New SARE Factsheet Offers Ideas on Alternative Dairy Forage Systems

Dairy farmers who are considering their options for increasing flexibility in their forage production systems may want to review a new SARE factsheet, Alternative Continuous-Cover Dairy Forage System for Profitability, Flexibility and Soil Health. In a SARE-funded study in New York, a cooperative team of farmers, researchers and consultants addressed these constraints in dairy farm rotations by developing an alternative forage cropping system with multiple options to produce high-quality forages. This system—Alternative Continuous-Cover Forage (ACCF)—produces high-quality dairy cattle forage with yields comparable to traditional cropping systems, and is based on soil health management, as opposed to the traditional crop rotation of corn silage for three or more years without the use of cover crops.