#106, In Practice, Mar/Apr 2006

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March 2006 2006 January/ April / February

Number Number 106 105

Keeping Ahead of the Curve

www.holisticmanagement.org www.holisticmanagement.org

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

by Ann Adams

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n 1984, Jack and Teresa Southworth took their first training in Holistic Management, even though at the time they felt their family could ill-afford the cost of the training.

Although they had begun debt-free in 1977 after graduating from Oregon State, by 1980 they had made some land purchases and were $1 million in debt, and it was touch-and-go as to whether they would get an operating loan.

But for the last 15 years, Southworth Brothers Ranch has been running in the black as it supports four families. The turnaround came when Jack went to that Holistic Management training and realized that doing things the way his dad and granddad had done them was not going to solve the Southworths’ problems.

Taking Care of Business “In some agricultural magazines, this fellow Savory was talking about doubling your stocking rate,” recalls Jack. “Here I was a graduate from the agricultural program at Oregon State, I’d taken general ag and lots of range classes, and I didn’t have a clue how to run this ranch. And I grew up on it. I just didn’t have a clue how to make a decision. Should we be in yearlings, or cows and calves, should we be running a cow-calf operation, or a cow-calf-yearling operation, or should we be buying outside yearlings? I just could not get a handle on how to decide what to do.

“I’m not blaming Oregon State. I think a lot of decision making in agriculture at the time was based on marginal return. They talked about adding increased amounts of fertilizer until your increased yield didn’t pay for the increased unit of fertilizer– and that’s about as much economic decision-making as I had from Oregon State.”

After the Holistic Management training, Jack became clear what kind of operation Southworths Ranch was. They are a cow-calf-yearling outfit running 750 to 800 cows, and they’ve made some decisions to increase profitability such as moving away from the “bigger is better” mentality. They stopped using implants in their cattle, and they stopped buying bulls. Instead they raise bulls out of their highest-producing cows that calve earliest

in the season. They monitor for drops in weaning weights and conception rates to determine if they need outside bulls.

Currently, Jack has a grazing lease on 24,000 acres (9,600 ha) of U.S. Forest Service public lands as well as 12,000 acres (4,800 ha) of private land. He has maintained photopoints and transect monitoring of the riparian areas on the private land to demonstrate the improved health of the land he is managing. The key indicators he is using for the riparian area health are grass stubble height and increase in alders and willows.

On his private land, Jack acknowledged he doesn’t do any formal monitoring. Like on the public lands he manages, Jack focuses on grass stubble left behind, usually leaving 4-6 inches (100-150 mm). The riparian area along the Silvies River on his private land is also a focus for increased willow growth. They have spent a lot of time fencing off the riparian areas and planting willows, a gamble Jack notes may not “pay off” in any easily defined economic return. “I’d a lot rather gamble on the side of increased biodiversity and higher water tables than the alternative,” says Jack.

“We focus more on the biological requirements of the plants. We found that if we use only 20-25 percent of the plant on the first grazing and leave more leafy photosynthetic material behind, we have earlier growth in the spring and better production. The amount we harvest in May and June now is more than what we were able to harvest previously in May, June, September, and October. In the spring, we used to run out of feed by the first of June. Now when we leave those paddocks toward the end of June, we are leaving feed behind. By not grazing those paddocks in the fall, we have more litter through recruiting that old plant growth.

“I realized I was cutting my own throat by grazing that land so heavily before. Lee Edelman from Oregon State says that sufficient litter will make a 60-degree difference in soil temperature in August, in the middle of the day. Without any continued on page 2

TERRY GOMPERT

Want to learn how profitable it is to graze corn? Turn to page nine and learn from Terry Gompert, an Extension Educator in Nebraska, why he thinks grazing corn is a good alternative for some farmers. In this picture, dry cows winter strip graze corn.

FEATURE STORIES Gross Profit Analysis– Bringing in the Most Money for the Least Additional Cost . . . . . . . . .4 Jody Butterfield, et al.

