Technical Abstract: All breeding programs share one common objective – to improve a species for use within a target population of environments and a particular agricultural context. Beyond this common goal, the objectives of forage breeding programs are as varied as the species upon which they are based and the breeders who develop and implement them. Breeding objectives are framed within the agricultural context and the environments in which the species will be used. This chapter provides a review of literature and brief descriptions of many breeding objectives related to growth characteristics, biomass yield, nitrogen economy, forage quality, and stress tolerances. The ultimate choice of breeding objectives depends on many factors. Breeders must often make difficult decisions with little scientific information of direct relevance to the specific objective. Practical plant breeders are much more than people who develop new cultivars – they are problem solvers. The use of forage breeding to solve forage production problems requires sufficient scientific knowledge to identify the problem, prediction of a potential solution with a reasonably high degree of certainty, identification of reasonable and reliable breeding methods and traits, and the presence of sufficient genetic variability to create new germplasm that is sufficiently improved to assist in solving the problem.