Impacts of Integrated Crop-Livestock System on Soil Health Parameters.

Introducing livestock into arable cropping systems can improve nutrient cycling, soil health, and provide economic benefits. In the Northern Great Plains, grasslands have been rapidly converted to croplands over the last decade. This conversion has the potential to reduce soil health and increase the region’s ability to pollute the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. Therefore, integrated land management practices that protect the region’s native prairies are needed. The present study was conducted under corn-soybean-oats rotation at Beresford in South Dakota to assess the integrated crop-livestock (ICL) systems on selected soil health parameters. Cover crops were planted after the oat harvest.  Grazing treatments (with and without) were then applied after the cover crop establishment. Cover crops provide feed to livestock in the ICL systems while plants capture nutrients from the livestock waste. There are many benefits with these integrated systems, however, some concerns still exist regarding the role of hoof traffic from livestock in adversely affecting the near-surface soil conditions, soil health, and hydrological properties. Use of diverse cover crop mixtures can provide increased biomass on the surface that can alleviate the compaction impact under these integrated crop-livestock systems. This demonstration study will also be conducted on producers’ farms where project findings and monitoring of soil health parameters, type of cover crops grown in the grazing systems, and importance of grazing management will be demonstrated to the producers. This study will be helpful in providing useful information about short-term (one year) grazing impacts on soil surface physical and hydrological properties.