Changing the Way We Make Decisions–Sheepishly . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Rob Rutherford

LAND & LIVESTOCK Amazing Grazing– Can Grazing Corn Be a Good Option? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Terry Gompert

Pampas through Patagonia– A Journey through Argentina . . . . . . . .11 Jim Howell

NEWS & NETWORK Grapevine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Reader’s Forum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Book Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Certified Educators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Network Affiliates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20 Marketplace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20

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Keeping Ahead of the Curve

Holistic Management International is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting resource management that restores land to health and operations to profitability. As the worldwide pioneer of Holistic Management, we’ve worked successfully with ranchers, farmers, pastoral communities and other entities since 1984.

FOUNDERS Allan Savory

litter, soils will get up to 110, 120 degrees F (49,49 C). With litter they’re a lot cooler, so we’ll have more microbial activity which means better nutrient cycling.

“We don’t get out on the grass in the spring until we see that third tiller leaf come up which is

STAFF

BOARD OF DIRECTORS Ron Chapman, Chair Ben Bartlett, Vice-Chair Jody Butterfield, Secretary Sue Probart, Treasurer Ivan Aguirre Gail Hammack Brian Marshall Jim McMullan Ian Mitchell Innes Jim Parker Jim Shelton Dennis Wobeser

ADVISORY COUNCIL Jim Shelton, Chair, Vinita, OK Robert Anderson, Corrales, NM Michael Bowman,Wray, CO Sam Brown, Austin, TX Lee Dueringer, Scottsdale, AZ Gretel Ehrlich, Gaviota, CA Cynthia & Leo Harris, Albuquerque, NM Clint Josey, Dallas, TX Doug McDaniel, Lostine, OR Guillermo Osuna, Coahuila, Mexico Jim Parker, Montrose, CO York Schueller, El Segundo, CA Africa Centre for Holistic Management Private Bag 5950, Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe Tel: (263) (11) 404 979; email: hmatanga@mweb.co.zw Huggins Matanga, Director HOLISTIC MANAGEMENT IN PRACTICE (ISSN: 1098-8157) is published six times a year by Holistic Management International, 1010 Tijeras NW, Albuquerque, NM 87102, 505/842-5252, fax: 505/843-7900; email: hmi@holisticmanagement.org.; website: www.holisticmanagement.org Copyright © 2006.

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IN PRACTICE

grazing season’s effect on the plant’s productivity.

That was a big shift for us. Now from September through November we feed the cows rakebunched hay on some of our hay meadows. In May and June we are grazing the crested wheatgrass seedings.” During the summer Jack’s cattle are on the public lands where Idaho fescue, pine grass, and Kentucky bluegrass dominate.

Those plants are only grazed once and have approximately 300 days of recovery.

One Plant at a Time

Jody Butterfield

Shannon Horst, Executive Director Peter Holter, Senior Director of Marketing and Product Development Bob Borgeson, Director of Finance, Accounting and Administration Jutta von Gontard, Director of Development Kelly (Pasztor) White, Director of Educational Services Constance Neely, International Training Programs Director Ann Adams, Managing Editor, IN PRACTICE and Director of Publications and Outreach Maryann West, Executive Assistant Donna Torrez, Administrative Assistant

continued from page 1

This is what the Southworths are managing for: a dense stand of perennial grasses with decaying litter between the plants in this 20year-old crested wheatgrass seeding. usually around the beginning of May. According to Dr. Lee Manske of Dickinson Experiment Station in North Dakota, it’s safe then to start grazing without compromising the plant’s productivity (see IN PRACTICE #87, January 2003, p. 10). With the first grazing, we’re in each pasture about seven days and try to move them back through in about 30-45 days, and we try to take the plants down to no less than four inches (100 mm) or no more than 20-25 percent of the present season’s growth. On the second grazing we take about 40 percent of the plant leaving four to six inches (100-150 mm) of stubble behind.

Our stocking rate is about .6-.8 AUM per acre (1.5-2 AUM/ha). Paddock sizes range from 50200 acres (20-80 ha), and our average rainfall is 15 inches (375 mm). Elevation varies from 4,650 feet (1,550 m) on our private land to 6,500 feet (2,167 m) on the public lands.”

