Talk:Rotational grazing

Article title is wrong

Title of this article appears to be in extreme conflict with the first sentence. One says "Managed Intensive Grazing" and one says "Management Intensive Grazing". In the first case the comma is missing but "intensive" modifies "grazing". In the second "intensive" modified "management". So in one case the grasing is intense and the other the managment is intense. The rest of the article makes it clear the latter intepretation is correct: the cattle are instensely managed to get optimal results. Indeed it is the opposite of intensive grazing because the whole goal is to prevent intense overgrazing.

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—Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.165.108.189 (talk) 22:38, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

conflict fixedRedddbaron (talk) 03:57, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Trampling, Muck

"For farmers and ranchers with cattle in open fields, there is a tendency for the animals to beat down and trample the plants across a wide area. The animals also typically congregate in one area such as around a water tank, feeding wagon, and often in riparian areas where degredation of banks can have negative impacts on wildlife.

This repeated trampling of the same areas over and over destroys plant life faster than it can recover. Eventually sections of the field become a permanent swath of exposed soil. When it rains this turns into muck a foot deep, which in turn covers the animals and makes maintaining sanitary conditions difficult. These exposed tracts of land often serve as seed beds for invasive species of weeds."

I believe the paragraphs above need proper attribution and citations to actual research that point to negative impacts on wildlife.

In addition the line "When it rains this turns into muck a foot deep," seems to be a curious sentence.

Leanbarton 02:48, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

In regards to the muck comment, that occurs because the hooves of the animals create narrow, deep potholes in wet soil that isn't reinforced with the roots of plants. Even a dry, exposed dirt cowyard becomes covered with these potholes closely packed together with tall walls of mud surrounding deep holes from the animals. When it rains, these holes fill with water, and all it takes is a little more walking of animals through that to churn it up into a huge mud-wrestling pit of goop easily a foot deep and sometimes deeper yet until the animals are sunk all the way down to their abdomen into the mud.

The solution for a factory farm is to either lay down a layer of well-drained sand and gravel bed, which doesn't stir up like clay-rich pasture soils, or go to something even more unnatural for the animal such as concrete or blacktop paving. DMahalko (talk) 17:30, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

No mention of criticism.

There are some very critical research papers on rotational grazing systems eg:

• Briske, D.D.; Derner, J.D.; Brown, J.R.; Fuhlendorf, S.D.; Teague, W.R.; Havstad, K.M.; Gillen, R.L.; Ash, A.J.; Willms, W.D. (2008). "Rotational Grazing on Rangelands: Reconciliation of Perception and Experimental Evidence" (PDF). Rangeland Ecology and Management. 61: 3–17.

no mention of the critics is made so it looks like the article has WP:NPOV problems.--Salix (talk): 19:05, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

With all due respect, that paper is about rotational grazing, (or prescribed grazing) not Managed rotational grazing. There is a huge difference that Briske himself admits. "because it derives from experiments that intentionally excluded these human variables."-D. D. Briske, et.al. Origin, Persistence, and Resolution of the Rotational Grazing Debate: Integrating Human Dimensions Into Rangeland Research, Rangeland Ecology & Management 2011 64:4, 325-334

To say it another way. Prescribed rotational grazing is completely different than Managed intensive rotational grazing.Redddbaron (talk) 17:10, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

• • Ok I have been doing some thinking on it. I think I may be able to draft a criticism section that adds balance and more importantly, since this is an encyclopedia, provides information and education. I will post it here in talk for a vote when I am finished. PS It will contain references to Briske's work. (the one you cited and others.)Redddbaron (talk) 20:19, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Great. It will bring more balance to the article. I'm sure there are more relevant critiques than Briske. I'm also unsure how much work about rangeland apply to more humid environments.--Salix (talk): 20:41, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Proposed addition of a criticism section

== Criticism ==

Managed intensive rotational grazing paints a wide brush over many different managed grazing systems. Managers have found that rotational grazing systems can work for diverse management purposes, but scientific experiments have demonstrated that rotational grazing systems do not always necessarily work for specific ecological purposes. This controversy stems from two main categorical differences in rotational grazing, prescribed management and adaptive management. The performance of rangeland grazing strategies are similarly constrained by several ecological variables establishing that differences among them are dependent on the effectiveness of those management models. Depending on the management model, plant production has been shown to be equal or greater in continuous compared to rotational grazing in 87% of the experiments. Another limitation of land management systems is that economically and politically powerful users can easily quantify and argue their needs. It is harder to define the economic value of ecosystem services and, therefore, the ecosystems and people most dependent on them for their subsistence become voiceless and often neglected users.

Redddbaron (talk) 00:12, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Ok since no one objected, I added the criticism section and removed the dispute. I also added a reference or two and made minor changes to reflect a neutral POV.Redddbaron (talk) 03:38, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Question - is this theoretical or actually used? if so how much?

