Management Intensive Grazing Sample Clauses

Management Intensive Grazing. One of the key tools of grass-based livestock production is commonly termed management intensive grazing (MIG). The key word here is management: MIG is knowledge and labor intensive, not capital, chemical, or technology intensive. Indeed, some of today’s finest graziers describe the management of soil, plants, livestock, weather, market demand, and other factors, as an art. That is an apt term for the depth of understanding, and creative adjustments, required to balance and guide so many subtle factors toward desirable ends. Traditional/conventional pasture management in America has been anything but management intensive – or an art form. Traditional/conventional pasture management is often termed continuous grazing. The basic strategy here is to do nothing: Turn livestock into a pasture for the entire season, letting them pick and choose to eat whatever, and wherever they like. The many economic and ecological drawbacks to this practice need not be detailed here. MIG systems operate at the opposite end of the sustainable grazing spectrum, using what is usually called rotational grazing or strip grazing. Here livestock are moved from one grazing paddock or area to another ever day or so (every few hours in some systems), depending on how a xxxxxxx chooses to balance the many factors involved. It is important to note that rotational grazing actually allows animal stocking rates from two to ten times as high per acre as continuous grazing – while avoiding the overgrazing problems commonly associated with continuous grazing.