“Since we’ve changed our grazing management and are not grazing dormant grasses, we’ve seen the crested wheat grass send out tillers. While we can’t say exactly how much our plant density has changed, we spend a lot of time on our knees watching to see how the plants are responding. Improving the land takes place an inch at a time.

“Ten years ago, I thought once perennial grass had set seed, you could graze as closely as you wanted and there wouldn’t be any negative consequence. Three years ago, after reading Dr. Manske’s work about plants’ respiration, “Biologically Effective Management of Grazing Lands,” and visiting with Dr. Manske in North Dakota, I realized I had to consider the dormant

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While Jack credits Dr. Manske for teaching him about the growth and health of perennial grass plants and what causes grass plants to tiller and how to increase basal area, he also thinks highly of Christine Jones (IN PRACTICE, #97, September 2004, p. 12). “Dr. Jones believes that range managers should strive for 100 percent ground cover, 100 percent of the time, no excuses.

I like that,” says Jack. He believes that the work by these scientists will be critical in the future in the western United States for getting a handle on reducing noxious weeds and improving the health and vigor of perennial grasses.

“Allan Savory said that overgrazing occurs one plant at a time,” Jack says. “I believe that improving the range will also occur one plant at a time. And that if we can get perennial grass plants to improve their vigor and basal area and also extend the length of time they meet the nutritional needs of lactating cows, we will greatly improve the overall productivity of our rangelands.

“Combine Manske’s notion of a wellmanaged grass plant with Jones’ notion of 100 percent ground cover and incorporate the two into a holistic goal, and you have a powerful tool for managing rangelands. What is exciting for us is that we are able to leave more plant material behind while at the same time harvest more grass. What I used to think of as ‘wasted feed’ plays a critical role in maintaining the health of the plant while dormant and providing litter material for obtaining 100 percent ground cover.”

Full-Time Employment Jack works full-time on the ranch along with ranch hands Ed, Brad, and Ken. Teresa works part-time taking care of accounting and cattle records. Jack is responsible for overall management. “I pick people’s brains and try to keep a low ego,” says Jack. “About every two to three years we revisit our holistic goal, all five of us. That’s a huge improvement over when I first came back from the Holistic Management training. I just focused on fencing and gross profit analysis then.”

Ed spends most of his time taking care

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of the cattle and irrigating. Brad is responsible for fences and feeding, and helps Ed with cattle. Ken’s primary responsibilities are working on the equipment, and he helps Brad on fences.

“We spend a lot of time talking about things and what we should do, making sure we are working on important things first,” says Jack.

“Our key focus is that we want this to be an enjoyable place to work. In agriculture it’s sometimes hard to find and keep good help. We count ourselves fortunate to have the crew that we do. Our timberland has helped us provide full-time, year-round work for everyone. When things start slowing down with the cattle around late October, Brad and Ken do the timber felling. Maybe it would be more efficient or economical to have a big machine come in, but I’d rather have the year-round workers–that’s what keeps a rural economy viable.

“When I read articles about ranch management there is all this emphasis on minimizing equipment and overhead. Instead, the focus is on hiring contractors, but that isn’t always fun. We enjoy working together here and there is more flexibility in schedules which affects our quality of life if Teresa and I want to get away. Also, our workers have kids in the local schools and participate in the local community which strengthens the community for us. I don’t think a rural community that works part-time or part of the year is as strong a community as one that offers year-round employment.

“That’s the neat thing about having a holistic goal–you feel comfortable making decisions that are right for you. Maybe the decision won’t be as profitable, but if someone questions it, you can just shrug your shoulders because you know why you are making that decision.

“We are really flexible as to when people want time off. I like to research local history and serve on several volunteer organizations.

Teresa has a yarn store and makes felted wool saddle pads. Ed and his wife, Karyl, enjoy visiting their children and grandchildren. Brad is coach of the high school basketball team and through the winter needs afternoons and weekends off. Ken loves to hunt and trap. I feel we are able to run a good ranch and still pursue our own individual interests.

