Improving grass silage production with controlled traffic farming (CTF): agronomics, system design and economics

Abstract

Grassland silage management is generally semi-organised with no conscious attempt to reuse wheel ways as with arable fields. The total number of machine passes can be 15 or more with normal traffic (NT) systems resulting in potentially large areas of a field suffering from direct damage to the crop and soil. Literature suggests there can be grass dry matter yield reductions of 5 to 74% under NT through compaction and sward damage, with a mean of 13% in the UK. Commercially available grass forage equipment with widths of 3 to 12 m set up for controlled traffic farming (CTF) could reduce trafficked areas (which is typically 90% to 80% for NT) to 40% to 13% for CTF. This study compared grass dry matter yield between CTF and NT for a three-cut silage system based on a 9 m working width in a permanent silage field in the southwest of Scotland, UK in 2015. Results showed a 13.5% (0.80 t ha −1) increase in yield for CTF for the 2nd and 3rd cuts combined. The CTF trafficked area covered was 57% less than the NT system (30.4% compared to 87.4%) over the three silage cuts. An economic analysis based on a 13% increase in dry matter yield (for 2-and 3-cut systems) and a reduction in trafficked area from 80% (for NT) to between 45% and 15% (for CTF), increased the yield by between 0.53 t ha −1 and 1.36 t ha −1 for 2-and 3-cut systems, respectively with an equivalent grass value of between £38 ha −1 and £98 ha −1. Introducing CTF for a multi-cut grass silage system is cost-effective by increasing yields due to a reduction in compaction and sward damage.

X-ray Microtomography Analysis of Integrated Crop-Livestock Production Impact on Soil Pore Architecture

“…Another relevant aspect of MT was the positive effect of cover crops compared to silage. Some authors have proposed that silage may damage the pore structure due to the traffic of the forage harvester [52,72,73], resulting in the densification of the soil and a reduction in its connectivity (Table 1). Concerning NT, the lower 𝐶 values may also be associated with the traffic of agricultural implements and animals during grazing, which reduces pore connectivity [74,75].…”

Assessment of Comfort Variation among Different Types of Driving Agricultural Tractors: Traditional, Satellite-Assisted and Semi-Automatic

“…In recent years, the accomplishment of agricultural operations carried-out with tractors has been heading towards the integration of traditional mechanics with geolocation technologies, to bring farming procedures closer to the precision agriculture logic [1,2]. The possibility to control the tractor steering by using Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) is an important contribution to improving the efficiency of agricultural practices [3,4] and allows savings of time, fuel, labor, and production factors contributing to the economic and environmental sustainability of the agricultural process [5,6]. However, today, driving agricultural vehicles still requires great concentration and repeated gestures to obtain quality and maintain security conditions [7].…”