I was invited once again to speak later this month at the NY Society of American Forester's annual conference in Syracuse.  This will be my third time in the past six years to present on silvopasturing at this event.  I still wonder if it's because they're trying to decide if they should ex-communicate me from the SAF, or if there's real interest amongst foresters in the silvopasture and other agroforestry opportunities that abound?  I'll remain optimistic that it's the later.

This upcoming talk is a reminder that from time to time we'll engage in "discussions" with other who aren't as excited and positive about silvopasturing as those of us here in the forum.  I came across an old email exchange between Peter Smallidge and an extension colleague.  I've copied it below because Peter has taken time to think it through and makes some good points that we can all draw from. 

The initial email:

Hi Pete and Brett:

 

I have seen (with great astonishment and dismay, may I add) the recent story in the Cornell Chronicle promoting grazing in the forests of the Northeast.  I am always suspicious about accuracy of a news story so I downloaded your "Silvopasturing in the Northeast" document and I must say that I am rather frustrated by the entire document.  

 

From a natural areas management perspective grazing has been one of the big destroyers of woodland flora in the past (deer now hammer vegetation on top of that!) and NY DEC is trying to eradicate feral pigs due to their destruction in forest ecosystems.  Your brochure touts the benefits of mammal (and duck) pasturing in the woods (including pigs!) and you even claim wildlife benefits and the benefits of hoofed animals destroying forest litter layers to increase germination.  We are concerned about worm invasions which have the very same effect and here you are promoting this as a health enterprise improving forests.  I could go on and on but I will not but I am afraid that this document results in potential further injury to woodlands that are already overrun by ungulates and will have only negative effects on native plants, amphibians, birds and ultimately forests that are already hammered by many other stressors.  I challenge you to provide evidence for beneficial effects that such grazing may have (other than to the farmer, but see below).  What most frustrates me is that this comes out of DNR when we should look at more than mushroom, beef, or pig production and have a more holistic view of land stewardship.  

 

Furthermore, Vicki just dropped a pile of papers onto my desk after I complained about this publication.  These are from the 1930's out of Perdue Ag Exp. Station and they have investigated exactly what you promote and come to the conclusion of detrimental effects for performance on the grazing animals as well as forest diversity and productivity.  80 years later you are promoting what they have come to argue to be abandoned for very different reasons than I raised in the preceding paragraph.  

 

You can probably  tell that I am extremely frustrated here.  I am running around (and many other do the same) arguing to management agencies and landowners to take 80% or more of the deer out of the woods to allow forest regeneration and recovery of the native groundlayer vegetation.  I am arguing for assessments using indicator species to see if we are making a difference on the road to recovery.  Then along comes your brochure to replace deer with domestic livestock claiming forest health benefits of grazing and you offer no supporting evidence beyond a few pictures.  We are working against each other here.  But I am claiming that you have it wrong in arguing for forest health improvement through grazing.

Peter's response:

I believe that I can clarify a few key points and that will ease your frustration.  I don’t believe that anything about silvopasture is in contradiction to your efforts. Let me restate your position to make sure I’ve captured your intent.  Your conclusion is that silvopasture management systems are bad.  You reach this conclusion on the premises that (i) domestic grazing is detrimental to natural areas, (ii) deer are already causing problems, so why add domestic livestock, (iii) that the silvopasture bulletin doesn’t adequately document the benefits of silvopasture management to trees, and (iv) that silvopasture management is not holistic.  Because there is some overlap in some of your premises, some of your premises have inaccurate assumptions, and because I think you have some misunderstandings about what silvopasture is, I opted to respond with points that clarify the management system. These points will, in some cases individually and more generally in aggregate, address your concerns.  Brett and I have previously planned for an update to the silvopasture bulletin this summer, and we’ll include a bibliography plus explicit references to specific benefits. I would welcome your review of the next version of the bulletin if you accept that your comments are suggestions that will be deliberately considered but that won’t derail the bulletin.   If I was prone to betting, I would bet that you will reach a point where you support the use of silvopasture management systems because of the holistic benefits it provides.