“We also participate in Country Natural Beef (CNB), a cattle marketing cooperative. What CNB does for us is give us some predictability in our cash flow budgeting. We have some long-

term debt and, for this size of ranch, quite a bit of labor costs, making our fixed costs relatively high. We need to be consistent in our production and livestock sales in order to make a profit. CNB gives us that consistency and certainty.

“The down side is that it requires quite a lot of involvement to make that consistency occur– meetings take about ten days of our time as well as in-store demos and conference calls. But that feels better than fretting over what the futures market is doing. I have decided that when it comes to marketing, you can work hard at marketing and have less worry. Or you can ignore marketing and worry more. But on our operation you can’t ignore marketing, not worry, and still survive. I’d rather miss out on the peaks and have the steady income.

Looking Ahead Jack believes Southworth Ranch has a good team, but change is inevitable. Jack and Teresa are turning 50, and Ed is in his 60s. As they get older they find that they are more costly to maintain, less productive and wanting more time to enjoy their individual interests. In the past year, they’ve been able to provide health insurance for all employees, but the cost of the policy is almost the cost of an additional employee. In the coming ten years they will have to grow the ranch enough to possibly bring on another employee, which means growing the ranch production by three to five percent a year.

“I finally understand cattle ranching is not the ultimate purpose of land in the western U.S.,” says Jack. “Views, solitude, hunting and photography are as important to our society as beef production. In fact, based on what people will pay for views and solitude, one would have to say that they are valued more highly than beef production. In order to expand, it will probably be on land we rent from absentee owners.

“So, we have to learn how to deal with absentee owners and grazing that improves the land and the wildlife that it supports and enhancing the aesthetic value. We have to be more creative and better communicators.

Ultimately, we need to ask our neighbors what they want the land to look like and be able to produce it.

“With energy costs what they are, we will continue to look at ways to reduce winter feeding costs. We rake bunch about 300 acres (120 ha) of hay ground right now to provide feed in November. Being able to extend that into

This is what the Southworths are trying to avoid in their grazing management: not much stubble left after grazing and bare ground between the plants.

December and January would reduce both energy and labor costs.”

When I asked Jack to distill what he’s learned from his 20 years of managing holistically, he said, “Holistic Management empowers you to create your own direction, your own vision, and be comfortable in making it happen. For some people, success is a high price for calves or a wet spring, but they are still frustrated by things outside their control when those things don’t happen.”

For Jack, knowing what he’s doing and why is the feeling of success because he doesn’t have to measure himself against someone else’s yardstick. “Without a holistic goal, we’d feel that if we weren’t weaning 600-pound (270-kg) calves, we weren’t doing it right. Now we’re managing for things we want, for these healthy perennial plants, for this quality of life. Before we were managing against so many things. We were managing against scours; we were managing against low weaning weights; we were managing against low cattle prices and high interest rates. And that’s a different mindset.

“I continue to love the task of trying to combine the economic challenge of making a profit with the social challenge of several people working together on the same operation with the ecologic challenge of maintaining healthy rangelands and streams with year-round clear water. We’re not the best ranch in the world but we’re OK, and when you’re managing for a holistic goal, OK is just fine.”

Jack Southworth ranches near Seneca, Oregon and can be reached at: 541/542-2558 or jksouthw@oregonvos.net. For more information about Lee Manske and biologically effective management of grazing lands go to: www.chaps2000.com/grazing. For more information about Christine Jones and grazing management for healthy soils go to: www.managingwholes.com/grazingsoils.htm.

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Gross Profit Analysis– Bringing in the Most Money for the Least Additional Cost

by Jody Butterfield, et al were variable costs! These included such obviously variable costs as feed, vet bills, and semen to produce high-production cows. The cost of the new facilities also counted and should have been calculated as part of the annual cost per cow over the life of the facilities.

