Advancing sustainable forage-based livestock production systems in Colombia (CoForLife)

该项目旨在通过采用多学科方法，将饲料生产力和质量与动物生产力和农民的态度和做法联系起来，提高哥伦比亚牧场的牛生产力。它将结合对牧草生产和动物行为的遥感以及对养分利用和系统损失的测量，以确定提高动物生长效率的方法，并帮助减轻养牛生产的环境负担。该合作项目汇集了来自英国和哥伦比亚的一系列专业知识，以解决如何增加奶牛和牛肉生产中改良饲料作物的吸收。遥感（使用无人机和卫星数据）将用于评估植物生长和营养成分，提供关于牧草何时、何地以及营养程度的空间明确数据。这将与新的青贮技术相结合，在生长良好的时期保存饲料，以便在饲料供应不足的时期（即旱季）使用。将在农场监测动物行为和消化生理，以确定牛对饲料资源的使用与其生长特性有关，并将其与遥感数据联系起来。提高用于生产目的的捕获的碳和氮的使用效率与潜在的污染物输出相平衡，并且将确定土壤中排泄的氮的命运，以调查饲料植物对生产系统中氮回收（和损失）效率的影响。利用新型饲料资源的经济学将被建模，以调查种植新的放牧牧场对农民的潜在利益，并帮助他们在不断变化的气候条件下做出投资决策。将研究农民在其农场使用改良饲料资源和方法方面的行为，以分析他们的动机和实施更有效耕作方法的潜在障碍。与农业社区的接触是这项工作的重要组成部分，因为他们的知识和理解对于项目工作和产出的成功设计、实施和传播至关重要。

This project aims to improve cattle productivity on Colombian pasture-based farms by using a multidisciplinary approach that will link forage productivity and quality to animal productivity and farmer attitudes and practice. It will use a combination of remote sensing of forage production and animal behaviour together with measurements of nutrient utilisation and system losses to determine ways of improving the efficiency of animal growth and help reduce the environmental burden of cattle production.This collaborative project brings together a range of expertise from the UK and Colombia to address ways to increase the uptake of improved forage crops for dairy and beef production. Remote sensing (using drones and satellite data) will be used to assess plant growth and nutritional composition, providing spatially explicit data on when, where, and how nutritious the forages are. This will be combined with new ensiling techniques to conserve forages at times of good growth for use in times of low feed availability (i.e. the dry season). Animal behaviour and digestive physiology will be monitored on farms to determine cattle use of feed resources in relation to their growth characteristics and linked to the remote sensing data. Improved efficiency of use of captured carbon and nitrogen for productive purposes is balanced with potential pollutant outputs, and the fate of excreted nitrogen in soils will be determined to investigate the effects of forage plants on efficiency of nitrogen recycling (and losses) from the production system. The economics of the use of novel forage resources will be modelled to investigate the potential benefits to farmers of planting new grazing pastures, and to help them take investment decisions under changing climate conditions. Farmer behaviours in the use of improved forage resources and methods on their farms will be studied to analyse their motivations and potential barriers to the implementation of more efficient farming practices. Engagement with farming communities is an important element of this work, because their knowledge and understanding is vital to successful design, implementation and dissemination of the project work and outputs.