We compared environmental and economic indicators of 12 farms that applied highland grazing (HG) of dairy cows with those of 16 farms that applied no grazing (NG), neither in highland nor in lowland.
In many European mountain areas, such as the Alps, highland grazing is declining.
The objective of this study was to assess economic and environmental effects of abandoning highland grazing of dairy herds in the central Italian Alps.
In addition to its effect on natural landscape and biodiversity, abandoning highland grazing may affect dairy-farm profitability and have environmental consequences in the lowland.
Hence, farmers tend to increase their net farm income by increasing their milk production per farm, via increasing their area of lowland and/or their milk production per ha lowland, while at the same time they abandon highland grazing.
And this second-largest island in the Caribbean also has rolling hills where cattle graze and interior highlands where all sorts of produce can be grown, which will positively impact your food bill.
The main economic activity of the pastoral people of San Luis Potosi highlands (SLPH) is grazing animals (goats), complemented with rainfed agriculture and the gathering of diverse plant materials ([Haenlein 1998]).
For example, for a highland area with only grazing a different configuration of the BEFM is required than for a lowland fertile area.
Since at least the year 1273, the country's shepherds have had the legal right to use about 78,000 miles of droving routes around the country to move livestock seasonally between summer pastures in the cool highlands and more protected lowland grazing areas in the winter.
Conditions were ideal for the large herds of grazing mammals that roamed Mesoamerica, especially in the highland valleys, much of which consisted of cool, wet grasslands not unlike the plains of the northern United States.
