Background and Education

Marcelo Osorio Wallau is from Santana do Livramento, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. He grew up on his family ranch close to the border with Uruguay, raising sheep, horses, and beef and dairy cattle. All were raised in pasture-based systems. From early childhood, he learned the principles of cowboying, range management, and respect for nature and for the elders. From his close contact with livestock and grazing, he developed a deep interest in pasture production. He moved out of his hometown in 2004, heading to Porto Alegre after a period in Jÿvaskÿla, Finland for high school. In 2006, Marcelo started his undergraduate degree in the Agronomy Department at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul. As scientific initiation, Marcelo worked for three years at the Soil Microbiology Laboratory under the supervision of Dr. Enilson Sá. During his undergraduate career, he took internships in south and central Brazil, and in Argentina. In 2009, he went to Texas Tech University in Lubbock, TX as an exchange student for one year, where he studied and worked in Dr. Vivien Allen’s forage lab.

 Marcelo graduated as an agronomy engineer in August 2011 and shortly after joined the Agronomy Department at the University of Florida, in Gainesville, FL for his Master of Science degree. In Florida, under the coordination of Dr. Lynn Sollenberger, he worked as Graduate Research Assistant, developing a project on testing limpograss hybrid lines under grazing. As fruit of that and previous work, two of the tested lines are now being planted by Florida’s Cattlemen, benefiting the livestock industry in the region. In 2014, back in Porto Alegre, Marcelo joined the Grazing Ecology Research Group to work on his Ph.D. under the coordination of Dr. Paulo Cesar de Faccio Carvalho, while working on the native grasslands line of research. During his Ph.D., he spent one year at the University of California – Davis, developing the modeling project which was part of his thesis with Dr. Emilio Laca. He also spent one month at the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA), in Clermont-Ferrand, France, working with Raphël Martin and Dr. Juliette Bloor on the implementation of the model. Being back in Brazil during his PhD studies allowed him to work at the family ranch part time, an activity always loved and missed when abroad.

 

From 2014 to 2017, Marcelo worked as an ambassador for Farmfair International, an event promoted by Northlands, in Edmonton, Canada. He took groups of Southern American producers to visit one of the largest livestock shows in Canada and local producers in Alberta. He also developed a volunteer extension project on feral hog management with the Equipe Javali no Pampa. This project resulted in the publication of a technical book on feral hog biology and control techniques, as well as many extension handouts and scientific publications. Upon finishing his PhD, Marcelo came to the University of Florida as a post-doctoral fellow working for Dr. Esteban Rios. In January 2018, he officially joined the faculty of the Agronomy Department at the University of Florida as Assistant Professor. In the role of Forage Extension Specialist, Marcelo has been helping extension faculty and farmers in the state of Florida by working on forage production and management for beef cattle, dairy cattle and horses, and on integrated crop-livestock systems. His professional goals are to better understand forage-livestock systems around the world and to develop sustainable practices for improving livestock production and agroecosystems from a global, systemic view.