Beef production from feedstuffs conserved using new technologies to reduce negative environmental impacts

End of project reportMost (ca. 86%) Irish farms make some silage. Besides directly providing feed for livestock, the provision of grass silage within integrated grassland systems makes an important positive contribution to effective grazing management and improved forage utilisation by grazing animals, and to effective feed budgeting by farmers. It can also contribute to maintaining the content of desirable species in pastures, and to livestock not succumbing to parasites at sensitive times of the year. Furthermore, the optimal recycling of nutrients collected from housed livestock can often be best achieved by spreading the manures on the land used for producing the conserved feed. On most Irish farms, grass silage will remain the main conserved forage for feeding to livestock during winter for the foreseeable future. However, on some farms high yields of whole-crop (i.e. grain + straw) cereals such as wheat, barley and triticale, and of forage maize, will be an alternative option provided that losses during harvesting, storage and feedout are minimised and that input costs are restrained. These alternative forages have the potential to reliably support high levels of animal performance while avoiding the production of effluent. Their production and use however will need to advantageously integrate into ruminant production systems. A range of technologies can be employed for crop production and conservation, and for beef production, and the optimal options need to be identified. Beef cattle being finished indoors are offered concentrate feedstuffs at rates that range from modest inputs through to ad libitum access. Such concentrates frequently contain high levels of cereals such as barley or wheat. These cereals are generally between 14% to 18% moisture content and tend to be rolled shortly before being included in coarse rations or are more finely processed prior to pelleting. Farmers thinking of using ‘high-moisture grain’ techniques for preserving and processing cereal grains destined for feeding to beef cattle need to know how the yield, conservation efficiency and feeding value of such grains compares with grains conserved using more conventional techniques. European Union policy strongly encourages a sustainable and multifunctional agriculture. Therefore, in addition to providing European consumers with quality food produced within approved systems, agriculture must also contribute positively to the conservation of natural resources and the upkeep of the rural landscape. Plastics are widely used in agriculture and their post-use fate on farms must not harm the environment - they must be managed to support the enduring sustainability of farming systems. There is an absence of information on the efficacy of some new options for covering and sealing silage with plastic sheeting and tyres, and an absence of an inventory of the use, re-use and post-use fate of plastic film on farms. Irish cattle farmers operate a large number of beef production systems, half of which use dairy bred calves. In the current, continuously changing production and market conditions, new beef systems must be considered. A computer package is required that will allow the rapid, repeatable simulation and assessment of alternate beef production systems using appropriate, standardised procedures. There is thus a need to construct, evaluate and utilise computer models of components of beef production systems and to develop mathematical relationships to link system components into a network that would support their integration into an optimal system model. This will provide a framework to integrate physical and financial on-farm conditions with models for estimating feed supply and animal growth patterns. Cash flow and profit/loss results will be developed. This will help identify optimal systems, indicate the cause of failure of imperfect systems and identify areas where applied research data are currently lacking, or more basic research is required

Remembering the City: Changing Conceptions of Community in Urban China

Adopting complimentary integrative research methodologies, this article examines changing conceptions of community amongst urban residents within the city of Suzhou, Jiangsu province, China. Whilst the impact of urban transformation from a macro-perspective, deploying large scale quantitative measures to capture resident perceptions within China’s mega-cities, has been addressed, there is something of a scholarly lacuna that adopts a micro-perspective to explore the nation-state’s smaller developing cities. Thus, through local residents’ past memories, ‘everyday’ experiences of (former) urban communities, and reflections on a particular way of life, we focus upon the subjective/affective meanings and memories attached to processes of urban change. We place emphasis on the manner in which residents make sense of socio-spatial transformations in relation to the (re)making of community, local social interaction, and a sense of belonging. Discussion centres on the affective and embodied notions of a particular way of life in (older) communities; sensory performances that were deemed difficult to replicate within modern development zones and the broader field of contemporary Chinese society

Grasping the Dynamism of Lifeworld

Recent attempts by geographers to explore the human experience of space have focused on overt behavior and its cognitive foundations. The language and style of our descriptions, however, often fail to speak in categories appropriate for the elucidation of lived experience, and we need to evaluate our modes of knowing in the light of modes of being in the everyday world. Phenomenologists provide some guidelines for this task. They point to the preconsciously given aspects of behavior and perception residing in the “lifeworld”—the culturally defined spatiotemporal setting or horizon of everyday life. Scientific procedures which separate “subjects\u27’and “objects,\u27’thought and action, people and environments are inadequate to investigate this lifeworld. The phenomenological approach ideally should allow lifeworld to reveal itself in its own terms. In practice, however, phenomenological descriptions remain opaque to the functional dynamism of spatial systems, just as geographical descriptions of space have neglected many facets of human experience. There are certain avenues for dialogue between these two disciplines in three major research areas: the sense of place, social space, and time-space rhythms. Such a dialogue could contribute to a more humanistic foundation for human geography

On People, Paradigms, and \u27Progress\u27 in Geography

The notion of ‘paradigm’ exercises a growing appeal among historians and commentators on geographic thought. (Stoddart, 1967; Whitehand, 1970, 1971; Chorley, 1974; Berry, 1974). As with ‘peneplain’ a few generations ago it offers an illusion of clarity yet remains sufficiently vague and analytically elusive to occupy our imaginations for a long time. The theory of scientific revolutions has provoked a virtual cacophony of protest and acclaim which was exposed several latent conflicts and uncertainties in the history and philosophy of science. (Kuhn, 1962; Lakatos and Musgrave, 1970). What emerges from this din with resounding clarity, however, is stronger evidence than before that the evolution of scientific ideas cannot be appreciated without a closer scrutiny of their social, ideological, and political milieux

Social Space and the Planning of Residential Areas

Cities are an immense laboratory of trial and error, failure and success, in city building and city design. This is the laboratory in which city planning should have been learning and forming and testing its theories. Instead the practitioners and teachers of this discipline…have ignored the study of success and failure in real life, have been incurious about the reasons for unexpected success, and are guided instead by principles derived from the behaviour and appearance of towns, suburbs, tuberculosis sanatoria, fairs, and imaginary dream cities – from anything but cities themselves – Jane Jacobs (1961:6). The livability of residential environments has become one of the most urgent challenges facing our industrial cities. Despite the volumes of scientific research, experimentation, and evaluation, our understanding of the problem remains embarrassingly incomplete. Its very complexity baffles the investigator. One merely carves out slices or the problem and investigates them according to the concepts and procedures of specific disciplines