Intensify pastures for livestock production: vermicompost use, an agro-ecological practice

The intensification of animal production at pasture is essential to meet the growing demand for animal products but also for other functions, the maintenance of areas, livelihoods and well-being of populations. This intensification must also take into account the reduction of agricultural land, promote positive interactions with the environment and biodiversity, while ensuring the supply of populations. The use of vermicompost involving the action of earthworms is an example of agro-ecological practices, to participate in the intensification of grassland and which has been studied in the context of a call to project, AGRIBIO3. Besides the fact that this practice makes it possible to achieve a proper recycling and recovery of various manures, it improves the quality of organic soil, nutrient bioavailability, and grassland biomass while having a nematophagous action, beneficial to a lesser gastrointestinal parasitism of grazing small ruminants. The biological and financial advantages of this practice in the longer term, and their use to various grassland systems must be quantified