Abstracts on Sustainable Agriculture (GTZ, 1992, 423 p.): Abstracts on integrated systems: 13. Grazing management: science into practice.

Abstracts on Sustainable Agriculture (GTZ, 1992, 423 p.)

Abstracts on integrated systems

		Acknowledgements
		1. Intensive sustainable livestock production: an alternative to tropical deforestation.
		2. Utilization of the african giant land snail in the humid area of nigeria.
		3. Important issues of small-holder livestock sector worldwide.
		4. Small ruminant production in developing countries.
		5. Microlivestock little-known small animals with a promising economic future.
		6. Assisting African livestock keepers.
		7. Deer farming.
		8. Economic constraints on sheep and goat production in developing countries.
		9. Sheep. Pigs.
		10. Strategies to increase sheep production in East Africa.
		11. Alternatives to imported compound feeds for growing pigs in solomon islands.
		12. Economic analysis of on-farm dairy animal research and its relevance to development.
		13. Grazing management: science into practice.
		14. Fish-farming in sub-Saharan Africa: case studies in the francophone countries - proposals for future action.
		15. Research and education for the development of integrated crop-livestock-fish farming systems in the tropics.
		16. Goats/fish integrated farming in the philippines.
		17. The sustainability of aquaculture as a farm enterprise in Rwanda.
		18. Double-cropping malaysian prawns, macrobrachium rosenbergii, and red swamp crawfish, procambarus clarkii.
		19. Rice/fish farming in Malaysia: a resource optimization
		20. Biotechnology in fishfarms: integrated farming or transgenic fish?
		21. Agricultural engineering in the development: tillage for crop production in areas of low rainfall.

13. Grazing management: science into practice.

Publ. of Longman Group, UK; ISBN 0-582-45010-1; 1990; £11.95

This is the latest book in the series 'Longman Handbooks in Agriculture'. It is an opportune time for the book to be published as research has advanced knowledge of grazed grassland considerably in the past 15 years. The author has been at the forefront of these advances.

In particular, the understanding of sward dynamics and the animal behavioural factors influencing intake have been clarified by research.

This has enabled the limitations to animal production from grazed grassland to be implemented to increase output. Reductions in government financial support for agricultural food products in developed countries will accelerate the move to lower input systems of production, which for ruminant animals means a greater reliance on grazing.

There are 20 chapters liberally sprinkled with tables and figures. Ten chapters deal with the principles of grazing including the grazed sward, the grazing animal, factors affecting herbage intake, food conversion efficiency and output from grazing systems. The resources of plants, soils, fertilizers and supplements are covered in four chapters. The final six chapters are devoted to applications, including grazing methods, sward monitoring and control and enterprise planning.

The book is written to answer the question of how the science behind grazing can be used by management to increase output, rather than how grazing management can draw on science to assist it, that is, it is science-driven rather than management-driven. Great reliance is placed on research experience in the UK, although the penultimate chapter on 'Enterprise planning and feed budgeting' reflects the author's more recent New Zealand experience. Extensive grazing on hills or rangeland is not covered, nor are grazing and plant species diversity.

The book is stronger on the principles of grazing mainly with intensive grazing. Being strongly research-based, it is directed more at the enthusiastic learner than at the superficial reader. Nevertheless this is an up-to-date, comprehensive account of the principles of grazing management, written by a world expert, which should make an important contribution to teaching in agricultural and applied biology.

1082 92 - 3/132

Integrated systems

Review, research report, Africa, Sub-Sahara, case studies, fish farming

LAZARD, J. et al.