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

Grassland perspectives 493
extremely destructive, and subsidizing concentrates and cereals for herders
is undesirable for sustainable grassland use.
• Improvement of the pastoral vegetation in extensive grasslands should
mainly be through manipulation of grazing pressure and the use of controlled
fire . Over-seeding is not usually successful on poor soils with unreliable
rainfall and is now often regarded as undesirable for the environment; it
can, of course, be very useful in agropastoral systems in more favourable
conditions.
• A very wide range of genetic material of species, cultivars and ecotypes of
pasture grasses and legumes have been collected and screened, but only a
very restricted range is readily available commercially.
• Sown pasture , for grazing and mowing, plays a very important role in large-
and medium-scale commercial mixed farming, and the use of perennial
pastures is to be encouraged wherever possible and profitable since they are
often more environmentally desirable than annual cut-and-carry fodders.
• Fodder crops can be useful for strategic use on favoured areas in extensive
systems , especially for conservation or supplementing vulnerable classes of
stock. They are suitable for both smallholder and large-scale mixed farming
enterprises and are becoming increasingly popular with smallholders who
have access to markets for milk or fattened stock. While fodder technology
is well developed generally, there is still a lot to be done in identifying locally
adapted material for smallholder areas, assuring seed supplies and training
farmers.
• What is the potential for diversifying the use of grasslands? Commercial
producers are experimenting with, for example, tourism and game -ranching.
Will such management maintain the grassland biome ?
• The area of grassland being put into reserves to conserve wildlife and biodiversity
, as well as to encourage tourism , is increasing, often without regard
to existing pastoral use. It is desirable that the creation of such reserves
should take into account their effect on migration routes, access to essential
grassland resources and to what extent grazing livestock and controlled fire
will be permitted or encouraged.
• Grasslands are sources of many products other than food for grazing livestock,
but grassland scientists have tended to limit their interests to grazing
resource s . Greater attention to wider ethnobotanical matters is desirable.
REFERENCES
Armstrong, K., de Ruiter, J. & Bezar, H. 2004. Fodder oats in New Zealand and
Australia – history, production and potential. pp. 153–177, in: Suttie & Reynolds,
2004, q.v.
Batello, C., Marzot, M. & Touré, A.H. 2004. The Future is an Ancient Lake:
Traditional knowledge, biodiversity and genetic resources for food and agriculture
in Lake Chad Basin ecosystems . FAO, Rome, Italy.