A unit of Lasting Forests evolving since March 30, 1999
A Total Forest Management Plan and Wildland Management Decision Support System
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A Pasture Management System

This is a pasture, rangeland, and livestock grazing system. It is a resident pastoral system part of what some call the "agro-silvo-pastoral" production system. Like forestry, it is a system complex beyond imagination. Efforts to simplify it only produce problems for future analyses and actions. The objective is profit, net discounted present expected value, but the complexity of that pales before the potential products, namely:

• land valuation increase
• hay
• area rent
• fencing sales and herd structures from an affiliate enterprise
• veterinary sales from an affiliate individual and lab
• water devices from an affiliate enterprise
• livestock sale
• meat and carcass
• hides (leather, wool)

  secondary carcass products

  milk (a dairy system is not discussed except as related to dairy goats)

• manure
• scenic vistas (the rural complex)
• semen for AI
• transportation
• protein purchase and sales
• herd care by wards of the courts
• education and training of herdspeople
• hayrides and winter feeding trips

This system operates on the lands between the crops and the trees, those not usually suited for sustained crop production. These are lands in crisis because the products are hardly those of the free market any longer. They are subject to local, national, and international policies, subsidies, import/export quotas, and news reports of health-effect scares. People leave the farms and the expertise (reasonable expert knowledge captured as "experience") that is necessary for sustained profitable operations also leaves or is not re-built or enhanced. It is an international as well as local crisis. Most governments give higher priorities to agriculture than to livestock management (also called rangeland use). Livestock production appears to be fighting a losing battle as a production system and as a way of life.

Without maintaining a viable group of people engaged in this profitable activity, its major contribution to what some call sustained agriculture, family farms, rural development, and community betterment, cannot be achieved.

Range restoration and improvement (and management after improvement) is an objective but it can be cast as reducing the costs found in equivalents of soil erosion and loss of fertilizer equivalents. The US Forest Service studies the change in ecologocal condition of the vegetation and the change in allowable annual grazing. In 1983 for example 12 percent of the rangeland was in excellent condition, 28 percent in good condition, 42 percent in fair condition, and 18 percent in poor condition. Similar ownership or county/regional estimates may be made. An objective might be to have 12 percent in excellent condition, 88 percent in good condition. Using such figures with acres, and animal-unit-months that might be supported per acre, the change, if made, can be quantified in likely increased animal production.

Part of the formulation of the objective is a constraint, one that recognizes the recurring effects of drought and cold winters. We must find socio-economic security for the livestock people of Rural System and surroundings.

Because of the extreme political and socio-economic nature of the system, there must be people within it who can "talk the talk" of the legislators, comprehend the proposed laws, practice accounting, and work to achieve desired marketing facilities and provisions, and reasonable terms of trade, credit and insurance. The proposed enterprise of Rural System seeks socioeconomic security for the household, the enterprise, and the region. The enterprise is the institution needed for securing the present gains, preventing their loss, and building for gains. It provides a genuine participatory form of a local institution (supplementing national groups), all the while dealing with the health and care of the animals and the land resource upon which they are dependent.

There is little consensus on the effects of grazing on pasture composition or productivity even though they have been studied for over a century. This ambiguity is due to tremendous interannual variation in climatic patterns, soil conditions, and the interrelations of the three. Climatic factors outweigh grazing effects. Costs of making studies are high, analyses difficult, and high variance assured. Thus it is time to use a robust approach to pasture management, concentrating on profits - the sum of grazing animal annual (monthly is weight-scales are available) meat weight gains x current median wholesale meat price) plus (animal unit days x rental price / acre). This metric is minimum for it is a value that ignores pasture esthetics as it contributes to land value and to tourism-site esthetic quality and watershed benefits (runoff, topsoil building, and erosion control.

Our understanding of intensively managed pastures and effects of intensive grazing is low. We have decided to invest in fencing for GIS-selected best sites near roads. These fenced areas give us greatest possible control of each area and potentials for short-rotations after the premises of Holistic Resource Management.

