Posted: 3/12/2013 1:49:41 PM EDT
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A biologist discovers that he had it all backwards. More cows, less desertification. "Desertification is a fancy word for land that is turning to desert,” begins Allan Savory in this quietly powerful talk. And it's happening to about two-thirds of the world’s grasslands, accelerating climate change and causing traditional grazing societies to descend into social chaos. Savory has devoted his life to stopping it. He now believes -- and his work so far shows -- that a surprising factor can protect grasslands and even reclaim degraded land that was once desert.  |
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Quoted: I don't know much about this, but I thought deserts formed when weather patterns changed and an area dried up...forcing the grazing animals to move. All the cow shit in the world won't bring rain back to an area; will it?  Speed There's an easy way for you to have your question answered. |
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I don't know much about this, but I thought deserts formed when weather patterns changed and an area dried up...forcing the grazing animals to move. All the cow shit in the world won't bring rain back to an area; will it?
Speed Poop will bring back the scrub. then the trees. trees and vegetation will create moist microclimates. Then the rain will come. Graze, rinse, repeat. |
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Allen Savory has a interesting personal life. He was raised in Africa and involved in the Rhodesian war.
I haven't seen him in person, but I have attended several seminars that dealt w/ his theories of Holistic resource management, and high intensity-low duration grazing. It is more complex then just adding animals and manure. It includes intensive grazing, ground surface disturbance, litter recycling, and periods of rest tailored to to local climatic and soil conditions. The system shows the most benefits on the fragilest land. |
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I don't know much about this, but I thought deserts formed when weather patterns changed and an area dried up...forcing the grazing animals to move. All the cow shit in the world won't bring rain back to an area; will it?
Speed Poop will bring back the scrub. then the trees. trees and vegetation will create moist microclimates. Then the rain will come. Graze, rinse, repeat. Nope. |
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Poop will bring back the scrub. then the trees. trees and vegetation will create moist microclimates. Then the rain will come. Graze, rinse, repeat. The poop is just a small part of it. I didn't watch this video, but I have read his book. I'm betting he talks about hoof action breaking up those little saucer like things that you see when a puddle dries up and how they add diversification in diet, which increases the diversity of the area. The soil climate is greatly affected by ruminant animals. I'll even bet there was some discussion of dung beetles. 
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Allen Savory has a interesting personal life. He was raised in Africa and involved in the Rhodesian war. I haven't seen him in person, but I have attended several seminars that dealt w/ his theories of Holistic resource management, and high intensity-low duration grazing. It is more complex then just adding animals and manure. It includes intensive grazing, ground surface disturbance, litter recycling, and periods of rest tailored to to local climatic and soil conditions. The system shows the most benefits on the fragilest land. If you raise livestock you should attend the Ranching for Profit schools. |
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Quoted: I didn't watch this video, but I have read his book. I'm betting he talks about hoof action breaking up those little saucer like things that you see when a puddle dries up and how they add diversification in diet, which increases the diversity of the area. The soil climate is greatly affected by ruminant animals. I'll even bet there was some discussion of dung beetles. He actually didn't get that deep into it, but went over trampling the grass into a microterrain that would trap moisture, and making it decay biologically instead of oxidizing. Which book? |
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I didn't watch this video, but I have read his book. I'm betting he talks about hoof action breaking up those little saucer like things that you see when a puddle dries up and how they add diversification in diet, which increases the diversity of the area. The soil climate is greatly affected by ruminant animals. I'll even bet there was some discussion of dung beetles. He actually didn't get that deep into it, but went over trampling the grass into a microterrain that would trap moisture, and making it decay biologically instead of oxidizing. Which book? The holistic management book. We rotationally graze and have tried diversified grazing, which is a pain in the ass, if your fence won't hold water it won't hold goats. He really turned us on to shifting paradigms and getting out of the typical mindset. We are so diversified now I'm not sure what our primary enterprise is. 
