After attending the Grazing For Change conference in Chico, CA in late February 2015, a group of attendees and local grazers met up to discuss holistic management and planned grazing.
How inspiring to be surrounded by people all with deep passion and respect for the land and animals we work. At our post-conference meeting here in Sonoma County, it was powerful to see people from different backgrounds (veteran ranchers, rookie ranchers, landowners, those who come from a ranching perspective, those who are new to it or come from a different agricultural focus), come together and share a desire and interest in managing animals and landscape to the best of their ability. A collective commitment to ranching respectfully arose quite naturally in our discussion—and it's this passion that drives us to discover and realize the goals of holistic management/planned grazing: “to improve environmental health, sustain economic viability, and enhance the quality of life of farm and ranch communities.”
How inspiring to be surrounded by people all with deep passion and respect for the land and animals we work. At our post-conference meeting here in Sonoma County, it was powerful to see people from different backgrounds (veteran ranchers, rookie ranchers, landowners, those who come from a ranching perspective, those who are new to it or come from a different agricultural focus), come together and share a desire and interest in managing animals and landscape to the best of their ability. A collective commitment to ranching respectfully arose quite naturally in our discussion—and it's this passion that drives us to discover and realize the goals of holistic management/planned grazing: “to improve environmental health, sustain economic viability, and enhance the quality of life of farm and ranch communities.”
Speakers Summarized In One Sentence:
Allan Savory: “People don’t believe what they see, they see what they believe.”
Tony Malmberg: “You cannot manage complexity, its self-organizing,” but you can influence the way it organizes: such as the where, when, how long, and behavior of animals.
Bill Burrows: If you want to change things, first change yourself, accept responsibility, and realize that when you point a finger, there are 3 more fingers pointing back at you.
Christine Jones: Mycorrhizal fungi act like guilds of communication (not unlike the way the internet functions) that are necessary for water holding capacity, resilience, structural stability, and mineral activity in soils—and are influenced by animal impact.
Jason Rowntree: Science as we know it (from Aristotle’s holism to Galileo’s reductionism to Descartes’ rationalism) is applicable to holistic grazing depending on the method and focus (and funding) with which the measures and analyses are enacted.
Gabe Brown: By starting with soil health and diverse cover cropping we can follow the patterns of nature to reorient the whole of a farm or landscape’s ecosystem to be healthy, functional, and profitable. (And he has).
James Komar: Soil is a biological system that functions only as well as the soil life that inhabits it.
QUESTIONS:
Q: How to stock high when the growing season is either erratic, or given to just part of the year?
A: Rapid rotations and plotting out an area taking low growth periods into consideration. Also, organizing slaughter/birthing according to growth season.
Q: What do the animals eat when put on desertifying land for the first time?
A: There’s never absolutely nothing to eat. Animal stimulation on the land is not just their eating, but their trampling and defecating and other impacts. Rapid rotations take the amount of feed into consideration, so sometimes animals are in areas for only a few hours or a day.
Q: What is the difference between rotational grazing and holistic grazing planning?
A: Rotational grazing moves animals between different paddocks but does not necessarily take into account the evaluation, planning, and analysis of a particular situation and place. Thus, in rotational grazing animals may be left too long in an area, allowing it to become overgrazed, when timely evaluation may have spared it. See figure 46.5 in Savory’s Holistic Management.
NOTE: At the conference we became aware of some regulations being developed by the state Water Quality Control Board, especially in relation to regulating grazing in California. Watch for info on Grazing Regulatory Action Project aka GRAP.
Further Reading/Resources:
-Holistic Management by Allan Savory
-“Short Duration Grazing Research in Africa”: https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/rangelands/article/view/11560/10833
-Grazing Regulatory Action Project
http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/water_issues/programs/nps/docs/grap/session2.pdf
http://www.agalert.com/story/?id=7523
Marie Hoff is the founder of the Capella Grazing Project and steward of Ouessant sheep and rams who can be found grazing their way through Sonoma county vineyards and farmland.
Allan Savory: “People don’t believe what they see, they see what they believe.”
Tony Malmberg: “You cannot manage complexity, its self-organizing,” but you can influence the way it organizes: such as the where, when, how long, and behavior of animals.
Bill Burrows: If you want to change things, first change yourself, accept responsibility, and realize that when you point a finger, there are 3 more fingers pointing back at you.
Christine Jones: Mycorrhizal fungi act like guilds of communication (not unlike the way the internet functions) that are necessary for water holding capacity, resilience, structural stability, and mineral activity in soils—and are influenced by animal impact.
Jason Rowntree: Science as we know it (from Aristotle’s holism to Galileo’s reductionism to Descartes’ rationalism) is applicable to holistic grazing depending on the method and focus (and funding) with which the measures and analyses are enacted.
Gabe Brown: By starting with soil health and diverse cover cropping we can follow the patterns of nature to reorient the whole of a farm or landscape’s ecosystem to be healthy, functional, and profitable. (And he has).
James Komar: Soil is a biological system that functions only as well as the soil life that inhabits it.
QUESTIONS:
Q: How to stock high when the growing season is either erratic, or given to just part of the year?
A: Rapid rotations and plotting out an area taking low growth periods into consideration. Also, organizing slaughter/birthing according to growth season.
Q: What do the animals eat when put on desertifying land for the first time?
A: There’s never absolutely nothing to eat. Animal stimulation on the land is not just their eating, but their trampling and defecating and other impacts. Rapid rotations take the amount of feed into consideration, so sometimes animals are in areas for only a few hours or a day.
Q: What is the difference between rotational grazing and holistic grazing planning?
A: Rotational grazing moves animals between different paddocks but does not necessarily take into account the evaluation, planning, and analysis of a particular situation and place. Thus, in rotational grazing animals may be left too long in an area, allowing it to become overgrazed, when timely evaluation may have spared it. See figure 46.5 in Savory’s Holistic Management.
NOTE: At the conference we became aware of some regulations being developed by the state Water Quality Control Board, especially in relation to regulating grazing in California. Watch for info on Grazing Regulatory Action Project aka GRAP.
Further Reading/Resources:
-Holistic Management by Allan Savory
-“Short Duration Grazing Research in Africa”: https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/rangelands/article/view/11560/10833
-Grazing Regulatory Action Project
http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/water_issues/programs/nps/docs/grap/session2.pdf
http://www.agalert.com/story/?id=7523
Marie Hoff is the founder of the Capella Grazing Project and steward of Ouessant sheep and rams who can be found grazing their way through Sonoma county vineyards and farmland.
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