Lists of Virginia Dealers with supplies of seed (1996) (probably updated by he Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries

DEALER	STREET	CITY	STATE	ZIP	TELEPHONE
1. Sharp Brothers Seed Co.	396 SW Davis St.-Ladue	Clinton	MO	64735	800-451-3779
2. Bamert Seed Co.	Route 3, Box: 1120	Muleshoc	TX	79347	800-262-9892
3. Adams-Briscoe Seed Co.	P. O.Box: 19	Jackson	GA	30233	770-775-7826
4. Kester's Wild Game Foods	P. O. Box: 516	Omro	WI	54963	800-558-8815
5. Miller Grass Seed Co.	P. O. Box: 81823	Lincoln	NE	68501	402-475-1232
6. MangelsdorfSeed Co.	P.O.Box:327	St. Louis	MO	63166	314-421-1415
7. Owens Station Shooting Preserve	RD I, Box: 438	Greenwood	DE	19950	302-349-4478
8. Carroll Gardens	P. O. Box: 310	Westminstcr	MD	21158	800-638-6334
9. Dothan Seed and Supply	P. o. Box: 1668	Dothan	AL	36302	205-794-2711
10. Southern States Coop.	6606 West Broad Street	Riclunond	VA	23230	804-281-1000
11. Wilson Feed and Seed	2105 Hull Street	Riclunond	VA	23224	804-233-3011
12. Pennington Seed Co.	1808 Midway Avenue	Petersburg	VA	23803	800-999-7333
13. Stark Brothers Nurseries	P. O. Box: 10	Louisianna	MO	63353	800-325-4180
14. Wildlife Nurseries	P. O. Box: 2724	Oshkosh	WI	54903	414-231-3780
15. Shennan Nursery Co.	P. O. Box: 579	Charles City	IA	50616	800-747-5980
16. Alabama Crop Improve Assoc.	P. O. Box2619	Auburn	AL	36831	205-821-7400
17. Wetsel Seed Co.	P.O. Box 791	Harrisonburg	VA	22801	703-434-6110
18. Carino Nurseries	Box 538	Indiana	PA	15701	800-223-7075
19. C. P. Daniel's Sons, Inc.	P. O. Box 119	Waynesboro	GA	30830	800-822-5681
20. Lincoln Oaks Nurseries	P. O. Box 1601	Bismarck	ND	58502	701-223-8575
21. Mellinger's Inc.	2310 W. South Range Rd.	NorthUma	OH	44452	216-549-9861
22. Musser Forests, Ine.	P. O. Box 340	Indiana	PA	15701	412-465-5685
23. Forest Nursery Co., Inc.	R12, Box 118A	McMinnville	TN	37110	615-473-2133
24. Boyd Nursery Company	P. O. Box 71	McMinnville	TN	37110	615-668-9898
25. Lawyer Nursery, Inc.	950 Highway 200 West	Plains	MT	59859	406-826-3881
26.PrairieRidgeNursery	9738 Overland Road	Mt Horeb	WI	53572	608-437-5245
27. Van Pines Nursery	7550 144thAvenue	West Olive	MI	49460	800-888-7337
28. Miller Nurseries	5060 West Lake Road	Canandaigua	NY	14424	800-836-9630
31. VlCginia Department of Forestry	P. O. Box 3758	Charlottesville	VA	22903	804-977-6555
32. Bluestcrn Seed Co.	4045 Somerset Drive	Prairie Village	KS	66208	913-642-7106
34. National Wild Turkey Federation	P. o. Box: 530	Edgefield	SC	29824	803-637-3106
35. Croshaw Nursery	P. O. Box 339	Columbus	NJ	08022	609-298-0477
36. Princeton Nurseries	P. O. Box: 191	Princeton	NJ	08542	609-924-1776
37. Appalachian Gardens	Box 82	Waynesboro	PA	17268	717-762-4312
38. Hess' Nurseries, Inc.	P. O. Box 326	CcdarviIIe	NJ	08311	609-447-4213
39. Evergreen Nurseries	5027 County TT	Sturgeon Bay	WI	54235	800-448-5691
40. Pinelands Nursery	323 Island Road	Columbus	NJ	08022	609-291-9486
42. Warren County Nursery	Route 2, Box 204	McMinnville	TN	37110	800-848-1272
43. Spandle Nurseries	Route 2, Box 125	Claxton	GA	30417	800-553-5771
45. J & JSeed Co.	Route 3, Box 134	Gallatin	MO	64640	816-663-3165
46. Johnston Seed Co.	319 W. Chestnut, Box 1392	Enid	OK	73702	800-375-4613
47. Stock Seed Fanns	Route I, Box 112	Murdock	NE	68407	800-759-1520
49. Woodlanders, Ine.	1128 Colleton Avenue	Aiken	SC	29801	803-648-7522
50. Hamilton Seeds	16786 Brown Road	Elk Creek	MO	65464	417-967-2190
51. Oscnbaugh Grass Seeds	RRl,Box44	Lucas	IA	50151	515-766-6476
52. Horticultural Systems, Inc.	P. o. Box 70	Panish	FL	33564	800-771-4114
53. Ernst ConsetVation