ETA: Allan Savory and Stan Parsons have played a huge role in how the "outside the box" ranchers operate in the US. We are low input and high management. |
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Two words: Joel Salatin Read Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal and Folks, This Ain't Normal |
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Allen Savory has a interesting personal life. He was raised in Africa and involved in the Rhodesian war. I haven't seen him in person, but I have attended several seminars that dealt w/ his theories of Holistic resource management, and high intensity-low duration grazing. It is more complex then just adding animals and manure. It includes intensive grazing, ground surface disturbance, litter recycling, and periods of rest tailored to to local climatic and soil conditions. The system shows the most benefits on the fragilest land. I've been to their property in Zimbabwe. The communal lands across the road are completely grazed down and there is a lot of bare ground. On his property, where he manages the grazing incorporating the communal herds into his own to increase the size and impact, they have grass 6 feet high after the ground rests. Herds are not allowed to freely wander while grazing as that does not model the behavior of natural herds avoiding predation. Herds are managed in tight groups and become big grazing, pooping, mulching, soil cap breaking machines. The ground rests after hi-impact, low duration exposure. Often within one or two years amazing results... water tables rising due to lack of bare ground evaporation... pretty amazing stuff. |
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I'm impressed .
Very interesting presentation, but not really surprising to a dumb ol' farm boy who has spent a lot of time tilling the soil, spreading manure, pasturing cattle and observing the effects of those activites on the land. I do wish he had given some credit to mechanized crop production and the feeding of said crops to livestock, as well. If the crops are rotated properly and the manure from confined livestock spread uniformly back on tilled land, the effect on the land can be just as positive or even more so than simply grazing, with less waste of each years' crop due to trampling. (Not that there's anything wrong with grazing; it's just that modern farming is often unjustly vilified as unnatural and harmful, when in fact it helps produce the very microclimates he's touting. I also think he was beating himself up somewhat harshly on his former stance on elephant culling. By the time he had to make that decision, the land had probably been damaged and many of the culled elephants would have died off anyway by starvation. Good to see that he was able to balance things out somewhat in more recent years, allowing some elephants to mingle with domestic herds. I also think subsistence zebra and wildebeest, etc. hunting should be actively and heavily promoted as an even more eco-friendly way to promote his system, with well-adapted native animals instead of somewhat less-suited cattle, sheep and goats. It's worked well for millenia...why not help to bring a good thing back? |
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Allen Savory has a interesting personal life. He was raised in Africa and involved in the Rhodesian war. I haven't seen him in person, but I have attended several seminars that dealt w/ his theories of Holistic resource management, and high intensity-low duration grazing. It is more complex then just adding animals and manure. It includes intensive grazing, ground surface disturbance, litter recycling, and periods of rest tailored to to local climatic and soil conditions. The system shows the most benefits on the fragilest land. I've been to their property in Zimbabwe. The communal lands across the road are completely grazed down and there is a lot of bare ground. On his property, where he manages the grazing incorporating the communal herds into his own to increase the size and impact, they have grass 6 feet high after the ground rests. Herds are not allowed to freely wander while grazing as that does not model the behavior of natural herds avoiding predation. Herds are managed in tight groups and become big grazing, pooping, mulching, soil cap breaking machines. The ground rests after hi-impact, low duration exposure. Often within one or two years amazing results... water tables rising due to lack of bare ground evaporation... pretty amazing stuff. But.....When they fuck something up.....They really fuck something up. Ask me how I know.
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I thought that the benefits of management intensive grazing had been widely known for years. I guess this is one of those things where something doesn't exist to a scientist until it is measured and repeated. There is a lot of truth to that. I read ''Man must Measure" by Jan Bonsma. I slept through most of it, but it's relevant. The old ranchers I know just called it "moving 'em" or "freshening the grass". The buffalo knew about it a long time ago. I imagine the wildebeests and Cape Buffalo knew it even earlier. |
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Allen Savory has a interesting personal life. He was raised in Africa and involved in the Rhodesian war. I haven't seen him in person, but I have attended several seminars that dealt w/ his theories of Holistic resource management, and high intensity-low duration grazing. It is more complex then just adding animals and manure. It includes intensive grazing, ground surface disturbance, litter recycling, and periods of rest tailored to to local climatic and soil conditions. The system shows the most benefits on the fragilest land. If you raise livestock you should attend the Ranching for Profit schools. Thanks for mentioning it. They have some webinars I'll have to check out, and I'll have to watch for when they have something in my area. |
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Is this the deal where they use movable fences and confine a lot of animals in a small space for a brief period? ...snip... Unless I missed it, he didn't really go into too much detail about how it was accomplished, but I think that's the general idea... |
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Is this the deal where they use movable fences and confine a lot of animals in a small space for a brief period? (can't watch now) I read about that method just this past week. More or less. I think given the size of the herds that they are probably using vehicles or horses to shift the areas around. This thread was perfect timing for me.
