Legumes for Our Land and Water

Using deferred grazing technology to increase the legume content of hill country pastures.

Deferred grazing, which involves grazing exclusion from late spring until after seed-fall typically in mid-summer, is a practice used by farmers to control feed quality and rejuvenate pastures. There is some evidence that a standard deferred grazing regime can increase legume abundance in dairy pastures, but there is a lack of knowledge on how deferred grazing affects legume abundance in hill country. In this Our Land and Water project, a proof-of-concept study was established to:
1. Determine the impact of deferred grazing and legume undersowing on legume establishment success and abundance on one North Island hill country farm in Waikato.
2. Use FARMAX to gain a greater understanding of how deferred grazing affects production and profitability.
3. Estimate the environmental footprint of the scenarios modelled in FARMAX.

Read full report in this output.