“Everything we humans do is 1,000% dependent on agriculture. Yet if you looked at our world from space you would consider us a desert-making species.”
That blunt observation comes from Allan Savory, a Zimbabwean ecologist, livestock farmer, and president and co-founder of the Savory Institute. He offers a remedy, however, for what he describes as the “desertification” of much of our planet: livestock grazing.
“Livestock is the most powerful tool we have.”
Savory’s holistic approach to resource management suggests most grazing lands should have more livestock added, not fewer. He argues for managed grazing systems that mimic the millions of bison that grazed for thousands of years in North America. By intensely grazing pastures for short periods then allowing for lengthy rest periods, Savory says grasslands are restored and soils are revitalized in a way that provides for substantial — possibly earth-saving — levels of carbon sequestration, meaning increasing the density of cattle can help protect against climate change.
Evidence shows that wildfires have become more widespread and severe over the years, with the ongoing West Coast blazes bearing testament to the worrying trend.
Firefighters and farmers have tricks of their own to prevent fires from sparking and to contain them enough for successful defeat. But there might be a secret weapon that hasn’t been getting the attention it deserves.
Cattle.
Researchers with the University of California Cooperative Extension set out to evaluate how much fine fuel — grasses and other plants known to start fires — cattle eat and how their feeding behavior affects flame activity.
The team concluded that without cattle grazing, there would be “hundreds to thousands” of additional pounds of fine fuels per acre of land, which could lead to “larger and more severe fires.”
The team’s study results have yet to be published, but they offered their preliminary findings in a blog post published Aug. 31.
https://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/bigstock-182719603-scaled.jpg17092560Katie Camerohttps://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/RI-Logo-New.pngKatie Camero2020-09-12 17:58:152020-09-24 17:58:27Cattle Might Be Secret Weapon in Fight Against Wildfires, Experts Say. Here’s How
Rodale Institute’s updated climate change white paper, “Regenerative Agriculture and the Soil Carbon Solution,” will be published September 25th. To learn more, visit RodaleInstitute.org/Climate2020.
So to start, a question of semantics—there’s a lot of terms for management intensive grazing, you use adaptive multi-paddock or AMP, there’s mob grazing, high intensity rotational grazing, holistic grazing management, and now regenerative grazing. Are there practical differences between these systems?
There are small differences, but they’re all part of the same cadre in terms of a general way of doing things and the philosophy. Prior to starting our regenerative grazing studies in 1999, we worked with the NRCS who did all the soil mapping around the nation. We asked them to introduce us to farmers and ranchers who had the highest soil carbon levels. Without a single exception, they were all following Holistic Management, or a couple of variations around that. Our research has been following up on that ever since.
https://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/cow-4212964_1280.jpg8531280Jennifer Haydenhttps://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/RI-Logo-New.pngJennifer Hayden2020-08-30 04:55:042020-10-07 12:21:34Cattle Are Part of the Climate Solution
REPUBLIC OF CHAD, Africa – While COVID-19 has forced most of the world into lockdown, we are fortunate to report that our “Trails of Regeneration” video series is alive and well. Over the last few months we’ve focused on reporting the effects of the pandemic on farmers and ranchers and indigenous peoples from around the world.
In our latest “Trails of Regeneration” episode, “Perspectives from Chad, Africa: Covid-19, Climate Change and Indigenous Knowledge,” we proudly feature Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, an award-winning environmental activist and indigenous woman from the Mbororo pastoralist community in Chad, which practices nomadic cattle herding.
Ibrahim is an expert in adaptation and mitigation of indigenous peoples and women in relation to climate change, traditional knowledge and the adaptation of pastoralists in Africa. She is founder and coordinator of the Association for Indigenous Women and Peoples of Chad (AFPAT), which works to empower indigenous voices and improve quality of life by creating economic opportunities and protecting the natural resources to which pastoralist communities depend on.
Ibrahim was recently named Emerging Explorer 2017 by National Geographic. She has worked on the rights of indigenous peoples and the protection of the environment through the three Rio Conventions—on Biodiversity, Climate Change and Desertification—which originated out of the 1992 Earth Summit.
The Mbororo pastoralist community reside near Lake Chad, located in the far west of Chad and the northeast of Nigeria. It was once Africa’s largest water reservoir in the Sahel region, spanning 26,000 kilometers. However, the lake has continued to shrink over time and is now thought to be one-fifth of its original size.
Experts say climate change, population growth and inefficient damming and irrigation systems are to blame. The loss of water in Lake Chad is having serious adverse effects on communities, such as the Mbororo people, who are forced to migrate greater distances in search of water and green pastures.
In a Zoom interview with Regeneration International, Ibrahim explained that in one year, the Mbororo people can travel up to a thousand kilometers and beyond, relying solely on nature and rainfall. Ibrahim told us:
“Nature is our main health, food and education system. It represents everything for us. In our culture, men and women depend equally on nature in their daily activities. The men herd the cattle towards water and pastures, while the women collect firewood, food and drinking water for the community. This provides a socially strong gender balance to our community.”
However, the degradation of natural resources is threatening these traditions, leading to human conflicts, particularly between farmers and pastoralists whose cattle sometimes roam onto nearby cropland and cause damage. These conflicts have forced Mbororo men to urban areas in search of a new line of work. Sometimes they don’t return, and the women, children and elderly are left behind to fend for themselves, Ibrahim told us.
Through its 3D maps, the project brings together rival farmers and pastoralists to collaboratively draw lines of land ownership and reach agreements on grazing pathways and corridors. The work has helped farmers and pastoralists agree on land boundaries, as well as established a calendaring system to coordinate grazing patterns with the harvesting of crops.