Hi, I just read this article. I don't know anything about this topic and came here looking for information. Do any of the people watching this article know whether this is a theoretical system, or if this is actually used? If so, who uses it? Big conventional livestock producers, small organic producers? What is the extent of its use? Some real world information would be super helpful. Thanks! Jytdog (talk) 15:28, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes it is actually used. There are many variants, but taken together it is even the dominant grazing system in many areas of the world. I don't have the reference at hand at the moment, but I remember reading it is the dominant grazing system in Great Britain ... partly due to the Mad Cow disaster. Many people use it, but because it is labor intensive compared to a feedlot or a 20000 square mile Texas ranch...... It has a tendency to be more common in smaller farms rather than larger. The largest farm I personally know of using it is 20,000 acres, but far more common on farms 100 acres or less.Redddbaron (talk) 06:53, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for replying! Would be great to get this into the article... Jytdog (talk) 11:23, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Polyface Farm Just one of many working farms using MIRG. Redddbaron (talk) 03:00, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

That's lovely but I am looking for lines, not points... I've been reading the sources in this article, they provide some data. I will add this eventually. Jytdog (talk) 04:22, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

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Article title is wrong2

I think this article should just be renamed to "rotational grazing", or "intensive rotational grazing" if you really want to further distinguish it from herding or transhumance. The terminology "managed intensive rotational grazing" is used only once in a single sentence in front of the first reference used when creating this Wikipedia article, not one other single reference uses it. The reference in question never uses the acronym MIRG sprinkled everywhere throughout the text. This is Wikipedia inventing jargonism, likely by mistake. See quote in reference in question. Please comment! Leo Breman (talk) 16:07, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

In general terms the title is correct. This is to differentiate it from management extensive rotational grazing systems like rest rotation and from various set stocking systems. As described in the article, the management of the animals is very intensive, usually daily, as to differentiate animals left to free range or from confinement animal husbandry. MIRG is neither one. It is intensive like confinement, but out on range instead.Redddbaron (talk) 01:57, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

"Rotational grazing" is the term in wide use; the article's title is a term virtually never seen before. Wikipedia's function is to report, not to innovate according to editors' tastes (that's WP:OR). Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:56, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

Ignorance is not excuse to make changes to a wikipedia page designed to educate. Dumbing down content is not what I signed up for. Your edits are simply wrong. There is a huge difference between managed intensive rotational grazing and extensive rotational grazing systems. That you don't seem to know that means you should probably read more and learn before making changes to a page you don't even understand. I will be reporting your improper edit war. Oh and BTW it is not synonymous, it is one of many closely related systems. You would know that if you even read the whole paragraph you edited.Try maybe reading one of the wikipedia pages on First order logic If A is part of B and Cis part of B, it does NOT mean A and C are the same thing, only that they share certain associative characterists that have them classified under the same general grouping.Redddbaron (talk) 05:32, 24 September 2019 (UTC)Redddbaron (talk) 05:16, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

Um, the Undersander source does not say "managed intensive..." but "management intensive...", so the title is wrong on that front also. Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:26, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

Hmm, I disagree with you Redddbaron. We must dumb things down a good bit around here at agriculture, that is my opinion. I mean, I had a reasonable education, but some of the things around here barely make sense. Why is this page called "Managed Intensive Rotational Grazing (MIRG)"? It makes no sense! Only one source uses it once, without capitals, no acronym. No other source does. It looks like someone just got confused. We are talking about something that has been in done in Europe for centuries. All these tiny systems of alternative agriculture do not even need to be mentioned in an article as basic as this. "extensive rotational grazing", as in moving livestock around for grazing?, you mean herding. Come on.Leo Breman (talk) 18:16, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

The current article clearly has its limitations. To get it to Good Article status, we will have to reconsider its structure and content, using the most reliable sources; that may involve reuse of some of the existing content, or its wholesale replacement. I do not think that minor editing alone will be sufficient, if only because the article is currently not well sourced, and trying to retroactively spray quality on to existing text, made from who-knows-what-sources, is never easy. Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:31, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, "Good" status means little to me, let's just try to reduce the BS & make things clearer, and move on. This is almost all just about rotating cows around on pastures, nothing mystical or esoteric. I went through the history of this article just now, and more of the sources.

