Grazing legumes in Europe: a review of their status, management, benefits, research needs and future prospects

In many parts of Europe there has been a net decline in the use of forage legumes since the 1980s, despite the reputed value of legumes for low-input livestock production systems. The political environment within which livestock farming in much of Europe operates (Common Agricultural Policy) is shifting the balance of economic advantage towards legumes and away from high usage of inorganic fertilizer. This has already been found for legume and grass-legume silages when compared with grass silages with a potential economic gain for farmers averaging 137 e ha(-1), corresponding to an annual benefit for the European livestock farming sector of as much as e 1300 million. Recent literature has shown that legume-based grazing systems have the ability to reduce environmental problems by increasing the efficiency of N use and by avoiding a high transient surplus of soil mineral N. From the perspective of livestock nutrition, when forage legumes contain moderate levels of secondary compounds, such as condensed tannins and flavonoids, they offer considerable advantages including increased efficiency of N utilization within the digestive tract, reduced incidence of bloat hazard and higher resilience to parasites. Nevertheless, these benefits are partially counterbalanced in both temperate and Mediterranean regions by difficulties in establishment, maintenance and management under grazing. To gain knowledge on mixed grass-legume pastures, further research is required on: (i) the development of sustainable systems of livestock production which can maintain sward persistence and agricultural production under environmental stress; (ii) increasing knowledge of soil-plant-animal relations for a wide range of leguminous species, and under different soil types and climatic situations; and (iii) the benefits for consumers of food produced from low-input livestock production systems.