ABSTRACT
The adoption of silage-making is considered in relation to the availability of suitable techniques to accomplish efficient preservation of silage. Limitations are noted and alternative approaches are outlined. The current and prospective roles for silage in different regions are discussed.
The essentials for efficient silage-making are to rapidly achieve and successfully maintain anaerobic conditions, and to lower water activity sufficiently to prevent degradation. Practical approaches for achieving these objectives were not available in Europe until the late 1960s. Several factors combined to give reliable technology: the ready availability of sheet polythene for effective sealing; the production of forage harvesters capable of rapid harvesting and efficient chopping; and the ability to direct the course of fermentation through wilting or the use of easily applied and effective additives. This technology was rapidly adopted on farms.
However, the efficiency of the system is still limited by reduction in feeding value and losses of nutrients during ensiling, and by the costs and resource inputs required for making silage. In all regions, it will be necessary to constrain costs of silage-making, particularly by the full and efficient use of machinery, and to use appropriate technology to maintain feeding value and to reduce losses. In temperate areas, it is possible that the use of grass silage in particular may lessen with increasing competition from grazed grass and from alternative feeds. In tropical and subtropical countries, suitable techniques for making silages from forages and by-products are emerging, and it is probable that the importance of silage will increase, particularly in areas where the markets for milk and milk products are well developed.