  1. Intent of the practice.  Silvopasture is a deliberate and prescriptive, intensive land management system designed to utilize agricultural wooded pastures to sustainably (i.e, continuous stable outputs) produce high quality food and high value forest products, both of which are essential resources for society.  The objective of silvopasture is not to create or maintain preserves or natural areas.  I agree with your implication, domestic grazing would have significant impacts on an eastern forest natural area.  Natural areas, together with agricultural areas, are part of the whole landscape.  We are thinking holistically.  You could think of a silvopasture as a pasture with trees added (one management strategy), or a woodland with the tree stocking reduced to allow for the development of an herbaceous forage understory (the other management strategy).  Within a silvopasture, the correct application of the design results in productive forage and healthy productive trees.  These together contribute to healthy and productive livestock.  These collectively contribute to healthy and profitable farms that maintain the working landscape of NY.  A bit tongue in check, but the alternative is to continue to ship beef from Oklahoma or Nebraska to NY.  Note that I’m using “health” in slightly different ways in the preceding sentences.
    1. I hate to contradict myself, but a type of silvopasture is being used in Dutchess county (?), where goats are managing vegetation that allows for the maintenance of habitat for a rare turtle.  So, silvopasture potentially has ecological applications.  In fairness, when I visited the site a few years ago it wasn’t true silviculture as described here, but many of the principles were applied within the constraint of priority on the turtle population.
  2. Style of grazing.  The perspective that most natural resource people have when they first hear about silvopasturing is the gut-wrenching but grossly mistaken image of continuous grazing.  The correct grazing term for “continuous grazing” is actually “set stock grazing.”  Silvopasture is not comparable to continuous grazing and set stock grazing; it isn’t possible to have a meaningful discussion of silvopasture if the image is of continuous grazing.  Continuous grazing is the process of establishing a perimeter fence and then turning loose the livestock; perhaps a 10 or 20 or 40 acre block or grassland or woodland with unregulated grazing.  I grew up in Indiana, B.S. at Purdue University in forestry, and continuous grazing was still the legacy (sometimes practice) for the default farm hardwood woodlot.  As historically practiced, I suspect that most producers would not assess the stocking capacity of the grazing area, but rather just turn loose the herd.  Silvopasturing, by contrast, would typically use rotational grazing based on a perimeter fence, but also internal subsections sized to balance herd needs and forage capacity and in which animals would intensively (i.e., high density) graze for one or two days every 5 to 12 weeks depending on other factors.  The paper from the Purdue Ag Experiment Station (Perdue is the chicken guy), if it is the paper I’m thinking of (Day and DenUyl), evaluated the effects of continuous grazing on woodlot productivity with reference to livestock health. I don’t believe that rotational grazing was practiced or possible in the 1920’s and 1930’s.  Ironically, I’ve used the Purdue grazed woodlot bulletin, at least the one I recall, in support of silvopasture.  The Purdue study was used to help convince dairy and cattle producers to move livestock from the woods, and may have contributed to the development of more intensive feed lot strategies and the associated problems.  Continuous grazing is an abhorrent practice for the livestock and the land.  Rotational grazing improves the forage base of the silvopasture relative to no livestock or continuous grazing.  Here is a link that gives a cursory overview of rotational versus set stock grazing, though I haven’t had the grazing specialists confirm its completeness http://lee-clift.suite101.com/set-stock-and-rotational-grazing-mana...
    1. As a tangent on the discussion of the 1930’s Purdue bulletin, I recall that Dave Apsley and George Parker, of Purdue, found in the 1980’s that healthy and productive oak and hickory woodland development had a connection to the past abuses of those woodlands by livestock.  This was Dave’s senior honor thesis and I think published in the Indiana Academy of Science.  I haven’t thought about that study in a few decades.  I’m not encouraging the use of livestock to abuse land, but highlighting the resilience of forests and that short-term “problems” don’t always translate into long-term devastation.  Related to this, you have probably seen the recent essay on ecosystem resilience in the anthropocene by P. Kareiva and others.
  3. Forest health.  You raise the issue of forest health, noting we use the term in our bulletin.  Forest health is a broad concept and we may be thinking about this in different ways.  I think about forest health, in the context of silvopasture management systems, as a productive and diverse forest with reduced numbers of trees that have an incidence of pests and pathogens.  These trees are efficiently using the soil resources and producing products that can be utilized.  Production is improved relative to an unmanaged forest.  The ecological components are simplified, as you would expect in an agricultural setting, but the forest remains functional.  Indeed the silvopasture forest is distinct from an natural areas forest, but given the objective I would expect it to be different. 
  4. Frequency of this management practice.  If all the woodlands of NY were grazed, even rotationally grazed, I agree the nature and function of the woodlands would be quite different than what exists today.  The likely maximum application of silvopasturing in a reasonable time frame is on the scale of at most 10’s of thousands of acres.  The only people who are likely to initiate silvopasture management systems are existing livestock producers or farmers because of the operational, logistical, and financial costs of livestock production.  We recognize that silvopasture management is not appropriate in all situations, which would include pristine natural areas. 
  5. Fencing technology.  The fencing used in the past was not adequate to allow for silvopasture management.  Current opportunities with high-tensile electric fence and portable electric net fencing expand the options by creating more effective fencing solutions.  Your concern about pigs getting lose has merit.  I will argue, based on the probability of the frequency of attention, that the farmer who uses pigs in a silvopasture system is more attentive to the fence and potential weak points than the operator of a game farm.  In further contrast, I wonder if the hunting preserve uses electrified fence?  The fact that pigs or other livestock might escape should not preclude our inclusion of them as an option.  In virtually every one of our extension publications we list practices or options that can be misapplied with grave outcomes (e.g., misapplication of herbicides, hunting that results in hunter mortality, tree felling that kills or maims the logger).  Our obligation is to make sure we provide clear guidance in our educational materials so that the well-intentioned user can be aware of and minimize the likelihood of pitfalls.
