Economic and Production Performance of Native Grasses as Forage in the Fescue Belt
The primary purpose of developing this literature review and summary was to inform producers about the potential benefits from utilizing warm-season grasses in the Fescue Belt. Effectively, managing forages is not always straightforward for livestock producers. Summarizing the economic and production benefits from using warm-season grasses could help producers make more informed forage management decision and might encourage producers to consider adopting warm-season grasses. Furthermore, this literature review also gathered information about the potential benefits of using native grasslands as forage to the quail population in this region, which could likely result in an economic benefit to the producer from leasing farmland to hunters.
NRCS Working Lands for Wildlife published a Science to Solutions (see URL) on this topic based on work completed by Drs. Chris Boyer and Pat Keyser of the University of Tennessee-Knoxville in 2018. The full literature review completed by Dr. Boyer is also available by emailing him at cboyer3@utk.edu.
