Improving Pastures And Grasslands For The Northeastern States At The U S Regional Pasture Research Laboratory Classic Reprint

Excerpt from Improving Pastures and Grasslands for the Northeastern States at the U. S. Regional Pasture Research Laboratory These differences among plants are the raw materials of plant breeding; Since plants or strains occurring naturally are seldom outstanding in more than a few of these characteristics, it is the task of the plant breeder to com bine the desirable characters from different plants or strains by appropriate genetic and breeding methods, thus synthesizing a new variety superior to each of its parents in one or several ways. The ideal combination of all desirable characters may not, and probably will not, be obtained for many years. The process of building new strains of forage species must proceed step by step, each advance, however, representing a practical benefit in terms of better and more economically produced animal products. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

This book covers the subject of grasslands used for grazing livestock. Grasslands can be split into improved and unimproved pastures (also a sub-set of rangelands). Land used for livestock industries occupy 70% agricultural land and about 40% of total land and produce 40% of agricultural gross domestic product (FAO, 2005; Steinfeld et al., 2006). Increasing populations and incomes, coupled with a change in diets and urbanisation in the developing world, is enhancing demand for pasture-based products (Devine, 2003; Schmidhuber and Shetty, 2005). For example, milk and meat production is predicted to double to just over 1 billion tonnes of milk and 465 million tonnes of meat by 2050 (Steinfeld et al., 2006). To meet these demands most effort will go into intensification of improved pastures, which translates into high stocking densities supported by large inputs of fertilisers, feed supplements and energy.

Bibliographic notes and index.

This book has been developed from a workshop on Technological change in agriculture and tropical deforestation organised by the Center for International Forestry Research and held in Costa Rica in March, 1999. It explores how intensification of agriculture affects tropical deforestation using case studies from different geographical regions, using different agricultural products and technologies and in differing demographic situations and market conditions. Guidance is also given on future agricultural research and extension efforts.