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so, start shipping shit to the sahara desert ? Don't think it's that simple. You still have to take local climate into account. The theory is that you can change the macro climate after a while. It's an interesting hypothesis. If you worked the edges of the desert long enough you might be able to complete change weather patterns do to vegetation, increased moisture, coolness, etc. I do agree with the premise of more land turning to desert and I do think it's a danger that no one is paying attention to. How soon? Probably not real soon but the population IS growing as well. Unless we have a virus that wipes out the population to reset our numbers... 
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I'm not remotely involved in the industry in any way, but I find stuff like this fascinating.  That's what you think...
(Just saying that this kind of thing very much affects every single person on the planet. ) And for many, perhaps millions, it is or will eventually be a life-or-death matter of survival. |
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"We are causing global warming with this as much as if not more than with fossil fuels". I don't care who you are or what you believe, that there is huge. Bump. He should think about that idea some more, too. Hopefully he'll soon realize that current Academia is as full of shit about anthropogenic Global Warming (excuse me, Climate Change), as it was about some of the other myths he's currently debunking... |
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Cattle are essential to the soil, plant, animal closed cycle.
However, it is important to make sure that the grazing strategy is properly managed. One of the primary things is the meristem, either intercalary or apical/terminal. If you let a cow get too crazy on the feeding they can totally kill a stand/field. |
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Cattle are essential to the soil, plant, animal closed cycle. However, it is important to make sure that the grazing strategy is properly managed. One of the primary things is the meristem, either intercalary or apical/terminal. If you let a cow get too crazy on the feeding they can totally kill a stand/field. You can't overgraze a plant the first time a cow/sheep/horse/whatever eats on it that season. Overgrazing occurs when the plant is regrazed before it has had a chance to recover and restore CHO to it's roots. |
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Quoted: Quoted: Cattle are essential to the soil, plant, animal closed cycle. However, it is important to make sure that the grazing strategy is properly managed. One of the primary things is the meristem, either intercalary or apical/terminal. If you let a cow get too crazy on the feeding they can totally kill a stand/field. You can't overgraze a plant the first time a cow/sheep/horse/whatever eats on it that season. Overgrazing occurs when the plant is regrazed before it has had a chance to recover and restore CH3 to it's roots. Goats are famous for grazing to the nubbins, but around here, goats have seen a rebound. Mostly with new ranchers on little land. Used to be prime area for mohair, when the subsidies went tits up in the early 1990s (FINALLY), the market collapsed. Now it is for meat (nasty). I doubt this new batch of goat raisers knows anything about pasture rotation. Another water conserving trend around here is removal of Ashe Juniper, mesquite and huisache. On several ranches, this has restored dormant stream flows. It is amazing, the Ashe Juniper kill grass under the drip line. Almost nothing eats it. The only "natural" control was grass fire but since settling, these fires have been kept in check. Without grass, rain doesn't permeate the ground and only contributes to flash floods, I can see how proper grazing will increase water retention. Bet this philosophy is getting lots of grief from the water melons  . The ones that don't want anything unnatural done to the land. The Nature Conservancy militia, for example. |
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Cattle are essential to the soil, plant, animal closed cycle. However, it is important to make sure that the grazing strategy is properly managed. One of the primary things is the meristem, either intercalary or apical/terminal. If you let a cow get too crazy on the feeding they can totally kill a stand/field. You can't overgraze a plant the first time a cow/sheep/horse/whatever eats on it that season. Overgrazing occurs when the plant is regrazed before it has had a chance to recover and restore CH3 to it's roots. Goats are famous for grazing to the nubbins, but around here, goats have seen a rebound. Mostly with new ranchers on little land. Used to be prime area for mohair, when the subsidies went tits up in the early 1990s (FINALLY), the market collapsed. Now it is for meat (nasty). I doubt this new batch of goat raisers knows anything about pasture rotation. Another water conserving trend around here is removal of Ashe Juniper, mesquite and huisache. On several ranches, this has restored dormant stream flows. It is amazing, the Ashe Juniper kill grass under the drip line. Almost nothing eats it. The only "natural" control was grass fire but since settling, these fires have been kept in check. Without grass, rain doesn't permeate the ground and only contributes to flash floods, I can see how proper grazing will increase water retention. Bet this philosophy is getting lots of grief from the water melons . The ones that don't want anything unnatural done to the land. The Nature Conservancy militia, for example.
