SARIC Translation: Grassland Management

草地是英国主要的土地利用，覆盖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很重要。反刍动物部门（乳制品和肉牛羊）的产值（82亿英镑）是英国农业中最大的，远远超过了耕地（35亿英镑）、水果和蔬菜（45亿英镑）以及猪和家禽联合部门（42亿英镑）。在英国反刍动物消耗的4200万吨牧草干物质中，英国草原提供了大约70%。因此，提高英国草地管理者对草地日常生长如何响应气候和经济环境变化的系统理解，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。该研究翻译项目由可持续农业研究与创新俱乐部（SARIC）承担，将翻译最新验证的ESPRC英国基于过程的草生长模型，这里称为“洛桑草模型”（Qi et al., 2017），通过与最终用户的共同设计和创新研讨会，创建适应性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。在可持续农业研究与创新俱乐部的支持下开发该工具2。为了翻译和调试最近验证的洛桑英国草生长模型（Qi et al., 2017），将其转换为开放的电子表格格式，以便在农场上实现多功能和广泛使用。3 .使用该模型与选定的最终用户共同设计决策支持和学习工具的布局，以改善当前和未来土地管理者的草原管理。运用创新的社会科学方法，培养当前和未来农民使用该模型的适应能力。该项目将以电子表格工具的形式翻译一个开放的、已经验证的英国基于过程的草生长模型（洛桑草模型），该模型可以与现有的耕地作物和金融模块相关联。该项目的计划影响是改善农场对草的利用，以增加利润并最大限度地减少浪费，鼓励系统思考，以激励未来的草地管理者，提供一种衡量农场草生产力的基准手段，并提供一种工具，也可能允许评估草地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.