The most significant fixed costs were mortgage payments on land, and taxes, which were high because booming second-home development had inflated values. Since only a imply stated, gross profit analysis is a fraction of the mountain land was suitable for technique that separates fixed costs crops and feedlots, little of this mortgage or tax (defined here as costs you have cost was assigned to the intensive milking regardless of what or how much you systems, even though it had produce) from the costs to be paid. Meanwhile huge directly linked to production.

Gross Profit Analysis of Fed Versus Pastured Dairy Cattle areas of pasture, laboriously It enables you to compare Standard Accountng Gross Profit Analysis cleared in past decades, many enterprises or Fixed Costs Allocated went out of production combinations of enterprises.

Profit Gross under the new system and Besides expenses normally Profit in that nonbrittle termed “overhead,” fixed environment quickly costs can include other } succeeded to forest. There expenses that have already was no going back. Those been incurred. For who could sell land to example, fertilizer–normally developers survived thought of as a variable financially, but the dairy cost–can be fixed if already herds disappeared. bought and you’re making a Fed Dairy Cattle Grass Operation Fed Dairy Cattle Grass Operation Gross profit analysis new decision about crops.

Fixed Variable Income Costs Costs would have revealed the This approach, developed problem before the fatal

by David Wallace, an step, as the second graph English agricultural shows. If variable costs economist, respects the fact alone are considered, it becomes obvious that encouraged local dairymen to build continuous that at any point many costs such as living each cow on the old mountain grass went milking parlors in association with feedlots expenses, debt payments, and full-time labor much farther toward covering the cost of the supplied by intensive crop production or exist no matter what you produce. So they land and incurred relatively little “per head” purchased feed. In theory this would produce should not be considered in judging the expense compared to the cow on feed. Even more profit per cow–and virtually no end to the potential of an enterprise you undertake when the high taxes ate up profit, die-hard number of cows you could have. tomorrow. farmers could often supplement their income The left-hand graph shows how traditional Many people do not make this distinction accounting justified this strategy. Cost per cow is enough to hold onto their property because the when analyzing the sources of profit and loss. whole farm produced. Gross profit per acre enormous, but so is production, so gross profit They look only at the bottom line–which tells remained healthy, and other inputs were low. per animal looks good enough to justify the them little or nothing about which elements of The story might have turned out quite large capital investment in the new equipment an operation contribute most to covering their differently on flat, fertile land. But in that case and feed purchase or production. Everything fixed costs and ultimately whether or not those a gross profit analysis might well have led to “cash flows.” The centuries-old practice of fixed costs are justified. Even when different truck farming instead of intensive feed crops grazing cows on steep mountain pastures looks enterprises in an operation are analyzed and Holsteins. pretty poor in comparison. separately it’s common to apportion some fixed Gross profit analysis tends to influence your At the time of the decision, however, all costs among them. But this obscures the real planning in several key ways: investments in the continuous milking scheme contribution toward covering the total fixed costs of the business by that enterprise. People unused to this concept often find the distinction between fixed and variable expenses confusing and want a list. Again, the decision is subjective.

Any expense that you can’t avoid in the planning period regardless of what you plan is a fixed expense. Any expense that derives from your plan is variable.

Failure to see the difference can lead to disastrous decisions. The two graphs shown in the figure below, for example, illustrate the large-scale ruin of dairy operations in the mountains of western North Carolina.

Beginning in the 1960s industry experts

Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from the soon to be published Holistic Management Handbook: Healthy Land, Healthy Profits by Jody Butterfield, Sam Bingham and Allan Savory. We expect to begin selling this book, a comprehensive update of the old Holistic Resource Management Workbook, in the fall of 2006. We will share other excerpts of this book in upcoming issues.

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1. You can be far more nimble in response to paper dollar changes. You will know when buying land makes sense, when sheep will do better than cattle, when yearlings beat calves, when to grow hay and when to buy it.

In this case, we are given:

2. You will make much better use of the land, equipment, and labor you already have. The common practice masks the expense of idle assets. Gross profit analysis shows when you’re better off making smarter use of what you have than making “cost effective” new investments.

