This is one I struggle with. The further down I take it, the more diverse and leafy the regrowth is. The less I take, the less diverse and more apt to have stems/stalks that cause eye damage. Except for early spring and early fall. Seems taking it all at end of spring clears the way for warm seasons to explode. Same with end of summer.
With the lack of precip this year i have been attempting to find the median between the two. It is obvious where ive taken more and less. Cant tell ya which one is better.
Take more and they move thru slower. Take less and they move faster.
The original "land-keepers" (the buffalo/wildlife like elk, deer, etc., along with all the other diversity that was a part of the environment) in general would never "graze it all down evenly"......... They were not "limited" in where they could go to graze... it was "open range" in the truest sense of the word. Though some of these animals traversed a fairly limited and "defined territory", for many that territory may have been hundreds, even thousands of miles... with the herds migrating with weather patterns and seasonally. They would continually graze "into" new grass, often going across an area once, and perhaps not returning for a year,
or more.
We individually however, in an effort to achieve "efficiency" and "maximize income generated
on the limited land resource that each of us have available to us", translate "total tons of forage grown/consumed per acre" with the efficiency of our operation. "How can we extract the maximum amount of forage, at the highest quality possible, from each acre of ground"?
So we look at a field, and consider that if we would mow everything off down to the ground and harvest it, we could "measure" our total tons of forage produced per acre. There's "no" waste, because we were able to "harvest it all"... no trampled waste, no half-harvested waste. And if we harvest ALL of that forage across every acre at "boot stage", we will be able to capture the maximum tonnage at the highest relative feed value, from every acre, which translates into the highest amount of gain/milk per ton of forage consumed. THAT is how we measure our "efficiency". NO strictly grazing model can ever achieve this... because there will ALWAYS be times when the forage is not at "optimal boot stage"... you couldn't have enough animals to consume the whole area.... and then be able to "wait" for the regrowth to get to that point again... by grazing. And you simply can't continually harvest at that perfect stage of forage, particularly if you want to maintain the stand of forage inevitably... Harvesting it all, at boot stage, is a certain recipe for reducing the stand of the very forages that you want to be harvesting. Which is why, in a row cropping scenario, we need to rotate out of our perennial forage crops into annuals................ harvesting for maximum feed quality and maximum tonnage automatically weakens the plants. They're never allowed to develop fully (including importantly, their root systems, particularly for perennial-type plants) and "mature".
And this system doesn't take into account the efficient functioning of the soil, or the environmental/ecological services provided by it and the plants. It too narrowly focuses on just a couple of things (reductionist science)... feed quality and tons produced per limited amount of acres available to us. This mentality causes us to seek additional, quantifiable, immediate-return "X in = X out" ways to increase that tonnage within this model. Enter the synthetics, which we have to pay for, but which certainly can increase the data inputs in the model, at least, and particularly..., in the short term. So we SEE this immediate "X in = X out" , short term response, and we "learn" to gradually, over time, turn more and more to it, and become more and more dependent upon... those synthetically derived, commercially sourced, costly inputs. We continue to build out our model based on these now required support systems (supplied by commercial, costly sources). We even base our land cost expectations upon them (pay more for an acre, because we're confident that we can force more "efficiency" out of the land than the next bidder). The next generation doesn't even remember that the whole system USED TO function entirely without these inputs. Our whole production model becomes highly dependent upon all of these crutches, and eventually would literally crumble without them. THAT is the "treadmill" that we slowly but surely drift into. But we, as a people, don't recognize that we are literally killing the horse that is carrying us along.
By cutting (or grazing) short, we DO replace all of the old growth with
new regrowth, which naturally is more diverse and leafy... all plants are at their younger life stage. By cutting/grazing short, we open the canopy to expose forbes (more diversity...) that otherwise wouldn't compete with a tall, dense, more competitive grass cover, etc. This is precisely an important part of why tillage generates weeds.
@ClinchValley86,
everything that you state in your first paragraph makes perfect sense, in the short term... and in a production model that leans in part or in whole in the "maximizing efficiency" model described. And it's really difficult to describe and teach someone "how" to move toward a more "holistic" model (
@ClinchValley86, you're obviously strongly engaged in that learning process... much more than many who have little interest in that learning...). I'm still working diligently at learning how to do that, every day, and making adjustments to my own "how", every day. I don't think that we can ever assume that we will no longer BE "learning how best to do this". I think that we are beginning to recognize that in the "original land-keepers" model, overall efficiency of production
from (extractive) the system actually WASN'T DESIGNED TO BE maximized (or wasn't intended to be maximized beyond the
natural capability), but overall efficiency of the entire ecological SYSTEM, and environmental services and BALANCE provided as a result... WAS maximized.
WE are just one small cog in that big overall systems wheel. WE are pretty insignificant, individually. But as a community, as a part of the whole, together, how WE function as a composite are a very important part of that overall system.
