Maintenance of previously cultivated land not now used for agriculture

Abstract

The area of fallowed land within the EEC, which by 1985 will have increased to 5 × 10 6 ha requires, because of different circumstances, differentiated means of maintenance. Maintenance of fallowed regions by sheep is a comparatively favourable measure, but it requires a fundamental re-orientation of the sheep breeder, so that in future, not the sheep but the preservation and maintenance of the land will receive the most emphasis. An expedient engagement of sheep in the maintenance of fallowed regions depends on: • Legal pre-requisites for grazing on large areas; • Division of labour in sheep farming; • Modest landrace sheep. Commercial crossbreeding or maybe multi-breed crossing to produce marketable lambs; • Artificial rearing of lambs; • Management conditions of sheep farming in paddocks, transhumance or stationary pastoral activity; • Size of herd and areal (600 ewes without offspring can maintain 150 ha of fallowed region, which is equivalent to 4 sheep/ha); • The nutrient production of the pasture (besides roughage production for winter feeding, straw and supplementary feed containing urea can be advantageous); • Housing conditions; • Supplementary management costs (25.00–55.00 $/ha); • The difficulty of obtaining enough staff as a consequence of the relatively poor pay for people working in the sheep-keeping profession. The characters of having simple demands and being hardly make sheep the most suitable instrument for maintenance of areas which are poor in terms of feed production (below 1 000 kg starch equivalent/ha).