The gross profit per head (in rand) would be

3. It makes you extremely aware of fixed costs.

In the long run, none of these costs is really fixed at all. You can sell the ranch or farm itself if you have to. Short of that you can bias your planning to cut fixed costs and get rid of inefficient assets. Thus, you can cut your exposure to the dangers of paper dollars–and compound interest–the great trap of agriculture in the U.S. and those countries following America’s lead.

The following simplified version of a real situation illustrates the technique for comparing enterprises using a gross profit analysis. The numbers are in South African rand, not dollars, and the relationship between income and animal numbers does not transfer either, so don’t expect the conclusions to relate to your operation. The method, however, will.

In this particular case two brothers differed as radically as Cain and Abel on the subject of sheep versus registered (or pedigree) cattle. The analysis answered their pressing economic question but not, alas, the human one.

The income and expense account, shown in the illustration on page four, has had a lot of detail boiled out of it, but it still includes many items that do not figure in the gross profit analysis. These represent items that either have nothing to do with the enterprises in question or are not “variable” in the sense that you will not get rid of them in the near future regardless of your conclusions about the various enterprises. Note that the gross profit analysis side has some categories such as “pasture, silage, and hay” that do not rate a line on the traditional account but are derived from several of the expense headings.

To compare the livestock options effectively, gross profit analysis results must be reduced to some common and comparable base–dollars per head per year, dollars per acre/hectare per year, dollars per standard animal unit per year, dollars returned per dollar invested per year, and so forth.

1,500 sheep 400 commercial cattle 150 registered cattle

R511,780 = R341.19/sheep 1,500 R222,470 = R556.18/commercial cow 400 (R53,010) = (R353.40)/registered cow (loss) 150 If the stocking rate reflects the commonly used ratio of five sheep to one cow unit, then the difference in gross profit per unit of land is drastic indeed. Sheep return R1,705.95 (R341.19 x 5) per animal unit in this particular case; registered cows lose R353.40.

Gross profit analysis helps greatly in determining which enterprises to engage in and in constantly monitoring the performance of each enterprise. However, all the actions and technologies involved in an enterprise should also be tested. Use gross profit analysis for three purposes: 1. To compare enterprises, as in the example.

2. To see how different conditions such as price changes might affect your enterprise.

3. To weigh the effect of diverting assets from one enterprise to another.

• Comparing Scenarios Gross profit analysis can be used to assess the impact of future events or policies by looking at one variable at a time. In this manner you can find out instantly how changes in price per pound (or kg), supplemental feed prices, labor policy, weaning percentages, average gain, and other factors would affect your gross profit. Ideally you should look at the variable least in your control to determine the likely “poor,” “average,” and “good” scenarios.

• Comparing the Use of Assets Gross profit analysis allows you to estimate the effect of changing an asset from one use to another. This could be land, machinery, buildings, cash, or whatever. Below we dissect the question of whether to use a piece of bottomland for alfalfa or as pasture for stockers.

The numbers are simply pulled out of a hat to show the technique. Don’t judge their plausibility.

Notice that the two options produce very similar bottom lines, but the process forces you to ask (and answer) many important questions: • Which choice is most risky?

• Would your own machinery make hay cheaper?

• Could you raise your own stockers?

• Could you finance stockers yourself?

• Could you increase the stocking rate?

• Could you increase yield?

• Could you cut chemical costs?

• Which gives most flexibility in the future?

• Gross Profit Per Unit If the mathematics of reducing gross profit to a unit of something tends to slip your mind, remember: $/head, $/acre, $ margin/$ invested, miles/hour, pounds/square inch, and so on are written like fractions, because they are. The top gets divided by the bottom.

If 100 cows produce a gross profit of $24,000, then Gross profit/cow = $24,000 = $240/cow 100 If the herd uses 800 acres, then Gross profit/acre = $24,000 = $30/acre 800 If the herd would cost $50,000 to replace, then Gross profit/$ invested = $24,000 = 0.48 $50,000 That is commonly said as “forty-eight cents on the dollar” or 48%.

The simple form of gross profit analysis described here has a number of limitations.

