Sustainable forages for net-zero in livestock production

Chris Reynolds is Professor of Animal and Dairy Science and director of the Centre for Dairy Research at the University of Reading. Following postgraduate study at the University of Tennessee, he worked in the USDA-ARS Ruminant Nutrition Laboratory at Beltsville Maryland until moving to the University of Reading in 1993. He then spent 4 years as Associate Professor at Ohio State University, returning to Reading in 2006. His research has primarily concerned the nutritional physiology of ruminants in relation to energy and protein metabolism. Recent research has focused on the management of ruminants to reduce methane and reactive nitrogen emissions associated with milk and meat production, and the use of multi-species swards to improve the sustainability and resilience of ruminant production systems.

Dominika Krol is a Research Officer in the area of ‘Agricultural Gaseous Emissions’ in Teagasc, Environment, Soils and Land Use Department in Johnstown Castle, Wexford, Ireland and an Adjunct Lecturer in College of Science and Engineering at NUI Galway, Ireland. Her research interests include nitrogen management and fluxes in grazed grassland systems, in particular quantification and mitigation of nitrous oxide and ammonia, sustainable manure management and refinement of emission inventories.

Forage Crop Specialist at NIAB, responsible for forage crop variety list and commercial trial programmes, technical advice and project work. A background in livestock/mixed farming, with previous roles in higher education and training, agri-environment and knowledge exchange. Research interests in diverse forage cropping systems, grassland, soils, mixed species swards/herbal leys, biodiversity, optimising milk, meat and health through understanding soil-crop-animal interactions and economic and environmental sustainability of the UK livestock industry.

Dr Graham McAuliffe is an Environmental Scientist with a background in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Systems Thinking. His career-focus to date has largely centred on methodological improvements to LCA, including the quantification of specific uncertainties and the consideration of nutritional composition and quality within the burgeoning field of nutritional LCA (or nLCA). Utilising high-resolution data generated by the North Wyke Farm Platform, one of UKRI's National Capabilities, Graham and his colleagues were able to develop novel approaches for calculating carbon footprints of livestock systems. His experience pertaining to nLCA, which, as a method, is arguably still in its infancy, has resulted in being invited to consult on a number of national and international projects and ventures, including consulting for the FAO (Led by Professor Sarah McLaren, Massey University of New Zealand) on novel grey literature. Graham is currently the Team Leader and Principal Investigator (PI) of the LCA Group at Rothamsted Research which forms part of the wider Landscape Systems Team within Rothamsted's Scientific Directorate, Net Zero and Resilient Farming, led by Professor Adrian Collins.

Dr James Humphreys is a Principal Research Officer at Teagasc Animal and Grassland Research and Innovation Centre, Moorepark, Co. Cork. He is an expert in pasture-based dairy production with over 20 years’ experience of systems-scale experiments and farm-scale studies at Solohead Research Farm and on commercial dairy farms. The focus is on developing economically competitive systems of dairy production to achieve national emissions reduction targets.

Martin Lukac is Professor of Ecosystem Science, with more than 20 years of experience in research on ecology of forest and agricultural ecosystems, agroforestry and soil science. His main area of expertise is terrestrial ecosystem productivity and functioning, role of diversity in ecosystem stability, and carbon cycling in ecosystems.

Oli is a progressive lowland livestock farmer from south Leicestershire. The business operates as a family partnership and has a strong focus on forage-based beef and lamb production using a variety of pasture types and grazable arable crops. He has previously worked in the meat processing sector and has extensive experience in delivering farm business consultancy to businesses across England and Wales. Oli is an appointee on the NFU National Livestock board and always strives to practically demonstrate how grazing systems can offer solutions to the net zero challenge.

Paul Totterdell runs Cotswold Seeds Ltd, and has 22 years experience as a seed merchant specialising in seed mixes for animal forage, soil improvement and agri-environmental schemes. Cotswold Seeds works with 20,000 farms across the UK providing specialist advice on seed mix formulation and management, as well as owning a knowledge exchange centre in the Cotswolds called FarmED. Paul has a particular interest in Diverse Mixtures and Herbal Leys which have become very popular in recent times due to extremes in weather and the political climate. As part of his role, Paul was involved for many years with the multi-million pound, EU-funded Healthy Hay and Legume Plus research programmes, focusing on the science behind the forgotten novel legumes, such as Sainfoin, and has collaborated more recently with various scientific and academic groups such as the SARIC group based in Reading University and Innovation Farm at NIAB in Cambridge.