Farming & Food
Grass provides the perfect diet for cattle and sheep. It is all they need to produce nutritious, healthy meat for people to cook and eat.
But grass can be tricky to manage. Its one aim in life is to grow, produce a seed head and then die. Only skilled grassland farmers can manage it to produce high quality animal food throughout the year – grazed out in the fields or given as conserved winter-feed, either dried as hay or pickled as silage.
The people I write about in these blogs are some of the best and most innovative farmers and chefs in the world. They look after their soils, their land and their animals and take great care to source and prepare the best meat possible. We should be proud of them all.
Stockman Grass Farmer newspaper is 65 years old!
Happy 65th birthday to the Stockman Grass Farmer – the quarterly newspaper edited and published by grazing guru Allan Nation out of Ridgeland, Mississippi in the USA.
Allan also has several books to his name including…
Grass platform brings lab research and practical farming closer together
A world-leading research facility that will mimic on-farm scenarios was launched in sweltering heat in Devon last week.
The North Wyke Farm Platform – part of Rothamsted Research and funded to the tune of £3.6million by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), will bring scientists from across the world to the UK to work on grassland.
Large amounts of data will be generated to help identify practices which are productive and economic for farmers, but that have the least negative environmental impact
Grass research can address major challenges
Professor Jamie Newbold, director of research and enterprise at the Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Research (IBERS) at Aberystwyth University, believes that ruminant feed research can address the big social and environmental challenges of the next few years. Speaking at an event last week organised by the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) which funds applied collaborative R&D, Professor Newbold said that grass breeding and research into the inner workings of the rumen will
Costs of production matter – in England and Finland
I hosted two farm business advisers from Finland last week – taking them to see dairy farmers in England and Wales, the largest grass trials site in the UK and ending up at a rain-soaked Grassland UK. They looked in envy at Tim Downes’ and Neale Manning’s...
Watch Pasture Promise TV
Tune into a new internet TV service dedicated to pasture farming and the vital role it plays in all our lives at www.pasturepromise.tv
The idea of agricultural author Graham Harvey and rural media specialist Trevor Bailey, Pasture Promise TV sets out to show how good grassland management can help farmers reduce their costs, boost their incomes and enhance biodiversity on their farms.
Switch to grazed grass makes farm profitable and sustainable
Somerset dairy farmer Caroline Spencer has turned the family’s tenanted mixed farm on its head over the past few years – making it a more profitable and sustainable business.
The 147ha farm used to run a high yielding, autumn calving herd of 140 Holstein cows, alongside arable enterprises. But, said Caroline at a farm walk organised by the British Grassland Society, the Royal Association of British Dairy Farmers and DairyCo this week, they were always busy and never made any money.