New Zealand Journal of Agricultural Research abstracts

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Native and low-input grasses for pastoral and marginal
cropping land

ALLAN D. WILSON

International Wool Secretariat
GPO Box 4867
Melbourne 3001, Australia

Abstract  This paper initially considers the advantages of low-input grasslands. These are their evenness of production across seasons and between years, and their low cost of maintenance. The latter implies that they will be native species that have low or nil establishment costs and which have low fertiliser inputs. These low-input grasslands will be useful on the less productive land units, where they may be managed in conjunction with high-input grasslands that are best established on the more fertile and deeper soils of any farm. In these situations, improvement will be best achieved through grazing management rather than through species selection. However, on the marginal croplands, it is appropriate to consider sowing an improved native or other low-input species at the beginning of the pasture phase. In this instance the high inputs of cultivation and fertiliser may be attributed to the cropping phase, and ceasing cultivation should be sufficient management to ensure that the low-input species is maintained in the pasture.

Keywords  native grasses; cropping land; grasslands

New Zealand Journal of Agricultural Research, 1996, Vol. 39: 465-469

0028-8233/96/3904-0465 $2.50/0 (c) The Royal Society of New Zealand 1996

PDF file of entire paper: medium quality (407K); (scanned from paper original: notes about this process)

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