Outreach video to ranchers in northern Mexico. Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory collaborates with private landowners there to support working ranches and improve grassland habitat for birds and other wildlife.
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Grazing livestock may soon be a common sight in the Palouse region of southeastern Washington, usually known for its rolling hills and grain production.
Jonathan Wachter, a soil science doctoral student at Washington State University, has been working with a local farm to improve the competitiveness of organic mixed crop-livestock systems and their potential adoption by growers in a conventional grain-producing region.
The study is supported by a $695,078 National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) grant awarded to Washington State University through the Organic Transitions (ORG) program.
“Since 2001, ORG has provided support to researchers across the nation to help improve the competitiveness of organic crop and livestock producers as well as those who are adopting organic practices,” said Mat Ngouajio, NIFA national program leader for plant production. “This support has also helped better understand ecosystem services of organic agriculture.”
Wachter has been working on this five-year project with wheat farmers Eric and Sheryl Zakarison since 2012, growing wheat, peas, perennial species like alfalfa, and sheep in a tightly integrated system to demonstrate how integrated livestock farming can contribute to sustainability goals.
“They are the ones doing the research on their farm because they want to improve their soil,” Wachter said. “All I’m doing is putting their ideas into practice in a research context to generate the data that backs up some of (their ideas). They’re the real innovators.”
Author: Seth Itzkan
The Las Pilas Ranch in Coahuila, Mexico, is a model of ecological restoration using Holistic Planned Grazing. Over a twenty five year period from 1978 to 2003, the barren landscape was completely revived. The images below show the transformation. Although the first picture is from 1963, the restoration with Holistic Management didn’t actually start until 1978. During the restoration period, the livestock population was doubled and grazing was done according to a plan that paid close attention to grass health.
 1963. Photo by Guillermo Osuna |
 2003. Photo by Guillermo Osuna |
Both images above are taken from the same location. Guillermo Osuna, the proprietor of the land, explains that when he began to manage the land, it was common to have dirt dams to capture the runoff – as there was no grass cover. A one-inch rain could fill the trough (pictured above, from 1963). After the land was restored, they could have a six-inch rain, and still no standing water (it’s all absorbed). There is no need for the dirt dams and artificial troughs now. Those have grown over with vegetation and the springs are running year-round. Livestock is now watered via gravity fed pools from streams that run throughout the dry season. Mr. Osuna says there is twice as much surface water now as there once was, and he has also doubled the herd density.