The Secrets of Silvopasture And How It Can Help Mitigate Climate Change.

Giving your land dual purpose by grazing livestock among a timber stand - a technique called silvopasturing.

What is it?

Silvopasture is a combination of trees, forage plants and livestock together as an integrated, intensively-managed system. Silvopasture can provide profitable opportunities for softwood or hardwood timber growers, forest landowners, and livestock producers.

Benefits:

Silvopasture has several advantages over timber or pasture alone.

Return on investment; By adding a livestock production component, silvopasture creates a stable source of cash flow prior to nut or timber harvest and diversifies the forestry enterprise. For livestock graziers, add a long-term timber while maintaining forage production provides more income than grazing alone. In some areas, pine straw harvest can also provide supplemental income.

Silvicultural benefits; Nitrogen-fixing forage species, pasture fertilization and animal manure all help improve the soil and tree nutrition. Grazing controls competing brushy species and reduces fire hazard. Competition between trees is less at the wider spacings employed with silvopasture. The result is greater timber yield.

Livestock benefits; Trees create a sheltered microclimate to protect animals from heat and cold. Shelter also improves forage quality and lengthens its growing season. The prunings of some trees can also be used as fodder, e.g. poplar. The result is better livestock growth.

Wildlife; By creating a more biologically diverse system, wildlife habitat is also created.

The climate benefits of trees are well known. Trees take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen, storing carbon in their roots and trunks but silvopasture is even more special because the natural behavior of grazing animals improves the soil’s ability to hold onto that carbon and absorb even more. As they graze, animals drop their manure and work it into the earth with their hooves, naturally fertilizing the pasture. This nourishes healthy perennial grasses that also sequester carbon. The animals chew those nutritious plants down to the ground, making way for fresh growth (and more sequestration).

When fully implemented, silvopasture systems may be able to offset the methane and nitrous oxide produced by grazing animals, making these farms potentially carbon neutral. That is a HUGE accomplishment in livestock farming.

"When managed properly, silvopasture can increase overall productivity. The reason is because the presence of symbiosis between all living organisms in it. It can also increase overall income due to the production of tree crops, forage, and livestock in one stop."

If you are a farmer, and want to help this earth by ‘simply’ boosting the productivity of your farm, why don’t you try this method?