The economic benefits of forage improvement in the United States

Abstract

The United States is a large country with a diversity of forage ecosystems and forage species to fill the varied management options within each ecosystem. For example, the American Seed Trade estimates seed of 5,500 varieties representing 1,500 grass and 4,000 legume species are produced annually. The economic benefits of forage improvement are both direct (seed and hay sales) and indirect (saleable animal products, nitrogen fixation and conservation uses). The benefits of improving forages through breeding are likewise important due to the current use of improved varieties to underpin these systems and their direct and indirect products. Because of the diversity of species and management systems, only a few case studies were examined in this paper to estimate these benefits. These were the alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) industry (economic value of US$8.1 billion per year), the forage and livestock systems of the southeastern USA (economic value estimated overall at US$11.4 billion per year), and switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.) and its potential use as bio-energy feedstock (economic value of needing an additional 28 million acres of production to supply the estimated future feedstock needs). The overall conclusion is that the economic benefits from forage improvement in the USA have been, and continue to be, immense. However, future resources are going to fewer crops, and these crops are the ones that have greater economic value and where biotechnology can be applied. This will favor alfalfa and penalize forage grasses. Even for crops with an identifiable path to market, this concentration of resources in fewer hands requires development of consortia where organizations can leverage their resources with others who possess complementary resources. The Consortium for Alfalfa Improvement is a good example of how this could work.