bigger invertebrates. All living things are made up of chemical elements in certain proportions and the availability of these elements in the environment can ...
-
Bee-friendly agri-environmental schemes need diverse habitats
Diverse agri-environmental schemes which combine flowering crops with semi-natural habitats, such as grasslands and hedgerows, will be best for bees, new research suggests. The researchers examined the foraging behaviour of honey bees, bumblebees and other wild bees and found that all bees used semi-natural habitats, which were particularly important for wild bees, in addition to crops, such as ...
-
Populations of grassland butterflies decline almost 50 % over two decades
Grassland butterflies have declined dramatically between 1990 and 2011. This has been caused by intensifying agriculture and a failure to properly manage grassland ecosystems, according to a report from the European Environment Agency (EEA). The fall in grassland butterfly numbers is particularly worrying, according to the report, because these butterflies are considered to be representative ...
-
High-nature-value grasslands can be maintained by alternating between mowing and grazing
Scientists recommend policies that alternate between mowing and grazing to manage Europe’s high-nature-value grasslands. This comes after a new seven-year study found that a high plant-species diversity helps grasslands to maintain productivity and to resist depletion of phosphorus caused by livestock grazing and depletion of potassium caused by mowing. Grasslands with high levels of ...
-
The Timbaktu Collective wins a Lush Spring Prize
2015 Fellow Sid Rao (right) at the award ceremony for the Lush Spring Prize. In 2017, the Lush prize was awarded to 11 projects, totaling £200,000 in funding to support environmental and social regeneration. The winners demonstrate the variety of approaches that can be taken to create a more regenerative society: from restoring degraded landscapes to creating platforms that give a voice to ...
-
Grasslands: The future of sustainable agriculture
Grassland: Quietness and Strength for a New American Agriculture was written to increase our awareness of the vital role grass and grassland plants have in ensuring a sustainable future for American agriculture. Published by the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America, the book's content is geared toward agriculturists, students, the ...
-
Do agri-environmental schemes benefit insect pollinators?
Agri-environmental schemes (AES) do successfully enhance the number and variety of insect pollinators, research suggests. They are particularly effective when implemented in arable landscapes which also contain some semi-natural habitat. AES were introduced in Europe in the early 1990s in response to declining farmland biodiversity. However, evaluations of their efficacy for biodiversity ...
-
Fourth Fellows Summit Held in Europe
Anna Jamieson (2010), who runs Pasture Beef Sweden, hopes to preserve semi-natural grasslands in Sweden by creating a market for pasture beef and lamb. For Anna, having the opportunity to network with like-minded professionals is an important benefit of being part of the Fellows Community. "The Fellows Community gives me access to a whole range of people with different knowledge and experiences ...
-
Minimise your losses with best practice ensiling
Producing good quality silage requires care and attention to both the clamp and the ensiling process. If biological processes in the clamp go wrong, this can result in average losses of 20-25%. This years Grassland & Muck Event is taking place on 24-25 May in Stoneleigh and will include new ensiling talks, focused on helping you to avoid and minimise these losses. Dr Dave Davies, renowned ...
-
Chevrolet supports grassland preservation program
Chevrolet has become the first corporate participant in a public-private initiative that pays farmers not to convert natural prairie to large-scale agriculture, which would release gases that are warming the planet, officials said Monday. The automaker, a division of General Motors, said it has bought more than 39,000 metric tons of carbon credits from North Dakota ranchers in the prairie ...
-
Commercial forestry – benefits for biodiversity?
Commercial forestry, often slated as monoculture, may have an important role to play in maintaining biodiversity. This beneficial effect occurs in nearby fields grazed by livestock, rather than the forest itself. This surprising finding could be important for the conservation of grassland species, which have declined dramatically over the past 100 years as agriculture has intensified in Europe. ...
-
Erosion of forests and grasslands triggers alarm bells in Asia and the Pacific
Forest loss and degradation remain major problems confronting the Asia-Pacific region which, if not addressed, will leave future generations a legacy of damaged ecosystems and irrecoverable losses of biodiversity, FAO is warning. Forest and grasslands cover 57.5 percent of Asia-Pacific’s massive land surface and provide vital ecosystems that support agriculture and livelihoods, which in ...
-
Soil nitrogen increased through greater plant biodiversity
Increased plant biodiversity improves grassland soil quality by boosting its nitrogen levels, even in the absence of nitrogen-fixing plants, recent research has found. Previous research has shown that grasslands with higher biodiversity had higher levels of carbon and nitrogen. However, in the case of nitrogen it has been suggested that this was purely a result of increased numbers of ...
-
Will large amounts of soil carbon be released to the atmosphere if grasslands are converted to energy crops?
Grasslands in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) in the United States may be increasingly converted to growing bioenergy grain crops. Questions abound regarding the fate of carbon sequestered in the soil during the CRP program by perennial grasses if the land is converted to grain crop production and the potential effectiveness of no-till production systems to conserve the sequestered soil ...
-
Nitrogen mysteries in urban grasslands
Areas of turf-forming species created and maintained by humans for aesthetic and recreational (not grazing) purposes, i.e. “urban grasslands” are an extremely common, but poorly studied ecosystem type. There are over 150,000 km2of urban grasslands in the U.S. and many receive high rates of fertilizer, creating concerns about nutrient runoff to streams, lakes, and estuaries and emissions of ...
-
AgriQuip Named MAJOR Supplier in New Zealand
Major Equipment Intl Ltd welcomes AgriQuip as its distributor of MAJOR branded products in New Zealand. AgriQuip has a strong reputation of presenting and providing quality farm machinery throughout New Zealand. With a network of tractor dealerships throughout the country, AgriQuip is well placed to deliver unparalleled service and after-sales support in North and South Islands. “Major ...
-
The 5 Biggest Farms in world
In Farming sometimes size matters, so we at Herdsy have scoured the globe and have located the five largest farms in the world. The size of some of these, farms are staggering. What is surprising that all of the Top 5 are located in just two countries China & Australia! China has 393mn hectares of grassland of which 331mn is deemed usable for grazing. Australia has 250mn hectares of grazing ...
By Herdsy Ltd
Need help finding the right suppliers? Try XPRT Sourcing. Let the XPRTs do the work for you