The future role of grass in the food chain.

The role of grassland Grasslands serve and have served many different purposes in the world, some of them related to the control of soil erosion and some to various aspects of amenity. Grass itself, however, even when widely interpreted, has generally served as an intermediary product in the human food chain. This distinction is likely to continue to be important, at least in terms of the role of grassland and the role of the grass product being different. Expressed another way, one of the roles of grassland is to produce a product but there are other roles and these may even be extended in the future. Natural grasslands might well serve as catchment areas, for example, for both wind and water (extremely likely) and even a receiving surface for solar radiation (less likely), other than in the form of plant cover. In such cases, of course, there is no reason to suppose that grass products could not also be harvested, although use as a catchment area does sometimes impose constraints on, for example, grazing. More important, perhaps, is the possibility that these ‘grassland’ roles could affect the economics of the grass production process, simply because another use of the land would result in a sharing of some of the overhead costs. The same argument also applies to multiple use of smaller areas of sown grassland, as in the possibility of grazing ruminants or geese in orchards or even the use of poultry (feeding more, perhaps, on insects than herbage) or even pigs (perhaps with an additional function of discouraging vandals and other marauders). The simple fact is that multiple use may have some effect on the economics of grass production and utilization and thus influence the form of the latter. The aim of this paper is, having recognized the foregoing, to focus on the role of grass.