23rd EGF General Meeting 2010

The organisers of the 23^rd EGF General Meeting and the German Grassland Society (AGGF) welcomed 400 participants at Kiel from 29 August to 2 September 2010. They made the EGF 2010 conference to all attendants a memorable event.

The mellow atmosphere of late summer provided a perfect environment for a successful arrangement and some of the most beautiful sites of Germany impressively presented themselves showing their diverse landscapes as well as variable forage crops.

Forage crops, covering more than 40 % of the agricultural land in Germany, play an important role in maintaining landscape biodiversity, besides being the backbone in feeding many domestic animals, e.g. cattle, sheep and horses. Only recently have they started to become a source for biogas production. Due to the increasing competition with alternative forage crops as e.g. maize produced for milk production, the share of permanent grassland is, however, decreasing in Germany. Thus, ecosystem services of permanent grassland beyond production functions play a dominant role in current discussions on the future of grassland and grass-arable rotations are discussed intensively in order to develop sustainable forage production systems for milk production.

• A summary of the “Conclusions and reflections from the 23^rd General Meeting of the European Grassland Federation” by Prof. Dr Josef Nösberger (Switzerland) can be downloaded below
• All the presentations and posters are published on the EGF2010 Website