It is Possible to Address Climate Change and Produce More Milk and Meat with Intensive Silvopastoral Systems

Abstract

Reducing vulnerability to disasters, adapting agricultural production systems to environmental changes, and mitigating emissions of greenhouse gases emissions are urgent actions to deal climate change. With regard to cattle grazing, applied research carried out in companies and pioneer families from several countries, has enabled remarkable progress in agro-forestry, especially with regards to intensive silvopastoral systems (ISS), a use of land characterized for applying simultaneously several agro ecological principles aimed at maximizing the conversion of solar energy into biomass, such as biological nitrogen fixation, phosphorus solubilization, accumulation of organic matter in the soil, rotational grazing, intelligent water usage, conservation of diversity biological, and animal welfare. With these arrangements, the SSPI allows stocking rate up four or five times greater compared to extensive grazing systems, going from 200 to 800 1200 kg meat ha^-1 yr^-1, while at the same time reducing costs in intensive grazing systems by reducing the use of feed concentrates (40% in tropical dairy cows) and eliminating the need of nitrogen fertilizers (going from 300 to zero N₂ kg ha^-1 yr^-1). The production of meat and milk per hectare is increased significantly and this increase is not accompanied by increases in enteric methane emissions or by increases in nitrous oxide emissions. Thus, the implementation of SSPI allows to sustainably intensify production of meat and milk cattle in the tropics and the subtropics.