Pasture Project: Regenerative grazing improves soil conditions

MANTENO, Ill. — Regenerative grazing can improve soil conditions to keep nutrients in the soil instead of moving through a watershed.

“The purpose of the Pasture Project is to work towards advancing regenerative grazing and grass-finished value chains in the six states located in the Upper Midwest,” said Mallory Krieger, grazing organizer for the Pasture Project at the Wallace Center.

In Illinois, Krieger said, the project is focused on developing farmer-to-farmer networks.

“We also do a lot of research and mapping of profitability and soil health outcomes of grass-based intensive grazing,” she said during a Pasture Walk, organized by University of Illinois Extension.

Dave Suprenant, owner of Law-Rae Manor Farm, hosted the event in Kankakee County. Previously, Suprenant grazed Holstein cows on his 160 acres of pasture.

“We are switching to Angus cows and our plan is to have from 120 to 150 head of cattle,” he said.

Grass produced on the pasture during the growing season this year, Suprenant said, was phenomenal.

“We have irrigation on our pastures that was installed in 2008,” he said. “You put a half of an inch of water on and it’s amazing, we had lots of clover this year.”

Krieger highlighted the five core principles of regenerative agriculture:

1. Minimize soil disturbance.

2. Maximize crop diversity.

3. Keep the soil covered.

4. Maintain living root year-round.

5. Integrate livestock.

“The Pasture Project helps farmers with annual row crops to achieve that fifth pillar of soil health by integrating livestock,” Krieger said.

“We just launched the Midwest Grazing Exchange,” she said.

“This site is for farmers who have ground and are interested in getting animals into their rotation, but are not interested in being a grazier. They are matched with graziers that are looking for acreage,” she explained. “So, we can get more livestock on more acres in a regenerative way to help improve soil and water quality.”

Farmers can learn more about doing an exchange at www.midwestgrazingexchange.com.

Krieger discussed different types of grazing systems and the impact on the pastures.

“With continuous grazing livestock have access to the whole pasture year-round so they graze what they like and graze it down until it’s gone,” she said. “This does not allow rest periods for that good forage to regenerate so you get infestations of weed species.”

One solution to this problem is rotational grazing where the pasture is divided into paddocks and the livestock are rotated through the paddocks in a regular pattern.

“That improves some of the issues we see with continuous grazing,” Krieger said.

“Livestock are excluded from large portions of the pasture which allows rest periods for the forage to rejuvenate and that also allows for a better spread of manure throughout the pasture,” she said. “But we still see issues around high-use areas that can lead to erosion and rather large gullies.”

Adaptive grazing can solve these problems by subdividing the paddocks and moving the animals more frequently.

“Sometimes the animals are moved as often as two times a day for dairy operations,” Krieger said. “The moves can be as infrequent as once a week, but typically it is once a day.”

By moving animals frequently and using a portable water system, Krieger said, it is possible to achieve a nearly even distribution of manure across the pasture.

“It also helps force the animals to eat species they otherwise wouldn’t eat because they only have as much forage as they need for that period of time,” she said.

Additional advantages of adaptive grazing include reduced weed problems, increased biodiversity and forage quality, as well as higher stocking rates.

“You will be able to stock more cattle per acre because the forage quality increases with the rest periods,” Krieger said.

By rotating animals through a rotational grazing system and providing rest periods for the plants to grow, this results in more root structures in the soil.

“You will get greater activation of the soil biology, increased water infiltration and increased water holding capacity,” Krieger said.

“As we see more biodiversity in the forage and higher forage quality we also see greater biodiversity of insects and birds species so the compounding effects of these grazing choices lead to a healthier ecosystem,” she said. “The benefits of rotational grazing are supercharged with adaptive grazing.”

Krieger stressed the importance of adaptive grazing.

“It’s based on observations so you need to get out to the pasture every day and look at the growth stage of the forage,” she said. “The precipitation patterns and how much solar energy has penetrated the cloud cover will impact when each paddock is ready for grazing.”

Once a herd is trained to a hot wire that separates the paddocks, Krieger said, producers can move those animals almost anywhere.

“That includes row crop acres and that’s really where you start to see amazing benefits with the system because by adding livestock into an annual crop rotation, all the benefits are available to the cash crop,” Krieger said.

“One of the key aspects of regenerative grazing is that when done properly, it dramatically reduces the need for purchased inputs,” she said. “The Iowa Department of Agriculture did a study in 2016 that showed using cover crops in a row crop rotation reduced the need for added phosphorus by 50% and reduced the need for added nitrogen by 31%.”

The current focus of the Illinois Regenerative Grazing Working Group of the Pasture Project is to listen to Illinois graziers.

“We are gathering information and putting together a list of what needs to happen in the next five years in Illinois to give regenerative grazing a chance to work,” Krieger said.

For more information about the Pasture Project, go to www.pastureproject.org.