Page 84 - Hereford Magazine 2021

Increasing the resilience of
global food production

Making agriculture more resilient is one of the main aims of
American scientist Dr Jason Rowntree, who was the WHC’s
keynote speaker.
“Sustainability has run its course and now we talk about
regeneration.”
He termed regenerative agriculture as a resilient system
supported by functional ecosystem processes.
“How our water, our energy, our biodiversity, and our solar
energy are flowing through our systems, and improving and
making healthy soil, producing a full suite of ecosystem
services, among them soil carbon sequestration and improved
soil water retention.”
An associate professor of animal science at Michigan State
University, Jason’s objective was to develop low-cost, low-input
beef production systems for the Upper Great Lakes. As faculty
coordinator of Lake City Research Centre, his research and
extension focused on forage utilisation of grazing beef cattle,
extending the grazing season and forage finishing.
In five years, he dramatically lowered the farm’s inputs,
including the elimination of nitrogen, while increasing
utilisation and productivity by 30%.
“That makes us more resilient; we’re improving our soil, Dr Jason Rowntree speaking to the conference at Earnscleugh
but we’re also improving our productivity, while spending Station.
less money.”
He has called his management practice adaptive multi- evaluations since international genetic evaluation was
paddock grazing (AMG). first mooted in World Hereford Linkage Project papers at
“By increasing our density, the number of animals we the 2004 World Hereford Conference. But in the absence of
are grazing in a certain period of time, and by allowing for “real, practical gain” in the development of an international
rest and recovery, we’re actually finding we’re building soil evaluation for the Hereford breed, he presented an outline of
carbon. We’re improving ecosystem services on the landscapes an ABRI initiative called International Hereford, essentially
we manage… we’re getting more ground cover, seeing less using software to cross-reference animal data to get a
erosion and less sedimentation in our waterways.” universal language. He said seven countries were participating
He says he has seen more carbon building below ground in the project – Australia, New Zealand, Namibia, the UK,
than “what’s going up”. Canada, Uruguay and Argentina – looking at performance
“Our grazing management could potentially be a net records collected in two or more countries.
negative on a carbon footprint basis.” Dorian said advantages of across-country evaluations could
On the research farm, he said the wider, more modern cows include better accuracy, and more candidate sires and dams
were more forage efficient and were also more productive to choose from (if you would use foreign animals), and one
on a weaning-weight basis. Days spent grazing was a huge evaluation for every animal, rather than different evaluations
indicator of profit. in different countries.
“That, coupled with a more moderate cow size, were the two “If you do an across-country evaluation, you can still publish
primary components that increased net present value in our them on your own country’s scale and your own country’s units.”
cow herd.” Existing across-country evaluations are the Trans-Tasman
He quoted a study where Hereford genetics were introduced Breedplan Hereford with Australia, New Zealand and Namibia;
to a farm with another breed, which downsized the cow, made Interbull (dairy) and Interbeef, which included mostly
it more forage efficient, made it easier to maintain in terms of European contributors at the time of the presentation.
body condition, it ate less, but they weaned the same amount, Dr Jason Archer from AbacusBio spoke about the Beef +
he told the conference. “Now if I’m you and I’m in the Hereford Lamb New Zealand Genetics beef progeny tests, and Simon
business, I’m taking that to the bank every day of the year.” Lee from Mendip Hills followed with his perspective on the
Jason also gave a second presentation about methane tests as a farm manager.
and greenhouse gases. This is available on the NZ Hereford Two presentations were made via web-link: Dr Rob Banks
website, along with other conference presentations and of the University of New England discussed the use of data
several panel discussions. and the future prosperity of the Hereford breed, while Tom
Dr Brad Crook from ABRI, an Australian-based agribusiness Schultz of Neogen Genomics spoke about DNA testing for the
company, and Massey University professor Dorian Garrick, Hereford breed from a global perspective.
talked about multi-country single-step genomic evaluation. Presentations are available on www.herefords.co.nz under
Brad said there had been many enhancements to national WHC under the news tab.

82 HEREFORD MAGAZINE Year 2021