Grasslands of the World.pdf - Disasters and Conflicts - UNEP

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Grasslands of the world
Plate 12.10
Cattle grazing oats through snow in Canada, where the oats were swathed at
dough stage in September.
from Canada by Fraser and McCartney (2004); “swath grazing ” provides
late autumn and early winter grazing for beef cows (Plate 12.10). Late-sown
cereals are swathed in the early autumn from heading until dough stage. The
livestock then graze the swaths through the snow. The emphasis on fodder
rather than grazing in the former USSR is mentioned above. Fodder growing
and conservation are an ancient tradition in Turkey .
Fodders are widely used in the better watered areas of Australia , for onfarm
use, local sale and export (Armstrong et al., 2004) and are also widely
grown in New Zealand. As discussed in Chapter 10, fodder was a mainstay of
livestock production in the collective period, with much less interest in grazing ,
but this is changing under economic pressure.
In Central Asia during collective times, fodder, especially alfalfa, was widely
grown for winter reserves ; the area has fallen sharply since decollectivization,
since there is now a need to use irrigated land to assure local cereal needs, and
livestock numbers have fallen. Great areas of fodder are grown in China . Hu
and Zhang (2003) give the area under alfalfa as 1 804 700 ha, forage maize at
570 500 ha and fodder oats at 274 400 ha. The climate of the Tibetan steppe and
Mongolia is not suitable for fodder; a little oats is grown by Tibetan herders
with subsidized seed from elsewhere; Mongolia grew fodder oats during the
collective period, but that ceased for economic reasons – only in the far west is
some irrigated alfalfa grown for hay .
DUANE McCARTNEY