Organic grassland farming in the Netherlands: a case study of effects on vegetation dynamics

Abstract

Summary The increasing area of grassland under nature conservation requires management that is less expensive than haymaking or extensive grazing without return from agricultural exploitation. Keeping dairy cattle in nature reserves, without any fertilizer application and with rotational grazing—one of the many forms of organic grassland farming—was shown to be economically feasible: the dairy cattle produced 6000 kg milk animal −1 year −1 . During an 11-year period the forage quality of the herbage—net energy value, digestible crude protein content and the potassium—and phosphate-contents all remained sufficiently high. The Ellenberg indicator value for nitrogen soil fertility decreased slowly. The plant species composition changed from a Poa trivialis – Lolium perenne towards a Poa trivialis – Holcus lanatus community. Species of wet grassland communities such as Lychnis flos-cuculi , Caltha palustris and Carex aquatilis remained rare in ditches within the fields and did not spread into the fields. It became clear from the present study that cessation of fertilizer application alone, when starting from eutrophic soil conditions, is not sufficient to restore mesotrophic plant communities such as Calthion palustris and Junco-Molinion , but has the potential to restore plant communities of pastures such as Lolio-Potentillion and Cynosurion cristati .