THURSDAY, JAN 26, 2023: NOTE TO FILE
Module 3-11
Holistic management
The contribution of the Zimbabwean born Allan Savory to Holistic Management provided two major components to Regenerative Agriculture. Firstly, it’s the holistic whole systems context for a farming initiative, and secondly, it’s the biomimicry approach of emulating the grazing of wild herds by domesticated livestock. Savory correctly postulated that the desertification of the Sub Saharan Sahel, and other similar areas, is not the result of over-grazing, but rather, grazing mismanagement, and in particular, insufficient grazing animals and predators. In the wild, herds are forced to mob graze together for fear of predators, which keeps the herd tightly together, thereby grazing everything uniformly in an area plus stomping their manure and urine into the soil. That is, until predators start hunting those members of the herd that stray or who are more vulnerable, such as, the lame, wounded, elderly or youngsters. The hunting predators forces the herd away to another area where the process is continuously repeated.
One can predict what happens when predators are eradicated: herds graze the choosiest grasses indiscriminately anywhere leaving the hardier grasses to grow into thick clumps around which surface erosion takes place when it rains. The lack of uniform ground cover and the resistance of grass clumps exacerbates soil erosion which leads to desertification. This is exactly what happens with domestic livestock whose grazing is not managed.
From this analysis, the simple solution is to mimic the function of predators by means of mobile electric fences which forces domestic livestock to mob graze specific areas uniformly until the grass is exhausted before moving the mobile electric fence to the next grazing area. The stocking densities of livestock in short cycle-controlled mob grazing are significantly higher than those of free range uncontrolled grazing. Controlled mob grazing is thus able to reverse desertification, restore grasslands and increase the livestock carrying capacity of grassland by mimicking the nutrient closed loop cycle that occurs in nature as illustrated in Figure 3.4.
Holistic Management has the potential to become a game-changer for climate change mitigation, as Savory explained in his 2013 video (20 minutes) titled, “How to green the world's deserts and reverse climate change”.
Savory’s tried and tested practices led to the establishment of Holistic management and its associated technique of “holistic planned grazing” (see the video below, 3:25mins), also known as “mob grazing”, are based on a systems thinking approach that mimics nature.
The Savory Institute has become a well-established entity with a growing global network of educational / demonstration hubs, trained land managers and validated holistically managed land. They also conduct and participate in research about holistic management and also have a repository of related published information.
In a 2015 article, the Savory Institute suggested that Holistic Planned Grazing could be applied to approximately 5 billion hectares of the world’s degraded grassland soils in order to restore them to optimal health and thereby sequester more than 10 gigatons of atmospheric carbon annually into the soil’s organic matter, “thereby lowering greenhouse gas concentrations to pre-industrial levels in a matter of decades. It also offers a path towards restoring agricultural productivity, providing jobs for thousands of people in rural communities, supplying high quality protein for millions, and enhancing wildlife habitat and water resources”. Watch the short video below (4mins) of Allan Savory explaining his vision of Changing our Future.
[To repeat: Critically assessing all claims by above would be exhasuting and as any points I might make if I did so would be dismissed (e.g. Alternative Farming), I would suggest anyone who might rather know than believe start with the Odum brothers as viewed by an historian of science. "'Potatoes Made of Oil': Eugene and Howard Odum and the Origins and Limits of American Agroecology." Telling stories that selectively cite 'science' as authority is not science.]
[Nate Hagens shared (tweeted) this short, but I'm not sure why:
[Of course peer review, if actually done and done well, is essential in science as is observation. Allan Savory is a fringe ecologist who makes claims that peers may have legitimate issues with as do their students. Savory believes he is right and the mainstream wrong, so his complaints may be over stated. Yet consensus thinking is alive and well and doing harm in science as in all fields (as is motivated reasoning and citing of selected evidence). H.T. Odum was also viewed as having idiosyncratic views and the scientific community has yet to embrace Odum's 'better view'. My guess is that Odum will be viewed as ahead of his time by historians of science in the 22nd century.]
Module 3, lesson 12
