Grazing quality clarification: What impact does this metric have on overall GHG output? What is its purpose?
Grazing quality information is required for the digestibility of grass. High quality refers to grass from good pastures (generally fertilized), low quality refers to grass from rangelands (mostly unfertilized). Both grassland quality levels have the same dry matter content but differ in the digestive efficiency. The lower the digestive efficiency, the higher the methane emissions from enteric fermentation. The grass quality is not yet used by the CFT, but CFT 3.0 will use it to estimate the digestibility of the grass, which is required for the enteric fermentation and manure management calculations.
If the quality of the rangeland differs throughout the year, select the quality for the main grazing season, and reflect the fact that lower volumes are available in the remainder of the year by adjusting the DMI intake of grass, and balancing it with supplementary forage / concentrate as required. These values should be averaged over the year, so will be slightly high for the grazing period, but low for the period where pasture are ‘brown’ or low quality.
If the cattle are housed when pastures are brown it is not an issue, as the grazing quality is high during grazing.
Related Articles
Grazing type clarification: What impact does this metric have on overall GHG output? What is its purpose?
Grazing type information is needed for the energy requirement calculation. Only two grazing options are available in the CFT. Confined pasture refers to grazing where animals are confined in areas with sufficient forage requiring modest energy ...
Grassland fertilisation: I only apply manure fertiliser on hayfields, not on the full acreage that is used for both hay and grazing. Does it make sense to select “grazing, grass silage, and hay area combined” and then enter in only the acreage on which fertiliser is being applied?
Correct. Select “grazing, grass silage, and hay area combined”, and please only enter the area that is fertilised and the respective fertiliser amounts, not the full area. This won’t impact any other modules (e.g. grazing, feed). Please keep in mind ...
Is the CFT compliant with standards such as the WRI GHG Protocol ISO, PAS2050, Carbon Trust, Life cycle analysis, the International Dairy Federation etc?
Generally speaking, the Cool Farm Alliance seeks to be aligned with various standards and protocols in terms of scope and boundaries, but does not seek to be necessarily ‘compliant’ to those standards. This is because the Coof Farm Tool is agnostic ...
Can I assess GHG emissions for a whole farm?
The greenhouse gas metric works on a per-product basis, whereas in contrast the biodiversity metric is for whole-farm. A whole-farm assessment is a GHG emission inventory considering all aspects that may influence the overall footprint of a ...
According to the GHG Protocol, which approach (scope 1,2 or 3) does the Cool Farm Tool take?
The Cool Farm Tool functions as a greenhouse gas (GHG) calculator designed specifically for the farm level, focusing on emissions arising from agricultural production of specific products, whether they are crops or livestock. The GHG Protocol ...