Theme 26: Grassland Degradation
Description
A long term experiment was set to test the hypothesis that agropastoral systems could improve crop and animal production, being more profitable and sustainable relative to economical, biological and environmental aspects, than continuous and traditional crop and grazing pasture systems. Five farming systems are being tested: two traditional (continuous soybean annual cropping and continuous pasture cropping) and three agropastoral systems (two combinations of four by four years of rotational crop-pasture systems and one by three years of crop-pasture rotation). Animal production in continuous pasture cropping measured as liveweight gain/ha (LWG) are declining along the years in the sub-treatment without fertilizer maintenance. After five cycles of animal performance evaluation, average yields were 397 as compared to 444 kg of LWG/ha, in fertilized pasture. Agropastoral systems, in the other hand, have shown promising results of LWG, either in the one by three or in the four by four cropping combination, with animal production ranking from 547 to 789 kg of LWG/ha/year. Soil fertility in agropastoral systems increased substantially.
Included in
Agropastoral Systems an Alternative to Revert Pasture Degradation in the Cerrados of Brazil: Preliminary Results
A long term experiment was set to test the hypothesis that agropastoral systems could improve crop and animal production, being more profitable and sustainable relative to economical, biological and environmental aspects, than continuous and traditional crop and grazing pasture systems. Five farming systems are being tested: two traditional (continuous soybean annual cropping and continuous pasture cropping) and three agropastoral systems (two combinations of four by four years of rotational crop-pasture systems and one by three years of crop-pasture rotation). Animal production in continuous pasture cropping measured as liveweight gain/ha (LWG) are declining along the years in the sub-treatment without fertilizer maintenance. After five cycles of animal performance evaluation, average yields were 397 as compared to 444 kg of LWG/ha, in fertilized pasture. Agropastoral systems, in the other hand, have shown promising results of LWG, either in the one by three or in the four by four cropping combination, with animal production ranking from 547 to 789 kg of LWG/ha/year. Soil fertility in agropastoral systems increased substantially.
