The Tropical Agriculturalist Bayer:Forage Husbandry

Rather than describing the techniques of forage production, this book focuses on forage husbandry for ruminants, because these animals can produce useful outputs from natural resources that humans cannot eat directly.

Husbanding forage resources for ruminants is thus largely complementary to cultivating food for humans.

The main emphasis of the book is on the functions of the different types of resources within forage husbandry systems.

Biological and agronomic aspects are treated only to the extent needed to understand these functions.

This text was written with the aim of: illuminating the principles and dynamics of forage husbandry within existing pastoral and smallholder farming systems; indicating the potentials and constraints of externally-developed innovations in forage husbandry; indicating the opportunities for indigenous development of forage husbandry; and giving development agents, especially those who can influence the planning of development programmes and the policy environment, some guidelines for understanding existing forage husbandry practices, development needs and opportunities.