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

该项目旨在通过采用多学科方法，将饲草生产力和质量与动物生产力以及农民的态度和做法联系起来，从而提高哥伦比亚牧场的牛生产力。该项目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和帮助减轻牛生产的环境负担的方法。这一合作项目汇集了英国和哥伦比亚的一系列专业知识，以解决如何增加对改良饲料作物的吸收，用于乳制品和牛肉生产。遥感(使用无人机和卫星数据)将被用来评估植物的生长和营养成分，提供关于何时、何地和有多有营养的空间明确数据。这将与新的青贮技术相结合，在生长良好的时候保存牧草，以便在饲料供应不足的时候(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利用与其生长特征有关，并与遥感数据相联系。提高利用捕获的碳和氮用于生产目的的效率与潜在的污染物输出之间取得平衡，并将确定土壤中排出的氮的去向，以调查饲草植物对生产系统氮循环效率(和损失)的影响。将建立使用新牧草资源的经济学模型，以调查种植新牧场对农民的潜在好处，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的行为，以分析他们实施更有效的耕作做法的动机和潜在障碍。与农业社区接触是这项工作的一个重要因素，因为他们的知识和理解对于成功设计、实施和传播项目工作和产出至关重要。

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.