Catch crops - cheap and environmental beneficial forages​

Ruminants are able to transform non-human-edible forages to high quality protein such as milk and meat. In the discussion of the future role of ruminants in global food production, there are strong arguments that the decreasing area of arable land mainly should be used for human nutrition and ruminant nutrition and should mainly be based on grasslands and by-products from food production.  Cover crops (=catch crops or intermediate crops) are usually grown between successive cash crops and are grown as green manure and ploughed in before establishment of the succeeding crop. Short lived forage species like Westerwold or Italian ryegrass, forage rape, fodder kale and vetches allow, besides all beneficial ecosystem services of traditional catch crops, additional harvesting of forage. The forage quality of catch crops is often underestimated. Many farmers in northwestern Europe have rediscovered the role of growing catch crops as strategy to make their farms more sustainable and resilient.