The naturists that want a diverse environment are the most stident opposition to grazing with ruminants. Unless it's buffalo. Then we're good. If we could only restore the benefits of fire....... |
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Cattle are essential to the soil, plant, animal closed cycle. However, it is important to make sure that the grazing strategy is properly managed. One of the primary things is the meristem, either intercalary or apical/terminal. If you let a cow get too crazy on the feeding they can totally kill a stand/field. You can't overgraze a plant the first time a cow/sheep/horse/whatever eats on it that season. Overgrazing occurs when the plant is regrazed before it has had a chance to recover and restore CH3 to it's roots. If you graze a plant below the collar region you can. The collar is the region where the stem and leaf meet. If proper rotation grazing is done, the forages will be grazed down to above the collar and ideally a bit of a leaf left over. Since chlorophyll is what handles the photosynthesis process, the regrowth period will be expedited. Fescues for example have 1-1.5 inches location of collar region, 3 inches is generally a suggested length for fescues. 6 inches is suggested for warm season forages. But as you say the goal is to give the plant the chance to quickly regrow and further repair and expand the root system. |
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Cattle are essential to the soil, plant, animal closed cycle. However, it is important to make sure that the grazing strategy is properly managed. One of the primary things is the meristem, either intercalary or apical/terminal. If you let a cow get too crazy on the feeding they can totally kill a stand/field. You can't overgraze a plant the first time a cow/sheep/horse/whatever eats on it that season. Overgrazing occurs when the plant is regrazed before it has had a chance to recover and restore CH3 to it's roots. If you graze a plant below the collar region you can. The collar is the region where the stem and leaf meet. If proper rotation grazing is done, the forages will be grazed down to above the collar and ideally a big of a leaf left over. Since chlorophyll is what handles the photosynthesis process the regrowth period will be expedited. Fescues for example have 1-1.5 inches location of collar region, 3 inches is generally a suggested length for fescues. 6 inches is suggested for warm season forages. But as you say the goal is to give the plant the chance to quickly regrow and further repair and expand the root system. Killa.....You got the schooling down. But, Where is the collar on a pasture that consists of Meadow brome, smooth brome, meadow fescue, tall fescue, orchardgrass, white clover, birdsfoot trefoil and a touch of alfalfa? Some of them get grazed below the collar everytime. |
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"We are causing global warming with this as much as if not more than with fossil fuels". I don't care who you are or what you believe, that there is huge. Bump. It is huge. It solidly disproves all the anti-industrial bullshit that has been spewed by the leftist idiots for the past 25 years. ETA: His remark about Africa burning a million hectares per year, and one hectare burning adding more airborne pollutants into the atmosphere than 6000 cars in a year will make Al Gore apopleptic with rage. |
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Completely the opposite of what I would think. Thanks for sharing. It's completely opposite of what most people in the livestock industry think. We've been taught that we can only improve the environment by leaving it alone. Not true. I'm still shocked by this claim that goat herds don't fuck the whole landscape up. |