The Canadian Forage and Grassland Association (CFGA) held a successful annual conference in Harrison Hot Springs, B.C. Nov. 28 to Dec. 1. A highlight of the week was announcing Dr. Dan Undersander as the winner of its 2023 Leadership Award.

Dan has worked as a forage specialist for 48 years. His areas of specialty include forage production, forage harvesting (hay, haylage and baleage), forage analysis and grazing. He is a fellow of both the American Society of Agronomy and Crop Science Society of America. He has more than 1,600 publications in forage production and utilization, has won numerous awards and traveled the world (working in 58 countries) helping farmers improve the quality and yields of their forages in Asia, Europe, North America and South America.

Dan led development of the University of Wisconsin Team Forage website, the most widely recognized source of forage information for temperate regions around the world. He developed the use of Relative Feed Value (RFV) in 1990 and Relative Forage Quality (RFQ) in 2000 as indices of energy intake by ruminants. He worked with the National Forage Testing Association working to help laboratories run similar forage chemical analysis and report more consistent and accurate chemical and Near Infrared Spectroscopy analysis of forages. This effort has resulted in more dependable analysis of forages across public and private forage testing laboratories in the United States and now in China and Brazil.

He and a dairy scientist developed the Milk-per-Acre spreadsheet for evaluating forage yield and quality changes, since the two often work in opposite directions. He led the writing of the Alfalfa Management Guide and worked with grazing groups and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to write and publish a 44-page grazing document. He developed a program to encourage contract harvesting of forage and he conducted numerous studies showing that forage dried more rapidly in a wide swath than conditioned forage in a windrow. He developed the concept of stem density to determine when an alfalfa stand density was limiting yield and the field should be turned over.

The CFGA presented its 2023 Leadership Award on Nov. 29 at a special reception during its annual conference. This year marked the 14th annual year for the conference, which was hosted in conjunction with the British Columbia Forage Council (BCFC). Throughout the event attendees focused on issues the forage sector faces and solutions to these challenges as well as taking a forward look to opportunities for the industry.

The CFGA Leadership Award was established in 2012 to recognize and encourage leadership in the forage and grassland sector. It recognizes individuals, groups or organizations who exemplify or enhance the goals of the CFGA and whose leadership has impact of national and/or international significance.