One obvious limitation is it does not account for time. You cannot of course schedule crops or other operations that demand more labor, equipment, and capital on a given day than you can supply. Use the gross profit analysis, but think and work to achieve both a form of cropping and a selection of input items that pass the remaining six tests.

As you acquire more skill in performing the gross profit analysis, you might find some benefit in analyzing various combinations of crop enterprises as a single enterprise. Likewise, you might analyze different phases of, say, cattle production on the ranch–breeding to calving, or growing calves to 18-month-old steers, versus not breeding but buying in young stock, and so on.

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Changing the Way We Make Decisions – Sheepishly

by Rob Rutherford

I

still remember the day last century when Bill Burrows asked me what I thought was a rather peculiar question. I was attending my first Holistic Resource Management introductory course here in San Luis Obispo, California, and Bill had driven all the way from the northern end of California to share in the event. Knowing that I had been around sheep all my life, and was in charge of the sheep program here at California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly), Bill asked me how I measured the productivity of the operation.

I couldn’t believe that someone who was a tenured faculty member in the agriculture department of a well respected college like Shasta College would have to ask that question. After all, didn’t everybody associated with agriculture know that one measured productivity by looking at birth weights, weaning weights, yearling weights, average daily gains, pounds of milk produced, estimated progeny differences (EPD’s), etc. Certainly all the textbooks, the industry publications, and the curricula at major agricultural institutions told us so. Well, a lot of soil has eroded since then, and with that time, my perceptions of sheep raising have changed as well.

agricultural teacher, and then was fortunate to be hired at Cal Poly in 1974.

Cal Poly has a long and proud reputation with its livestock operations, and for many years, registered livestock at Cal Poly competed at all the major California livestock shows and participated in major purebred livestock sales events. There have been registered sheep at Cal Poly since 1903, and if you were to visit, you would see an entire hallway in the ag building with pictures of champion stock from the Los Angeles County Fair, the Great Western Livestock Show, The Grand National Livestock Exposition, and the California Ram Sale. In order to be competitive, our sheep were very well cared for–no expense was spared to capture the top prize.

Of the various goals that drove the program,

much–we really couldn’t allow inexperienced students to do much with them - despite the fact that we are an educational institution. We had computerized records with weaning weight ratios and yearling weight ratios.

My predecessor initiated a ram test station designed to test the weight gains of consigned ram lambs from around the state. We dewormed about six times a year with various products, and yet, the vet clinic always enjoyed using the sheep during parasite lab because they knew they could always see lots of worm eggs in the feces. The lambs all got a shot of BoSE (Selenium buffered solution) within a day of being born; the ewes were vaccinated twice a year with an eight-way Clostridial vaccine, and the lambs received three vaccinations of the same material before they were weaned at four months. We did some artificial insemination and were almost at the point of instituting embryo transfer.

Everything was done to make the sheep grow fast and look good.

Highly prized sheep were the goal (at least one of them).

Healthy, Profitable Sheep

I don’t do much of that type of management anymore. We haven’t exhibited at a show in five years, Prized Sheep Goal our purchases from the feedmill have plummeted by 80 percent in To better grasp how my perceptions 10 years, the Vet clinic now uses off have changed, perhaps a little campus sheep to do their fecal egg background would be helpful. I have counts for parasite lab, and the owned and managed sheep since I was students do a lot more of the 6 years old, 50+ years of experience and counting. Through the youth programs Some of the Cal Poly Animal Science students doing their holistic grazing decision making for the planning. management of the flock. So what associated with elementary and one was to win. In order to do that, we had lambs happened? I guess Bill’s question wouldn’t let me secondary schools (4-H and FFA), I was very born at various months of the year to fit the go–and I started to make decisions differently. successful with my registered Southdown sheep. differing age classifications at the shows. The I have created a temporary holistic goal Because of an outstanding show ring record, my sheep were kept in the barn for the late gestation for the sheep unit. This was challenging, sheep were recognized and demanded for their and early lactation phase so that we could better given the nature of the bureaucracy that outstanding qualities. Everything that we did to assist them and provide proper health care and surrounds a university. However, in order and for those sheep was done to win the top nutrition. The ewes received the highest quality for me to make management decisions, I awards. alfalfa hay and a concentrate diet mixed at the found that I needed to have a clearer They were regularly vaccinated and decampus feedmill. picture as to what I really wanted– what I wormed, whether there were any obvious To be competitive, the lambs required a needed to produce to have that – and what symptoms or not. Their feet were trimmed higher quality diet than that, so we purchased the operation needed to be like in the routinely; they were treated for external parasites, various high-powered, commercially future to sustain it as a viable part of the received special feeds, and their estrus manufactured feeds to make sure they grew as educational experience for our manipulated to create Fall born lambs and fast as possible. We had a lot of money invested in undergraduate students. more–all because of advice of various experts in the sheep. In the early 1980’s, we purchased a What became apparent is that meaningful extension and industry. It certainly kept me busy education was one of the things I value. From and out of trouble. After I graduated from college, Suffolk ram at the Midwest Stud Ram Sale for $23,000. Because the sheep were worth so that, the concept of intertwining the economic, I had a short term as a secondary school 6

