This has been on my mind.

Cattle and sheep are actually poor converters of grass protein into milk and meat. When grazing ordinary grass, livestock use only about 20% of protein from the herbage for production – most of the rest is wasted in faeces and urine. This is not only financially costly, but also detrimental to the environment.

A major reason for these losses is the imbalance between readily available energy and protein within the grass. Proteins are rapidly broken down when feed enters the rumen. However, when the diet lacks readily available energy, the rumen microbes can use less of the nitrogen released from the feed, so much of it is absorbed as ammonia and eventually excreted.

Water soluble carbohydrates in grass are the sugars found inside the plant cells, rather than in the cell walls themselves. They become a source of readily available energy soon after forage enters the rumen, allowing rumen microbes to process more grass protein. This protein can then be used in the production of meat and milk.

That's pretty well written. Since I know what they are trying to say I get it, but I'd say it another way: it isn't that ruminants are poor converters of protein (i.e nitrogen), it is that their rumen microflora need some easily accesible energy to do the conversion work. Feed the rumen bugs and they feed the steer.

This isn't a revelation, deep geekery, it's the well known situation and one of the reasons why the whole idea of feeding human food grains to ruminants caught on. Another reason - just to avoid any magic bullet thinking here - is that the grain was easily and cheaply available due to a strategic objective of state to support the grain industry.

It's complicated already, more so if you are neeping about the quality of fatty acids produced by various nutrition choices, and steering an environmentally benign course. Nutrition needs improvement, but it has to come from the pasture, in sufficient quantities and proper proportions.

Through this mechanism, HSG varieties, with high levels of water soluble carbohydrates, can significantly improve the utilization of protein in grass. Research at IGER and AgResearch has shown that HSG varieties have consistently higher levels of sugar than standard varieties throughout the grazing season. Water soluble carbohydrate levels up to 40% higher have been recorded in some HSGs.

HSG, High Sugar Grasses. It sounds vaguely worrisome, like HFC or something. It sounds like something that the knee-jerk conservatives that have hijacked environmentalism would denounce. I'd say it another way: it's balanced nutrition or even high nutrition, nutrient dense, something that communicates that this grass is more healthful. HSG is more accurate, but it requires one to understand the situation, the existing imbalance of nutrients, to grasp that this is an altogether good thing.

It takes less food if the food is more nutritious. And if a grass variety is also more productive it's doubly good. I use one of the varieties from the previous generation of pasture grasses which was productive, digestible, palatable and winter active. It makes a lot of grass, that cattle love, that nourishes them well, and never dies out or goes dormant. HSG makes the newer varieties with high productivity and persistence attributes even better.

That means more and better cattle for the same amount of land, water, fertilizer, labor and time with less external impact. That pushes most of the hot buttons. I don't grow pure stands, it's always a polyculture. I overseed or interseed new varieties. The pasture gets better but remains diverse, becomes increasingly diverse. That pushes a few more buttons. It may not be as good as a pure stand in a given year, but it accomplishes some additional objectives and is reliable over the vicissitudes of time. More buttons.

I'm lucky to be able to do some of this super pasture stuff since I have a climate comparable to the places where these sorts of advanced pasture systems are researched and varieties are developed. One of the explanatory insights for the development of agricultural techniques and varieties is the axis of diffusion: if the land mass runs east/west then climate similarities allow faster and farther diffusion, but if it runs north/south diffusion is limited by climate variation with latitude. Modern global trade allows diffusion to skip across oceans and up mountains so that any pocket of similarity anywhere can benefit from new developments. Modern information systems make it possible to learn of new developments and access new products. At this moment in time I can do things that were difficult or impossible not that long ago.

What puzzles me a bit is why there is not more such research for other climate zones? It isn't true that there is little existing demand or potentially increased markets for such products. I guess that no one in that business sees the potential, or perhaps cares since there are other good markets to pursue. I'd love to see the kind of funding, energy and creativity that goes into turf grasses for homes, institutions and golf courses focused on pastures.