Get reliable rangeland science

In Uruguay, the forage base that feeds our herds and flocks is natural grassland. Research in the last 20 years has shown the importance of working with a greater proportion of grass to improve animal performance and make our systems more resistant and resilient to climate change. However, to date there has been no tool that allows for simple grass budgeting that can be used by livestock ranchers without major complications. With this objective, an index called the "Meal Plate Index" (MPI) has been develop ed in collaboration with ranchers, which, by estimating forage availability by measuring it with a ruler and comparing it with forage requirements by category, objective and season, allows us to know how well we are doing with grass in relation to the productive objectives we are trying to achieve. In practice, the difficulty is in making the grass field measurements. For this reason, and to move towards general application, a simplified version has been developed which, by means of visual estimation with s elf-calibration of the height of the sward and calculation of the stocking rate of the farm, can quickly and easily provide an estimate of how full the feed plate is that the animals need. The MPI tool, in both its regular and "quick" versions, was compared against external information provided by a national ranchers' network. The tool was adjusted to account for average and extreme forage conditions (both scarcity and excess) during its development and testing phases. The impact of using this simplified tool will improve the performance of ranching systems and for our national herd.