1 Challenges in the Pasture

Abstract

Abstract Cow-calf farms are abundant across the southeastern US and there is a wide diversity of farm sizes and types of farmers. Farms include small-scale part-time farms, and large commercial-scale farms, often integrated with other farm enterprises. Many farmers have full-time employment off the farm and little if any hired labor, such that there is little time to devote to farming activities. In contrast, large farms often have access to labor, equipment and other inputs that may not be available to small farms. The diversity of farms and farmer demographics makes extension programming challenging as motivational factors vary considerably. Many pasture management practices proven by research have very low levels of adoption including active grazing management, pasture renovation, hay testing, etc. We assume that all farmers are focused on profitability, but this is clearly not the case especially with small part-time farmers. Other motivations may be enjoyment of spending time with animals, time spent with family, improving animal welfare, interest in machinery and “gadgets”, and other non-farm interests including using a cow-calf enterprise to hold land in some kind of agriculture for future development. New management practices may make sense from a profitability perspective but might require the development of new skills that the farmer does not have. Additionally, there may be other barriers including access to necessary equipment, conflicting information provided by advisers, and expertise in simple practices such as planting and spraying. As an example, novel endophyte tall fescue (NETF) has potential to eliminate the negative aspects of endophyte infected tall fescue while maintaining the desirable agronomic characteristics. While NETF technology is research proven and has been available to producers for over two decades, adoption has been very slow. The Alliance for Grassland Renewal is a multi-state private/public collaborative formed to promote the appropriate adoption of NETF. The Alliance conducts workshops to teach farmers and their advisors about how to best implement the NETF technology. The collaborative effort provides a more uniform set of recommendations than was formerly available through each member state. Through workshop evaluations we found several important factors that limit adoption including 1) the balance of cost and benefit is unclear, 2) farmers have limited financial resources, 3) the land is rented or unsuitable for renovation, and 4) farmers lack of knowledge, and 5) farm forage reserves are limiting. Many of these pasture management practices are difficult to adopt because they require many sequential steps that must be completed in a timely way. This may leave the farmer hesitant to take the first step in the process. For practices that are very different than standard management, use of on-farm demonstrations and hands-on learning have proven valuable.