  6. Initial condition of woodland.  If you accept that the majority of silvopasture management will occur primarily on existing farms (#4), then the concern of impact is largely restricted to the condition of the current farm woodlot in NY.  As you are likely aware, farm woodlots are not well tended, and seldom deliberately managed for the health and vigor of anything.  Most farm woodlot management I’ve encountered or heard about typically involved unsustainable harvesting practices.  These practices plus deer pressure, in my experience, result in well-developed understories of undesirable species.  Even sustainable harvesting practices can result in undesirable understories of interfering species.  As a result, farm woodlot understories become dominated by invasive shrubs, beech, striped maple, etc.  Once the interfering species dominate, if the overstory canopy is removed, the next plant community is deficient in many respects (you of course have seen this, or the potential for this).  Further, correct me if I’m wrong, most agricultural soils have existing earthworm populations; however, I suspect though that the mechanism and outcome of earthworm impacts on litter and soil is different from that of hooved livestock.  The point I’m making here is that silvopasture is most likely to be implemented in degraded woodlands that have undesirable shrub (or beech) understories.  The livestock, under proper silvopasture management, would control the undesirable plants as the desired forage species develop.  In the absence of the undesirable shrub understory, there are improved opportunities to regenerate desirable canopy species.  Forest regeneration in the presence of livestock will of course require some deliberate strategies, but the removal of the undesirable species relaxes one of the management constraints.
    1. This point addresses, in principle, half of the silvopasture operations.  The other half involve planting trees into existing pastures.  In either case, the design and intended outcome for the tree component in a silvopasture is for high quality and high value forests. 
  7. Deliberate management of the woods.  As a corollary to the point on the initial condition of the woodlot, the silvopasture management system is designed to assure the productivity and vigor of the tree component.  Most farmers, actually most woodland owners, are not attentive to the health (by many definitions) or productivity of their woods.  With silvopasturing, the trees and woodlands are deliberately tended.  This attention can improve the growth (one index of health) of trees.  Research at the University of Missouri found a 25% increase in the growth rates of trees in a silvopasture system compared to a non-managed woodland system.  One exciting aspect of silvopasture is the potential to involve some farmers in more deliberate and sustainable forest management.  In addition to locally produced food, silvopasturing will contribute to locally produced timber, maple syrup, and related forest products.  Is it safe to assume that the farmer who is attentive to his or her livestock and trees will be more aware of the functioning of their land and vegetation?
  8. An alternative to feed lot management or land clearing.  If we assume that people are going to continue to eat meat, that fewer people will hunt deer each year, and that eating locally grown food is desirable, then silvopasturing provides improved opportunities to produce that food with reduced ecological and financial costs.  In order to increase meat production, the local producer has to increase the size of the herd or flock. Or, to reduce dependence on grain as feed the producer must manage the herd using different practices.  The larger number of animals will need to eat more and will generate more manure. Or animals will need different sources of food.  The two basic options for increased feeding, and associated manure management, are to concentrate or distribute.  With silvopasture management, the effective land base of a farm can be expanded and at the same time the complications of a concentrated animal feeding operation can be avoided or reduced.  Related to this, there are examples in the Finger Lakes of farmers who want to increase their herd size, so they clear their forest and create pasture.  Silvopasture avoids the assorted costs of CAFO and deforestation.
  9. Deer are not livestock.  I don’t intend to sound flip, but the impacts of unrestrained deer browsing involving species selective pressures is of course entirely different than intensive rotational grazing.  I don’t understand how these can be compared. The image of continuous grazing (back to that), is a pasture that is gradually encroached by undesirable shrubs and other, often invasive, species.  By contrast, one of the outcomes of intensive rotational grazing is the diminishment of the undesirable species.  Intensive rotational grazing applies pressure more or less equally on all plant species, may use mixed herds for broader selectivity, and the action of the animals hooves and manuring fosters a vibrant forage base.  As an aside for what it’s worth, I’d like to see 90% of the deer herd removed.  I hope you’re successful, but know that our efforts and recommendations in no way contradict your efforts.
  10. Established in other areas.  I assume you’ll agree that simply saying that “others are doing it” fails as a supportive argument.  It is, however, worth noting that silvopasture management is established and widely accepted in the south and lower Midwest.  It is also worth noting that livestock producers in NY will put their animals into woodlots.  Silvopasture is recognized as a component of agroforestry systems that are used around the world, and variants of silvopasture have been used for centuries.  Silvopasture is recognized and supported programmatically at other land grant universities, and is promoted by NRCS as a preferred grazing system in some situations.

I hope these points clarify what I perceive as your misunderstanding of the application of silvopasture management systems.  I suspect you still have questions, concerns, or appropriately some skepticism.  I’m happy to discuss those.  We certainly have questions that need research to resolve.  Minimally, my points provide a focused outline that we can delve into more deeply.  Silvopasture is relatively new and not widely practiced in the Northeast, but given similarities to other regions I expect that silvopasture will have positive outcomes from many perspectives.

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