Ecophysiology of Pastoral Systems

Aplications for Sustainability

Abstract

Only during the last decades a conscience is being formed about the risks of the effects of unlimited exploitation of the natural resources and its consequences for the environment and the quality of life on the planet. In the case of native pastures, their conservation depends on the added value of other services, which are usually not taken into consideration. Preservation and quality of water, soil, and landscape, of cultural and other aspects are not valued; leaving only the profits generated form the sales of animals to the farmer. This profit is low because the management of the pastures do not allow them to express their productive potential. This is due to a wrong approach of research, which only recently has adopted a more analytical and explicative standpoint toward the processes leading to the production of forage and the behaviour of animals on pasture, substituting the traditional productive approach. The application of knowledge generated on morphogenesis of the different plant species, which compose the pasture, and the knowledge on how this morphogenesis affects the structure of the pasture and its consequences for ingestive behaviour and animal performance on pasture, is the only way to generate recommendations for management, which will lead to increases in production and profit without compromising the ecosystem, adding other values, which maybe one day will be sufficiently known by the farmer. This paper revises aspects of ecophysiology of forage and the ingestive behaviour of the animals, concentrating on native pastures; presents a conceptual model of the functioning of pasture; and some applications that have resulted in an increase in animal production and profits to the farmer, along with improvement of some indicators of sustainability of the ecosystem.