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Evaluating the accuracy – labour trade-off between alternative grassland monitoring methods by rising plate meters

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 September 2025

Andrew Geoffrey Jones Open the ORCID record for Andrew Geoffrey Jones [Opens in a new window] ,
Taro Takahashi ,
Michael R. F. Lee  and
Paul Harris
Andrew Geoffrey Jones*
Affiliation:
Rothamsted Research, North Wyke, Okehampton, EX20 2SB, UK
Taro Takahashi
Affiliation:
Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute, Hillsborough, BT26 6DR, UK University of Bristol, Langford, BS40 5DU, UK
Michael R. F. Lee
Affiliation:
Harper Adams University, Newport, TF10 8NB, UK
Paul Harris
Affiliation:
Rothamsted Research, North Wyke, Okehampton, EX20 2SB, UK
*
Corresponding author: Andrew Geoffrey Jones; Email: andy.jones@rothamsted.ac.uk
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Abstract

Production efficiency of pasture-based livestock production systems is primarily driven by the level of pasture utilisation, and, as such, regular monitoring of herbage mass (HM) provides essential information to assist on-farm decision making. Unfortunately, this practice is seldom carried out on commercial farms, likely due to the time commitment required across the entire grass-growing season. Recent studies have shown, however, that even moderately inaccurate HM data can improve the system-side profitability compared to enterprises with no data, warranting further investigations into the trade-off between the accuracy and cost associated with HM measurements. Using a weekly multi-paddock dataset from the North Wyke Farm Platform research site in Devon, UK, this study evaluated the technical validity and labour-saving potential of a simplified ‘pasture walk’ protocol for rising plate meters, under which only data along the diagonal transect – rather than the industry-standard W-shaped pathways – of the paddock are collected. Across 234 temporal-paddock combinations, the mean absolute difference in HM estimates between diagonal and W-transects was 106 kg DM/ha, a scale far too small to alter sward or animal management. The presented statistical analysis, together with a supplementary spatial simulation experiment, supported the generality of the findings across the full grass-growing season. With a 51.2% reduction in labour time (1.2 min/ha rather than 2.5 min/ha) across paddocks of various sizes and shapes, the proposed method is likely to facilitate uptake of evidence-based grazing management amongst farmers who currently do not quantify HM at all.

Keywords

Herbage masslabour savinglivestock agriculturepasture utilisationsampling method

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Type
Crops and Soils Research Paper
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The Journal of Agricultural Science , First View , pp. 1 - 13
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© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press

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