Grazing for multiple benefits

At best, grazing of cattle can maintain farmland biodiversity and enhance animal welfare. Grazing has been on decline in Finland and elsewhere for decades, especially in dairy production. We aim to uncover approaches to grazing in modern dairy and beef production that could be feasible for modern systems in Finland: while optimised for biodiversity and animal welfare, they would ideally maintain productivity, gain farmers’ acceptance and consumers’ support.

Ongoing projects

Multipurpose Grazing

Grazing on dairy farms has a great potential to promote both animal welfare and farm biodiversity. However, grazing has declined in Finland and elsewhere with increasing herd size and transfer to free-stall barns with automatic milking. This 4-year research project aims at exploring how animal welfare and farm biodiversity can be promoted in dairy farms by developing grazing methods for dry cows and heifers without compromising their nutrition and health. It will also look into the economics of grazing and consumers' valuation of grazing-based production systems.

We will focus on grazing on both field pastures and on multispecies semi-natural pastures (such as wooded pastures). Research will be conducted on Viikki research farm and on commercial dairy farms. The multidisciplinary consortium involves experts from fields of animal nutrition and welfare, agroecology, and economics from the University of Helsinki and Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke). Research is funded by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (Food 2.0- programme) with a contribution of Valio Oy.

We invite master students and interns interested in fieldwork on the above aspects in 2026, 2027 or 2028. Please, be in touch with Irina Herzon () on biodiversity aspects and Anni Halmemies-Beauchet-Filleau () or Peter Krawczel () on animal nutrition and welfare.

Past projects

Graze-WEL: Can grazing regime and farmers’ perceptions of pasture management affect the welfare of dairy cattle and potential for carbon sequestration? and group

Role of cattle grazing in maintaining biodiversity in Finland and group, in collaboration with . The aim is to gain an in-depth understanding of the impacts of varying livestock grazing regimes on farmland birds in Finland through a quasi-experimental field-based study design.