According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, silvopasture is a deliberate integration of trees and grazing livestock on the same land. Two systems are intensively managed for both forest products and forages providing both short and long-term income sources.
This sounds like a straightforward way to increase your profits by essentially doing two things at the same time. Take a moment to consider: How do you want to do this and what are you trying to manage for?
Goals
The concept that we must grasp here is more difficult to manage for two things than it is to manage for one — where you are trying to establish trees, or even keep trees healthy, you have to get the grass to grow. Mowing is going to be harder, light competition is going to be an issue and animal compatibility needs to be considered.
Tree protection might be something that you have to do because, for example, goats like to strip bark off trees. Large animals with small trees don’t always mix well either. Soil testing is a big one that we always harp on, especially with traditional pastures and hay fields.
If you have trees there, you have to balance things, and this might lead to limited options. Trees might like it a little bit more acidic. Most forages, especially grasses, might do just fine in slightly acidic soils. However, it gets tricky when you want to start incorporating legumes. Clovers and alfalfa like it more neutral, so you must strike a balance to manage for both trees/tree products and livestock forage grazing.
Have a plan
A management plan must be in place to obtain the best results. It takes a little bit of foresight and more adjustments, but you can’t do what is good in one situation without considering the other aspect of the management system. Put in the simplest case, consider trees and grasses.
It does take a little bit more thought because you could be managing for three separate areas if you have incorporated animals into the system when everything is put together. You could be managing for animals, trees and, if you are raising animals that eat forage, forage.
The more you add to the equation the more diligent and complicated the management. You have your grasses, your trees and your animals that you are all managing for. Think about how your sales are going to generate revenue for the farm. Your livestock can give you that annual return for a continual cash flow for the farm, but your trees are going to take much longer. They could have the potential for giving you a much larger return when they are ready to yield either from their product of fruit or nuts or the timber.
Other benefits to trees
You also have to keep in mind that those trees have a lot of other benefits to them; they are going to provide resilience to climate change. They are going to increase your carbon sequestration, which may make you eligible for funding. Some practices can get more carbon out of the atmosphere than others, but this is one example as well. There are a lot of programs out there for that now, keep it in mind when factoring in profit margins.
You could potentially improve your water quality by reducing your farm runoff. With trees, you are improving your soil health, as compared to open pastures, because the tree roots add a lot of enzymes into the soil, which attract more microbes that create a healthy network of mycorrhizae for good soil and crop production.
In this way, you are preserving wildlife habitat and biological diversity, which means that you’re going to be more resilient to potential influxes of invasive pests. On the other hand, mismanagement could increase your water problems, so stay on top of it!
From a farm business management standpoint, you are helping to create that rural social economic development by diversifying the different jobs that are available. In that niche, we can explore: producing local meats, tree products, timber and possibly other forest products. These are just some creative ways to increase the capability of what we think a “pasture” is or should be.
In silvopasture, it can be many animals but many think of cattle. Cows are large animals. If you have excessive stocking, or they are on that ground for a long time, their weight can compact the soil and damage trees. Trees may send a long taproot down, and they might be sturdy, but a lot of the roots that pull up the nutrients are going to be superficial. If you have a lot of cows, that weight can be on average 1,500 pounds each on the drip line and under the tree — that is where most of the feeder roots are located.
Cows love shade when its hot. Balancing the light for both grass growth and tree growth will cause shade to be concentrated and dappled which in turn will cause cows to congregate more tightly.
Think about the ecosystem when you are doing your management intensive grazing. Rotation is important, you must move the animals for pasture resilience, but in a silvopasture setting, it becomes even more critical. Think about the times where the ground might be more sensitive, like when it’s really wet.
I know there are times where you probably won’t be able to help it, you can’t always predict the weather. At least try to mitigate those issues. You can have positive results, if that does happen, give it time to recover, don’t just say, “Oh, well, I guess I can’t do anything anymore,” because it happened once. It just gets progressively worse if ignored. This balancing act between trees, grass, and animals can get complicated, there will be setbacks, but it can be very rewarding.
Many pastures in the southern U.S. have trees and utilize annual forages in their production systems. Annual forages can sometimes yield better especially in a season and can be a good option for silvopasture management, especially where grass growth is limited.
Start small
Silvopasture is a novel concept for many farms and production systems.You can go from grass to trees or the other way. Even this can make a big difference in management. Like many new practices, starting small is a good way to understand the potential in things. If you are considering silvopasture, think about the management part and do not hesitate to ask for help from your Extension Service, USDA or soil and water conservation district.
