Editor’s Choice: Can collaborative adaptive management improve cattle production in multi-paddock grazing systems?

Authors: Sheley, Roger

Submitted to: Rangelands
Publication Type: Other
Publication Acceptance Date: 3/6/2021
Publication Date: 3/6/2021
Citation: Sheley, R.L. 2021. Editor’s Choice: Can collaborative adaptive management improve cattle production in multi-paddock grazing systems?. Rangelands. 43(2):86-87. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rala.2021.02.005.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rala.2021.02.005

Interpretive Summary: Livestock producers and land lovers throughout the world are always looking for new ways to improve rangelands, while extracting the necessary goods and services. This represents the first experimental investigation of the contributions of using a collaborative approach to livestock production in a multi-paddock rotational grazing system where high numbers if animals were increased over a shorter duration with rest. The group was able to increase individual cattle weights by constant monitoring and adapting their grazing management to take advantage of changes in plant communities, phenology, precipitation, and forage production across a very large landscape. The study supports the value of adaptive management (including monitoring) and having a larger pool of stakeholders with a larger suite of knowledge from which to make better grazing management decisions.

Technical Abstract: Collaborative adaptive management (CAM) is a widely emphasized resource management approach that seeks to engage multiple stakeholders in a structured, deliberative, and experimental management process to achieve desired land improvement. CAM integrates multiple interests and knowledge sources of diverse stakeholders to reduce uncertainty, accelerate learning, and foster stakeholders’ shared understanding of complex ecosystem dynamics and responses to management actions. CAM aspires to increase provision of ecosystem services above what would be expected from less adaptive or collaborative approaches to ecosystem management. In this Editor’s Choice article, the researchers found Cattle weights gains were increased with CAM above those expected with non-adaptive grazing management at a comparably high stocking density. This resulted from the flexible matching of animal forage demand to forage quantity and quality, which capitalized on inherent spatiotemporal variation in plant communities, phenology, precipitation, and forage production among ecological sites. If producers employ a multi-paddock rotational grazing system, the key advantage is the capacity to incorporate adaptive management, which provides greater livestock and ecological benefits than the potential ecological benefits derived from successive graze–rest periods alone. Their results imply that the development of a multi paddock rotational grazing strategy should emphasize adaptive management supported by monitoring data, rather than just technical design details such as the order and duration of pasture rotations.