Farming livestock along with growing crops can help spread the risk of farm investment and create new opportunities for profit. The venture may increase the financial and environmental sustainability of an arable farm but potential advantages are achieved at a cost and any limitations need to be considered.
Limitations of integrating stock
The benefits of livestock integration must be balanced against the limitations involved. These include:
- Crop damage
Unrestrained stock can lead to significant crop damage from eating the crop as well as trampling. Good fencing is essential to ensure stock stay where they should be.
- Poor stock health
As well as damaged crops, escapee livestock may harm themselves by gorging on crops. Livestock need to be introduced slowly to forage brassicas otherwise digestive upsets may occur, particularly if stock enter a crop with an empty rumen. A potential risk when feeding forage brassicas is nitrate poisoning (causing death or abortion). Large quantities of cereal grain can also stop the rumen from working properly and can lead to death. Once again, good fencing is essential to ensure stock only graze areas the farmer intends them to.
- Pest and disease transfer
Some crop pests and diseases can be transferred in the soil on the hooves of animals, for example bacterial blight of peas. Knowledge of the lifecycles of crop pests and diseases and how they spread needs to be kept in mind when moving and grazing stock.
- Soil damage
Typically, livestock are break-fed forage crops which means there is usually a high concentration of animals in a relatively small area. In wet conditions this may lead to soil pugging and compaction. This may be unavoidable at times but needs to be kept in mind to ensure long term soil damage does not occur.
- Increased financial costs
Extra costs of combined arable and livestock ventures can be limiting. In addition to the costs of variable inputs to both stock and crops there will be new costs for additional fencing, and perhaps buildings and handling facilities. Though the total amount of land farmed will not change there will be increased investment that has to be funded.
- Increased risk
Although the aim of integrating livestock may be to reduce long term risk the reverse may occur in the short or medium term. Financing the new venture, gaining new skills, purchasing a flock or herd, managing the combined enterprises and fine-tuning their integration to get the best returns all involve a level of risk.
- Competition for resources
Adding a livestock venture may result in times when equipment and labour is needed simultaneously for both cropping and livestock tasks. Ideally, good management should be able to avoid such situations or, if unavoidable, plans should be in place to enlist part-time employees and/or extra equipment to cover the shortfall.
- Employee skills and availability
Existing staff may not have animal husbandry skills and may not be willing to learn the skills or have the temperament required. Employing new staff with the right skills may prove difficult due to labour costs and/or availability of suitable people.
- Increased stress
Change usually involves some level of stress both for farmers and their staff. Many people thrive on new ventures and the challenges they create but others will find the changes more demanding. The responsibility of caring for animals creates a different set of stresses than those of caring for plants. Also, increased financial risk may be stressful early on in the new venture. Some people value stability and find accepting change difficult and resist it. This can be stressful for both employers and long serving employees that are not keen to take on new responsibilities that may be expected of them. Ideally, long serving staff should be consulted before deciding to integrate livestock so staffing arrangements can be made to suit all parties and any conflict resolved early on.
Although there are limitations to integrating livestock with arable production most can be overcome with good management. The benefits of integrating livestock can lead to a more diverse and sustainable farming system.
References
- Soil Management Guidelines for Sustainable Cropping. T G Shepherd, C W Ross, L R Basher, & S Saggar, 2000, Manaaki Whenua Press
- Farm Technical Manual. Ed. Peter Fleming, 2003, Lincoln University
- Foundation for Arable Research
