André Voisin
Rational grazing — deciding when to move stock by the grass’s recovery curve rather than by the calendar.
The record
- Standing
- foundational work
- Years
- 1903–1964
- Based
- Académie d’Agriculture de France · Normandy, France
- Also published as
- André Marcel Voisin
- Trained as
- Biochemist by training and a farmer by inclination; a member of the Académie d’Agriculture de France in Paris.
- The method
- Voisin Rational Grazing, proposed in the 1950s and developed further in Brazil in the 1970s — timing stock moves to the regrowth curve of the sward.
- The observation
- Arrived at by watching his own cows graze his own fields in Normandy, at length.
Standing is this studio’s placement of the work, not a ranking of the person, and it is the one line here that is a judgement rather than a cited fact.
The work
Voisin’s laws of rational grazing are the foundation everything after them rests on, and they are almost embarrassingly simple. A plant needs enough time between defoliations to rebuild its reserves. A herd should not stay long enough on one sward to bite the same plant twice. Stocking density and residence time are separate levers and must be managed separately.
What made this science rather than folklore was that he documented it — Grass Productivity is a heavily referenced textbook covering, as its publisher puts it, every aspect of management where the cow and the grass meet.
The method carries his name and is still taught as Voisin Rational Grazing, particularly in Brazil, where it was substantially developed after his death.
Where to read them
- Grass Productivity (La Productivité de l’Herbe) The textbook; still in print in English.
- Voisin Rational Grazing as a Sustainable Alternative for Livestock Production — a modern review
Sources for this record
Corrections
This record was assembled from the sources above, and nothing in it was inferred to fill a gap. If it is about you and it is wrong, or you would rather not be listed, write and it changes.