Grass10 Grassland Management

Grassland Excellence for Irish Livestock

The Grass10 campaign aims to promote profitable and sustainable milk and meat production from grass on Irish farms.

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Grass10 Phase III

The main objectives of Phase III of the Grass10 campaign 2025-2028 are:

1. Improving grazing management
2. Improving the level of nutrient management
3. Develop sustainable systems of grass-based milk and meat production
4. Improving the sustainability of grass-based farming

While the environmental footprint of our grass-based systems of milk and meat production continue to improve, sustained effort is required to reach our environmental targets for gas emissions and water quality. There are still easy-wins to be obtained. These include having a long grazing season, entering the right pasture quality, having greater clover content in the sward, making more effective use of slurry, greater use protected urea and improving soil fertility.

Given the anticipated greater restriction on chemical fertiliser allowances will bring greater challenges in feed supply generation. Greater variation in climate will only enhance the risk in feed self-sufficiency on farm. Matching pasture production to the appropriate stocking rate on the farm will become more important to avoid serious deficits in farm feed supply.

Grass10 Campaign – Improving sustainability of our grass based systems

Grass10 Campaign

The Grass10 campaign aims to promote sustainable grassland excellence on Irish livestock farms (dairy, beef and sheep). The Grass10 partners are Grassland Agro, AIB, FBD, Department Agriculture Food & the Marine and the Irish Farmers Journal. The primary objective of the Grass10 Campaign is to utilise 10 tonnes of pasture dry matter (DM)/ha per year by achieving 10 grazings per paddock on grassland farms. Phase II of the Grass10 campaign focused on the following:

Improving the level of grass measurement and management

Grass10 grazing courses operated across the country and this model of improving the level of grassland management and measurement locally has worked well. This was fundamental work carried out during the Grass10 campaign. The plan aimed to improve the farm level adoption of grassland measurement and management using PastureBase Ireland. The level of grass measurement recorded on PBI improved by about 70,000 measurements between 2020 and 2024 (67,000 to 135,000).    While the level of grass measurement has improved overtime, the average pre-grazing yield remains about 150-200 kg DM/ha to high during the main grazing season. This has both immediate and subsequent negative consequences on pasture quality and therefore animal performance. Therefore, a continued focus must remain on having animals enter the right level of pre grazing yield. i.e. 1300-1500 kg DM/ha.

Clover

There is now an increasing demand to include white clover in grazed pastures due to its ability to biologically fix nitrogen making it available for grass growth and thereby potentially reducing inorganic nitrogen fertiliser use, while maintaining or increasing pasture production and quality and improving animal performance. There are challenges in establishing clover in swards at farm level. These issues revolve around time of sowing, soil fertility, herbicide choice and grazing management. There is a huge requirement to focus on educating the grassland industry in the establishment and management of grass/clover swards. However, achieving this objective will take time and this must be recognised. The level of reseeding needs to increase and provides the opportunity to establish clover on the farm. In a new era of moderate chemical N input, the sward needs to perform at a high level to generate enough feed.

Nutrient management

Grass requires a continuous and balanced soil nutrient supply to achieve its production potential.  Many farms are capable of growing in excess of 13 tons DM/ha annually. This level of grass production requires reasonable quantities of nutrients such as Nitrogen (N), Phosphorous (P), Potassium (K) and Sulphur (S) supplied at the correct time. The return in grass production from correcting soil fertility is very high. Improving nutrient use efficiency has become a priority due to the ambitious targets to reduce fertiliser use. PastureBase Ireland can facilitate the process of improving nutrient use efficiency, by providing farmers with up-to-date information on fertiliser use, level of fertiliser requirements and soil fertility. Improving nitrogen use efficiency, along with technologies such as protected urea, LESS, GPS, etc. will assist Ireland to achieve its commitments to reduce greenhouse gas and ammonia emissions.

Grass10 Newsletter

The Grass10 newsletter is the flagship Grass10 communication channel that has developed & innovated throughout Phase II of the Grass10 programme with over 500,000 readers per year! The Grass10 newsletter is produced & sent out every Tuesday by email to 10,600 farmers, PastureBase users & industry stakeholders. It is then taken from there & released on our social media channels & into WhatsApp groups for our readers.

Register for the Grass 10 newsletter

Grassland – our natural advantage

Ireland’s natural resource of almost four million hectares of grassland, combined with our mild, moist and changeable climate, provides us with a significant comparative advantage over other international milk- and meatproducing countries. These twin advantages allow Irish farmers to grow abundant grass, and produce milk and meat naturally and at low cost.

Despite the established benefits of grass-based milk and meat production, Irish livestock farmers are currently not optimising grass production and utilisation. Indeed, Teagasc research indicates that the current levels of grass grown (and utilised) on dairy, beef and sheep farms can be increased significantly. Closing the gap between current levels of grass utilised and the Grass10 target of 10t DM/ha/year utilised, will support significant increases in milk and meat production. Achieving this will require changes in farm practices associated with both grass production and utilisation, including soil fertility, sward composition, grassland measurement and grazing infrastructure.

The Teagasc Grass10 campaign is supported by:

Reward for farm families

The potential reward of utilising more grass in livestock production is huge – for farm families, rural Ireland and the national economy. Teagasc estimates that if grass utilised were to be increased by one tonne DM/ha/year, the benefit to dairy farmers would be €181/ha and €105/ha to drystock farmers.

The Grass10 campaign will feature activities in four broad areas:

1. delivering best practice;
2. building capacity;
3. building awareness; and,
4. setting standards.

Delivering best practice

Grass10 will develop a body of agreed resources, tailored to the needs of various user groups, that is research based. This will be gathered into one single, easily accessible resource available to all. Actions will include the review of existing materials, the development of new materials, and the design of a training module.

Building capacity

A key objective of Grass10 will be to build the capacity of three groups of people: (1) farmers; (2) students; and, (3) advisors/teachers/consultants. Training courses will be delivered with the aim of upskilling livestock farmers in best practice in grassland management. Additional actions will relate to supporting the rollout of the revamped PastureBase Ireland website, which will assist livestock farmers in making precision grassland management decisions.

Building awareness

A comprehensive communication strategy will highlight Grass10 messages to all grassland farmers and their advisers. Actions will include the delivery of events/demonstrations, the creation of a network of ‘Grassland Champions’, the launch of a new Grass10 website, and the provision of regular newsletters/timely updates.

Setting standards

Grass10 will establish targets and measure progress in terms of both grass production and utilisation. Actions will include the production of an annual progress report, the launch of a ‘Grassland Farmer of the Year’ competition and the launch of ‘Annual Grassland Awards’.