Dr. Guillermo Scaglia

Professor

LSU AgCenter

603 LSU Bridge Rd.
Jeanerette, LA 7054-0466

(w) (337) 276-5527

About

Dr. Guillermo Scaglia started conducting research in his native country of Uruguay, worked at Virginia Tech, and in December 2007, moved to Louisiana to start working at the Louisiana State University Agricultural Center Iberia Research Station. Since he started with his appointment at the LSU AgCenter, Dr. Scaglia has been studying the impact of management strategies on productivity and sustainability of pastoral systems for growing beef cattle. He worked on the evaluation (productivity, economic feasibility, and capacity for carbon sequestration) of three forage systems for finishing cattle on forages (100% of the diet from standing or conserved forages). On these issues, Dr. Scaglia and his team secured three years of funding from the SARE Southern Section (2009-2012). Continuing his work on grass-fed beef production and building on previous grants, Dr. Scaglia and collaborators secured three years of funding from Southern SARE (ending in October 2018). In the last five years, Dr. Scaglia and his team published 12 refereed scientific journal articles covering different issues of the grass-fed beef industry: two dealing with production, four covering consumer acceptance, meat quality and sensory characteristics of grass-fed beef and six on economics of production, labor use, marketing, as well as producers’ perceptions of the challenges facing the grass-fed beef industry. In terms of economic impact, grass-fed beef had a premium per pound of beef produced that oscillated between 31 and 50% more (hanging weight, carcass) than grain-fed beef. Depending on the four different year-round grazing systems that Dr. Scaglia developed, a single 1,200 pound (live weight) grass-fed steer can produce a return of $350 to $912. This dataset (from production to consumer) provides invaluable information for ranchers interested in grass-fed beef production but also for those already in this niche market due to the analyses conducted in the marketing of the product and challenges facing the industry. Starting in 2019, Dr. Scaglia also has a research appointment at the Dean Lee Research Station and Extension Center near Alexandria (Central Louisiana). Dr. Scaglia started developing cow-calf systems and work on fetal programming in Bos indicus crossbred cattle.