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Integrating Crops, Grazing And Soil, Livestock Health

Adding a cover crop that livestock can graze to the rotation plan can improve soil health and help protect the environment.

That’s the premise behind a four-year, nearly $4 million U.S. Department of Agriculture project, spearheaded by South Dakota State University assistant professor Sandeep Kumar of the Department of Agronomy, Horticulture and Plant Science.

The integrated crop and livestock management system seeks to use crops, such as oats, sorghum, turnips, radishes or millet, planted after harvest for grazing, Kumar explained.

The National Institute of Food and Agriculture project involves 26 scientists from five universities including North Dakota State University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology along with USDA offices in Lincoln, Nebraska; Mandan, North Dakota; and Brookings. The researchers will assess the impact of incorporating grazing crops at seven sites covering three states—North Dakota, Nebraska and South Dakota.

“We’re expecting this practice to help increase crop production,” explained Kumar. The researchers will share their results with producers through a quarterly newsletter, which will be available along with other project information at the IPICL website.

Kumar said, “The hypothesis is that this system can alter nutrition cycling and improve soil resilience.” The practice may, in the long run, reduce the need for chemical fertilizers.

One of the concerns the researchers seek to resolve is the availability of moisture. “The treatments are different in each state because of the variability in precipitation,” Kumar noted. In South Dakota, he said, “we are putting the cover crop in a three-year rotation, right after small grains, which are harvested in June and July.”

At the Southeast Research Center near Beresford, for instance, the researchers are evaluating three treatments—corn-soybean-oat, corn-soybean-oat/cover crop and corn-soybean-oat/cover crop with grazing. In addition to sites at Brookings and Beresford, several producers in South Dakota, who have been utilizing an integrated crop-livestock management system for more than a year, have agreed to participate in the study.

Though grazing cropland was once common, Kumar admitted, “most farmers are not into this practice.” The fall crop will not only provide nourishment to cattle, sheep, goats and other ruminants, but will bind nitrogen to the soil, reducing runoff into lakes and streams.

Researchers will gather data on soils, crop and livestock performance and environmental parameters, Kumar explained. “The goal is greater sustainability.”


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US Soy: Pig growth is impaired by soybean meal displacement in the diet

Video: US Soy: Pig growth is impaired by soybean meal displacement in the diet

Eric van Heugten, PhD, professor and swine extension specialist at North Carolina State University, recently spoke at the Iowa Swine Day Pre-Conference Symposium, titled Soybean Meal 360°: Expanding our horizons through discoveries and field-proven feeding strategies for improving pork production. The event was sponsored by Iowa State University and U.S. Soy.

Soybean meal offers pig producers a high-value proposition. It’s a high-quality protein source, providing essential and non-essential amino acids to the pig that are highly digestible and palatable. Studies now show that soybean meal provides higher net energy than current National Research Council (NRC) requirements. Plus, soybean meal offers health benefits such as isoflavones and antioxidants as well as benefits with respiratory diseases such as porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS).

One of several ingredients that compete with the inclusion of soybean meal in pig diets is dried distillers grains with solubles (DDGS).

“With DDGS, we typically see more variable responses because of the quality differences depending on which plant it comes from,” said Dr. van Heugten. “At very high levels, we often see a reduction in performance especially with feed intake which can have negative consequences on pig performance, especially in the summer months when feed intake is already low and gaining weight is at a premium to get them to market.”

Over the last few decades, the industry has also seen the increased inclusion of crystalline amino acids in pig diets.

“We started with lysine at about 3 lbs. per ton in the diet, and then we added methionine and threonine to go to 6 to 8 lbs. per ton,” he said. “Now we have tryptophan, isoleucine and valine and can go to 12 to 15 lbs. per ton. All of these, when price competitive, are formulated into the diet and are displacing soybean meal which also removes the potential health benefits that soybean meal provides.”