SARIC Translation: Grassland Management

在英国，草地是主要的土地利用方式，占地1240万公顷(占农业总面积的71%)。草原和反刍动物对英国经济也非常重要。反刍动物部门(乳制品和肉牛和绵羊)的产值(82亿GB)是英国农业中最大的，大大高于可耕地(35亿GB)、水果和蔬菜(45亿GB)以及猪和家禽组合部门(42亿GB)。英国草地提供了英国反刍动物消耗的4200万吨饲料干物质中的大约70%。因此，提高英国草原管理者对每日牧草生长如何应对气候和经济环境变化的系统了解，对于决定英国畜牧业未来的效率、弹性和盈利能力至关重要。这项与可持续农业研究与创新俱乐部(SARIC)共同开展的研究翻译项目将翻译一个新验证的基于ESPRC英国流程的草生长模型，在此称为“Rothamsted草模型”(齐等人，2017)，通过与最终用户的共同设计和创新研讨会创建一个适应性强的决策支持和学习工具。该项目的目的是翻译、共同设计和使用决策支持和学习工具，以提高当前和未来英国农民管理草原的盈利能力和可持续性。它有四个目标：1.在可持续农业研究和创新俱乐部的支持下开发该工具2。将最近验证的Rothamsted UK草生长模型(齐等人，2017)转换和调试为开放的电子表格格式，以实现多功能和在农场上的广泛使用。共同设计了一个布局决策支持和学习工具，利用该模型，与选定的终端用户一起改进草原管理的现有和未来土地管理人员。利用创新的社会科学方法发展当前和未来农民使用该模型的适应能力。该项目将把一个开放的、已经经过验证的基于英国过程的草生长模型(Rothamsted草模型)转化为电子表格工具的格式，该工具可以链接到现有的可耕种作物和财务模块。该项目的计划影响是改善农场对草的利用，以增加利润和最大限度地减少浪费，鼓励系统思维以激励未来的草地管理者，提供一种对农场草生产力进行基准测试的方法，并提供一种工具，可能还可以评估草原提供的其他生态系统服务。

Grassland is the dominant land use in the UK covering 12.4 million ha (71% of a total agricultural area). Grasslands and ruminants also have great importance to the UK economy. The value of the output (£8.2 billion) of the ruminant sector (dairy and beef cattle and sheep) is the largest in UK agriculture being substantially greater than the arable (£3.5 billion), the fruit and vegetable (£4.5 billion) and the combined pig and poultry sectors (£4.2 billion). UK grassland provides approximately 70% of the 42 million tonnes of forage dry matter consumed by UK ruminants. Hence improving UK grassland managers' systematic understanding of how daily grass growth responds to a changing climate and economic environment is critical in determining the future efficiency, resilience and profitability of the UK livestock sector. This research translation project, undertaken with the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Innovation Club (SARIC) will translate a newly validated ESPRC UK process-based model of grass growth, termed here as the "Rothamsted grass model", (Qi et al., 2017) to create an adaptable decision-support and learning tool through co-design and innovative workshops with end-users. The aim of the project is to translate, co-design and use a decision support and learning tool to improve the profitability and sustainability of how current and future UK farmers manage their grassland. It has four objectives:1. To develop the tool with the support of the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Innovation Club2. To translate, and debug, the recently validated Rothamsted UK grass-growth model (Qi et al., 2017) into an open spreadsheet format to enable multi-functional and widespread use on farms.3. To co-design the layout of a decision support and learning tool, using the model, with selected end-users to improve the grassland management of current and future land managers.4. To develop current and future farmers' adaptive capacity to use the model using innovative social science methods.The project will translate an open already-validated UK process-based model of grass growth (the Rothamsted grass model) in the format of a spreadsheet tool that can be linked to existing arable crop and financial modules. The planned impact of the project is to improve the use of grass on farms to increase profits and to minimise waste, to encourage systematic thinking to enthuse future grass managers, to provide a means of bench-marking grass productivity on farms, and to provide a tool which also potentially allows assessment of other ecosystem services provided by grassland.