The increasing demand for safe and nutritional dairy and beef products in our globalizing world, together with the needs to increase resource use efficiency and to protect biodiversity, provide strong incentives for intensification of grassland and forage use. This paper addresses the question in the title. Firstly, we present some notions about ‘intensification of agricultural production’. Secondly, we discuss the intensification of grassland-based dairy production in The Netherlands (NL), Chile and New Zealand (NZ). Finally, we arrive at some conclusions. External driving forces and ‘the law of the optimum’ provide strong incentives for intensification, i.e., for increasing the output per unit surface area and labour. The three country cases illustrate that intensification of grassland use is a global phenomenon, with winners and losers. Winners are farmers who are able to achieve a high return on investments. Losers are small farmers, who drop-out of business, unless they broaden the income-basis. The relationship between intensification and environmental impact is complex. Within certain ranges, intensification leads to increased emissions of nutrients and greenhouse gases to air and water per unit surface area, but to decreased emissions when expressed per unit of produce. The sustainability of a grassland-based ecosystem is ultimately defined by the societal appreciation of that system and by biophysical and socio-economic constraints. In conclusion, intensification may lead to more efficient and profitable, and thereby more sustainable grassland ecosystems, if the systems of departure are extensively managed, under-utilized, low-productive, over-exploited and/or unregulated systems, and the target systems meets societal demands