• This article was originally just about plain old "rotational grazing", but was thoroughly altered and renamed to MIRG by one Hysilvinia in 2008, who also did the stuff on Agroecology and Agroecosystem. People talked about the terminology at the time but nothing happened.
• It got "B" status from the guy who did all the articles on different sheep breeds back in 2009, but it was 15,000 bytes at the time. Additions of unreferenced opinion brought it up to 22,000 until we started deleting/moving text -interestingly the excised text is almost all text added relatively recently.
• Joel Salatin had a link to his mag. here until someone cleaned out the advertisements in "external links" in 2018, that guy is being plugged everywhere on Wikipedia.
• Originally this article was cited to the same source (Pastures for Profit) 7 (!) different times, references were merged by JytDog (2017) and me (yesterday). People do a search on the terminology, and always end up with the same reference, because MIRG is likely not official terminology.
• Ref. 1 & 6 both talk about "management-intensive (rotational) grazing" (slightly diff. wording) as a form of rotational grazing using higher paddock numbers, this is thus what they call "cell-grazing" in Australia, or almost the same. But google shows this terminology is not very prevalent.
• Ref. 1-6 all recommend this type of grazing because they claim higher yields can be obtained. That needs qualifiers. Read criticism.
• Ref. 2 & 5 are aimed at hobby farmers with small plots and speak of preventing over-grazing, and are specifically about resting pasture and supplemental feeding -that last part needs some emphasis.
• Ref. 6 lists some "alternative agriculture" concepts which could fall under this general concept.
• It seems to me that something on fencing and water sources is pertinent and needs to remain.
• The section added by Redddbaron on "Criticism" is very pertinent and needs some editing to make it's point.
• The section "Nutrient availability and soil fertility" is highly wonky and needs looking at. Ref. 11 does not corroborate the statement it cites, in fact appears to say the opposite, and is barely pertinent to rotational grazing as opposed to organic food. This section seems to me more a factor of how much soya you import from Brazil for supplement feed which ends up as nitrates in patties on the land, than all this blabla.
• A lot of prose needs vetting and work to be more scientific and impartial.
• There could be a section on subtypes, but this is not necessary for me.
• Holistic management (agriculture) needs a straight-up source saying it a type of rotational grazing before being added, none of the sources used here use that terminology, the sources over there are vague. Nor is "mob grazing" ever mentioned in the sourcing, it comes off a bit as Joel Salatin agribusiness marketing, and is weakly sourced as concept in its own right.
• We need a bit less breathless "how to" sources from permaculture freaks in the lede. Isn't this concept just in the dictionary? Here! Very clear! Maybe some stuff on Europe, rotating dairy cattle seasonally among pastures is a very normal thing here, all the references used are for USA. I can add something general about meat livestock pasturing from Australia I was using earlier. We could also assume Japanese and others use some kind of rotational management, so this article could just get either too unwieldy or too biased if we don't just stick to the core principal.

We have 3 for moving name, 1 against now, can we just move it? Leo Breman (talk) 17:48, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Try. You will find you will need to use WP:Requested moves as the other article already exists as a redirect. It might succeed as we have indeed discussed it, but it may be that a more formal discussion will be needed first. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:07, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

Now we have a problem. You changed the page to just rotational grazing, however, the first paragraph is false no matter how you say it. In particular: "The approach produces lower outputs than more intensive animal farming operations" Which is quantifiably false when compared to intensive rotational grazing, but true when compared to extensive rotational grazing like rest rotation etc. Redddbaron (talk) 22:11, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

No, it's true; read it again. It doesn't make sense to compare RG to itself (and the lead doesn't try); intensive RG presumably produces more output than less intensive RG, but both are RG. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:06, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

I changed several things to make the new article make sense under its new title. We probably need to either make a stub or a sub-heading for MIRG though. Because a wide variety of things apply to it but not traditional rotational systems. I don't think you do any favors by only eliminating all mention of grazing technology advances in the last 60+ years. ? Redddbaron (talk) 14:20, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

There is scope for subsections on all forms of rotational grazing here that can be reliably cited to independent secondary or tertiary sources. Everyone's welcome to contribute. Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:28, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

Hmmm, I was never a fan of that statement, it can go in my opinion, or be reworded. I don't think Wikipedia should give advice, or try to presuppose system profits/outputs, just explain what concepts mean. It all depends on the costs of your inputs, if you need to pay high annual taxes for real estate or rent (think Gaza, Singapore or Hong Kong), your inputs/costs might be lower the more concentrated your operation, no? Similarly, if you are out in the boondocks (Copper Belt or inner Australia or somewhere far from roads), importing fencing and piping can be very expensive, and it might be more profitable to just use continuous grazing, or limiting the number of paddocks. A fence will depreciate in a decade or two: it is not clear the added output will compensate the extra cost in that time. A fence in the Amazon will last even less long.

As Chiswick says, Redddbaron, there is scope in this article to add a chapter on different subtypes of rotation grazing, if you want, although that information is now mostly at grazing. I think we can agree that what this reference: calls MIRG, is apparently the same as "cell grazing"? (see ref. at Grazing#Cell_grazing)

I've also meant to get in contact about your diagrams/picture captions Chiswick, they are very pretty, but I don't think the inherent implicit advice in some of them is warranted (the studies in Briske et al. provide food for thought) -though it's at grazing that I was most piqued, here not so much. This is also why I don't like the section on nutrients in this article, it is presupposing caeteris paribus, but how much nitrates a field looses or gains has little to with grazing method, when dung deriving from supplemental feed is not considered (practically all our sources mention using this). In the Netherlands, too much nutrients in the fields is the problem! If you are using dung as fuel, as in say, India or parts of Kenya, it also defeats the point made here. My 2 cents, Leo Breman (talk) 19:38, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

References