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Supplementary irrigation is a strategic option to ensure the forage production in a scenario of high climate variability. Nevertheless, Uruguay lacks of information to be able to generate technical coefficients about responses. An experiment was performed with the objective to evaluate the effects of irrigation and N-P fertilization on forage yield and botanical composition in a basaltic natural grassland. In the period October 2011 to June 2012 was carried out an experiment to determine the effect of supplemental irrigation and fertilization N-P in a split plot design. Supplementary irrigation and rainfed were located in the big plots, while the fertilizer ones were established at smaller plots. Fertilizer treatments consisted on one unfertilized control and seven fertilization treatments: one with phosphorus only (80 kg P2O5.ha-1), three nitrogen rates (50, 100 and 200 kg N.ha-1) and three N-P combinations (80 P2O5-50 N, 80 P2O5-100 N, P2O5 and 80-200 N). The interaction of irrigation with nitrogen fertilization explained the short-term variations in productivity and botanical compo sition. Irrigation imp roved the re sponse to nitrogen fer tilization doubling forage production, and allowed conditions to increase the contribution of the most valuable forage productive types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Family-run cow-calf farms based on native grasslands exhibit low economic and social sustainability, as reflected in low family incomes and high workloads. Experimental results have shown that pasture–herd interaction management could improve native grasslands and animal productivity. This paper analyzes the extent to which the sustainability of family-run livestock farms based on native grasslands could be enhanced by a systemic redesign informed by ecological intensification practices. The research questions address the initial state of farm sustainability, key bottlenecks to improving farm sustainability, and changes in sustainability criteria achieved over three years of farm redesign. The study was executed as part of a multi-level co-innovation project in Uruguay in which a team of scientist-practitioners and seven farm families participated in farm characterization, diagnosis, and redesign. The farm characterization took the form of indicators to describe the farms' management and bio-physical subsystems. Redesign plans were negotiated between the research team and the farmers. Frequent monitoring and evaluation cycles enabled finetuning across the years of implementation. Improvements were observed in the economic indicators gross margin (+55%), return to labor (+71%), and family income (+53%) and in the social indicator workload (−22%), and the environmental indicators bird diversity and ecosystem integrity index were maintained or increased slightly. These changes were explained by the uptake of coherent sets of ecological intensification practices causing changes in forage height (+30%), forage allowance (+69%), pregnancy (+22), weight of weaning calf per mating cow (+32%), and presence of tussocks (+65%). Ecological intensification principles resulted in synergistic positive effects between productivity–biodiversity tradeoffs and the scope for enhanced farm resilience and stability. Cow-calf family-run farms can be transformed to produce positive environmental and social effects and viable economic results. The implementation of projects in a co-innovation context may be taken as a guide to scaling up and scaling out the ecological intensification of livestock production on native grasslands, contributing to an extension system at the national level with the aim of improving cow-calf systems sustainability. [Display omitted] • Seven commercial farms were redesigned over three years of co-innovation. • Ecological intensification improved economic, environmental, and social indicators. • Spatio-temporal grazing management resulted in enhanced meat productivity. • Farmers highlighted the different way of working with an advisor. • Changes in performance of the participant farms exceeded national trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]