The result is a win-win solution where cattle fertilize and enrich the land through purposeful grazing. This prevents crop damage and helps to mitigate climate change. According to Ibrahim:
“When we experience climate change, we use our nomadic way of life as a solution. When we go from one place to another, resting two or three days per location, the dung from our cattle fertilizes the land and helps the ecosystem regenerate naturally.
“Our traditional knowledge is based on the observation of nature which is the common denominator of all the traditional indigenous knowledge around the world. We live in harmony with biodiversity because we observe insects that give us information on the health of an ecosystem.
“We look at bird migration patterns to predict the weather and we learn from the behavior of our animals who communicate a lot of information. We look at the wind. When the wind transports a lot of particulates from nature during the dry season, we know that we are going to have a good rainy season. This is free information we use to help balance community and ecosystem health and adapt to climate change.”
Ibrahim believes that events such as climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic, are nature’s way of letting us know she is mad because we are mistreating her. In order to heal the planet, we must listen to our wisdom and respect nature, she says.
Oliver Gardiner is Regeneration International’s media producer and coordinator for Asia and Europe. To keep up with Regeneration International news, sign up for our newsletter.
https://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/MbororoPeople-scaled-e1593802272371.jpg14202560Oliver Gardinerhttps://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/RI-Logo-New.pngOliver Gardiner2020-07-03 15:13:062020-07-03 15:16:59Perspectives from Chad, Africa: COVID-19, Climate Change and Indigenous Knowledge
I had the opportunity to visit with a man today about the benefits of managed grazing in a drought, and I think my list of advantages might be useful to others.
These are things I’ve observed and things I’ve gleaned from others as they have managed their way through droughts. In some cases there is science to bear witness to these truths, and in others they are anecdotal but widely accepted among top grazing managers.
The ugly
The bad news is that at some point, drought can get bad enough you may need to destock completely. The good news is, as part of your grazing plans, grazing records, and your records of rainfall and resulting forage production, you should have done so in a controlled method that garnered you the highest price for part of your stock because you sold earlier than everyone else. The other piece of good news is good grazing management will set you up for a faster recovery, and likely a much more successful recovery than continuous graziers.
Beef Producer columnist and long-time holistic grazier Walt Davis says many years ago he studied the rainfall records and stocking rate records from the research station at San Angelo, Texas, and found all the major declines in stocking rate occurred after droughts. These were new, lower plateaus of production from which the forage never recovered. Of course, the research station was continuously grazed.
The good
Just how much drought resistance you have depends foremost on how much progress you’ve made increasing soil organic matter through good grazing. The key is full recovery of plants and the deep roots that puts down. There are many ways to do this, as we’ve covered over the years. R.P. Cooke uses full recovery all the time, all year around, as do many others. Some graze part of the property on a schedule that uses two or three grazings during the growing season while recovering part of the ranch fully. Then they graze in the winter on the fully recovered and heavily stockpiled forage.
One thing I know is people who use faster rotations and less recovery time, concentrating on keeping forage vegetative and at the highest quality, have much less drought resistance. Their advantage is typically they know about how many days of forage they have left.
Better timing
Great graziers keep good records on rainfall and forage production (usually animal days per acre) or similar, so they understand when they are getting in trouble before others. Selling a portion of your animals early in a drought cycle when prices are good is an inconvenience, but not a disaster. Selling a large proportion of your animals, or all of them, well into a drought and after prices are down significantly is absolutely a disaster.
Great graziers also know how many days of forage they have ahead of their cattle and when they will run out. They also can monitor regrowth in grazed paddocks to see if that supply will expand.
Better soil
Those who practice complete recovery of forages as part of their grazing management will have soil that’s healthier and has higher organic matter and more life. The plant roots will be deeper, fuller and higher functioning. The arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi will be healthier and will provide more water and more nutrients to the plants so they can thrive. Higher organic matter and more shade on the soil surface can catch and hold much more water — each 1% soil organic matter can hold about 25,000 gallons of water per inch of soil. That alone can fight back a lot of drought.
More grass
The records kept by great graziers show they increase the animal days per acre and therefore increase their stocking rates over time. We have reported many, many times over the years that graziers who do a good job nearly always double their stocking rates, and that many triple or quadruple their stocking rates. This proves they are growing more grass.
Incidentally, animal days per acre or animal unit days are just measurements of how many grazing days you get per unit of livestock.
Author: Donald Stotts | Published: December 6, 2016
Beef cattle grazing on grass pastures might not be the first thing people think of when discussing the subject of combatting greenhouse gas emissions, but it is an agricultural practice providing significant dividends to the effort.
“Environmental as well as economic sustainability are key elements of best management practices for agriculture, as most people involved in agriculture are well aware they are stewards of the land,” said Keith Owens, Oklahoma State University associate vice president for the university’s statewide Oklahoma Agricultural Experiment Station system. “Air, water, soil; we pay attention to all of them.”
In terms of greenhouse gas emissions, scientific studies have long indicated the burning of fossil fuels and land-use changes such as deforestation have led to an increase in atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide since the beginning of the industrial revolution.“Carbon dioxide atmospheric concentrations have risen from 280 parts per million prior to the industrial revolution to more than 400 parts per million today,” Owens said.Carbon sequestration – the long-term capture and storage of carbon from the atmosphere, typically as carbon dioxide – is a method of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.“Many different agricultural production practices can capitalize on carbon sequestration in both soil and biomass to reduce negative environmental effects,” Owens said. “These practices enable use of the natural carbon cycle to replenish carbon stores while reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.” That is where beef producers who employ grasslands as a pasture resource come in. Research by R.F. Follett and D.A. Reed published in 2010 examined the effects of grazing on soil organic carbon storage in North American rangelands. Follett and Reed found impacts ranging from no change to up to 268 pounds of carbon stored per acre per year.
