Kernza® intermediate wheatgrass (Thinopyrum intermedium) is a novel perennial grain and forage crop with the potential to provide multiple ecosystem services, which recently became commercially available to farmers in the USA. The viability and further expansion of this promising crop require understanding how it may fit the needs of farmers’ livelihoods and the structure of their farming systems. However, no prior research has studied the perceptions and experiences of Kernza growers. The goals of this research were to understand why farmers grow Kernza, how Kernza fits into their systems and identify challenges for future research. We conducted in-depth interviews with ten growers in the North Central USA during the summer of 2017, who accounted for a third of the Kernza farmers in the USA at the time. All farmers had a positive attitude toward experimentation and trying new practices, and they were interested in Kernza for its simultaneous ecological and economic benefits. Kernza was marginal in terms of area, quality of fields and resources allocated in the farm systems, which also meant that farmers maintained low costs and risks. Growers utilized and valued Kernza as a dual-use crop (grain and forage), sometimes not harvesting grain but almost always grazing or harvesting hay and straw for bedding. Weeds were perceived as a challenge in some cases, but Kernza was valued as a highly weed-suppressive crop in others. Farmers requested information on optimal establishment practices, assessment of forage nutritive value, how to maintain grain yields over years, weed management, markets and economic assessment of Kernza systems. These results agree with other cases on sustainable practices adoption showing that engaging farmers in the research process from the beginning, identifying knowledge gaps and testing management alternatives are critical for the success and expansion of novel agricultural technologies.

We assess empirically how agricultural lands should be used to produce the highest valued outputs, which include food, energy, and environmental goods and services. We explore efficiency tradeoffs associated with allocating land between food and bioenergy and use a set of market prices and nonmarket environmental values to value the outputs produced by those crops. We also examine the degree to which using marginal land for energy crops is an approximately optimal rule. Our empirical results for an agricultural watershed in Iowa show that planting energy crops on marginal land is not likely to yield the highest valued output.

In Sehoul, Morocco, the use of marginal land for agriculture became a necessity for the local population due to increased poverty and the occupation of the best land by new owners. Desertification poses an additional threat to agricultural production on marginal slopes, which are often stony and degraded. In a participatory process embedded in the EU DESIRE research project, potential sustainable land management measures were selected to address land degradation and desertification. Promising experiences with no-tillage practices elsewhere in Morocco had motivated the Moroccan government to promote conservation agriculture throughout the country. This combination of crop rotation, minimal soil disturbance and soil cover maintenance, however, had not yet been tested on sloping degraded land. Field trials of grazing enclosure combined with no or minimum tillage were conducted on the plots of two farmers, and trial results were analyzed based on stakeholders’ criteria. Results suggest that increased soil cover with barley residues improved rainwater use efficiency and yields only slightly, although soil water was generally enhanced. Soil moisture measurements revealed that no-tillage was favorable mainly at soil depths of 5 cm and in connection with low-rainfall events (<20 mm); under these circumstances, moisture content was generally higher under no-tillage than under conventional tillage. Moreover, stakeholder discussion confirmed that farmers in Sehoul remain primarily interested in animal husbandry and are reluctant to change the current grazing system. Implementation of conservation agriculture is thus challenged both by the degraded, sloping and stony nature of the land, and by the socio-economic circumstances in Sehoul.

The foraging behaviour (grazing time and diet composition), live-weight (LW) changes and parasitic infection (faecal egg counts of gastrointestinal nematodes) of 12 beef cows, 84 ewes and 84 goats suckling their offspring, managed in mixed grazing on heathlands with 24% of improved pasture of perennial ryegrass-white clover, were studied during the years 2003 and 2006. The results showed that goats tended to graze for a longer time, and utilised significantly more heathland vegetation than cattle and sheep, including in their diet in an average of 0.39 herbaceous plants, 0.11 gorse and 0.51 heather over the grazing season, comparing with respective mean values of 0.85, 0.02 and 0.13 in cattle and sheep. Dietary overlap was higher between cattle and sheep (0.76) than between sheep and goats (0.53) or between cattle and goats (0.47). Despite the high performance of autumn-calving cows in spring, sheep had the best LW changes per livestock unit (LU) during the whole grazing season. Goats’ performance per LU was lower than in sheep but higher than in spring-calving cows. Regarding offspring production, lambs had higher LW gains per LU than calves and kids. Mean nematode eggs/g fresh faeces (epg) during the grazing season were higher in goats (91 epg) compared with sheep (34 epg) and cattle (14 epg), particularly from September to December. In conclusion, sheep performed best on these heathlands with improved pasture areas if the entire grazing season was considered, despite the good level of production in spring from autumn-calving cows. The results suggested the complementary use of goats in order to increase the effective utilisation of the available vegetation, achieving production levels similar to those from spring-calving cows. Therefore, mixed flocks of sheep and goats would be the most appropriate sustainable systems from the animal production and vegetation use points of view.

Diet selection, live-weight changes and productivity per hectare of two breeds of goats (Cashmere and local Celtiberic) managed in natural vegetation dominated by heather, and the effect of stocking rate (high or low) in the Cashmere breed, were studied during four grazing seasons. Breed had a significant (P < 0.01) effect on the available biomass and its components over the experimental period as a consequence of the differences in dietary components selected by the animals. Local goats produced a greater reduction in short and tall heather and in the percentage of leaves in the tall heather. Live-weight changes were significantly (P < 0.001) different between breeds. Over all experimental years Cashmere goats maintained weight under both low and high stocking rate (4 and − 1 g/day respectively), while local Celtiberic goats lost 30 g/day.

Across all grazing seasons and experimental years stocking rate did not significantly affect individual live-weight changes of Cashmere goats. Productivity per hectare did not differ significantly (P>0.05) between high ( − 0.6 kg/ha) and low stocking rate treatments (4.1 kg/ha). However it was significantly (P < 0.001) worse for the local breed treatment ( − 51 kg/ha).

As a consequence, in these vegetation communities with low abundance and poor quality of herbaceous plants it will be impossible to develop sustainable systems from the animal production point of view, and their management would need to be integrated during the grazing season by alternating with vegetation communities with better quality.