This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Several chronic diseases—obesity, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and some cancers—have been linked to lifestyles and diets high in calories, based on processed foods and lacking diversity and nutritional value. These diseases are among the greatest health challenges globally and in New Zealand, placing growing pressure on health care systems.
This highlights the need for prevention strategies that address not only individual consumer behavior but also environments and food systems. Research increasingly shows how connected our health is to that of the animals we eat and the land they graze. The conventional view of landscapes as merely sites of food production no longer holds.
My team's research focuses on designing and implementing new food production systems as part of a project that integrates farming with health in pursuit of "healthscapes." Our objective is to innovate, demonstrate and manage a tangible transition from current practices to a system designed to enhance health from the ground up, with measured improvements in soil, plant, animal, human and community health. New Zealand's conventional pasture-based farming often relies on uniform and monotonous feed systems dominated by grass monocultures. Even balanced mixed diets, repeated without variation, compromise animal welfare, behavior, health and nutrition.
One of the central practices in integral health farming is "functional diversity," which combines—in space and time—multiple forage species. It includes grasses (ryegrasses, fescues, cocksfoot), herbs (plantain, chicory), legumes (alfalfa, perennial and annual aromatic clovers) and commercial soil biostimulants. This lets animals satisfy their nutritional, medicinal and prophylactic needs while enhancing soil health.
Our pastoral livestock production laboratory has compared conventional, multispecies and functional-diversity grazing options and management in sheep, cattle and deer. We found improved growth, feed efficiency, milk production and animal well-being. Functional diversity systems also cut the loss of nitrogen to the environment by about 30% in sheep and 42% in dairy cows.
A key question is whether changes in grazing management can change the biochemical composition of animal products. We analyzed milk, beef, lamb and venison from different grazing systems for thousands of metabolites involved in biological processes. Milk from cows grazing on functional-diversity pastures showed higher levels of several beneficial compounds, helping the body properly burn fat for energy.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