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ecological, and social just fell into place. Because no longer bring the sheep into the barn during swine industries far exceeds the sheep industry– of that, I no longer just teach about the physical the lambing season, we have physically removed the decisions made at those units will be heavily management practices of raising sheep. Those them from an environment where pathogens can influenced by what is perceived as industry practices are now presented in the context of flourish (bare surfaces/simplified communities), preferences. To the extent that profits from what they mean to the whole being managed. and, therefore, the incidence of things like operations might not be what they should, cash The level of state support for higher mastitis and pneumonia have declined flow from donations, grants, and other programs education has continued to shrink over the past drastically. seem to be sufficient reason to avoid changing two decades, therefore the livestock operations As I evaluated the quality of life that needed the decision making. are expected to produce a profit. In the past, to exist at the sheep unit, it became clear that Results Speak For Themselves student labor, equipment maintenance, pasture students needed to have greater ownership in maintenance, and travel were all paid for from the place and, therefore, their own education. I As the decision making has changed at the state budgets. That is not now the case. In is our believe that I have been successful in creating sheep unit, the use of time and money has departmental opinion that the livestock play an the impression that the sheep are here for the changed as well. Our grazing planning and integral role in the education of the students of education of the students–which is not management has been successful in reducing Animal Science at our “hands-on, learn-bynecessarily the case at the other livestock units. bare soil, increasing the numbers of perennial doing” institution; therefore, we need to produce All of the units on campus exist under the plants, and decreasing some of the less desirable effective education including the interaction of same general plan for the university, however plants. I’ve been able to convince our close humans and livestock. As I neighbors and even some began to test decisions as to of the other on-campus what I needed to do with entities to stop shooting the sheep operations, things coyotes, squirrels, and began to change. rabbits. In our situation, One of the big decisions the coyotes prefer to hunt was to discontinue the during the day–and it exhibitions at livestock appeared that shooting was exposition. This activity forcing them to hunt at wasn’t taking us to our night–when the smaller future resource base as it critters would be in their did little to enhance our burrows. connection with the Now I see coyotes industry upon whom we coming through the fields– depend for support, it did and apparently, they prefer little to recruit future squirrel and rabbit to students, and it failed to mutton–as we haven’t had create the perception of us a predator kill in five years, being a leading academic except for one ewe last year institution. The marginal that was attacked by a reaction failed terribly.

This year’s Cal Poly students check their ewes and the mineral supply. This was the first day domestic dog. With Another big decision was to that the ewes were in this paddock, and the last measurable rain was in early March. healthier soils and plants, change the lambing the sheep need far less seasons of the purebred and grade flocks. This handling and special attention, which frees up the management of each unit is up to decision was heavily influenced by the weak link our time and resources to work with the fencing individual faculty members. At this point, only biological and financial tests as well as the and irrigation, which directly contribute to better the sheep are managed with some semblance marginal reaction test. solar energy conversion (more feed). of Holistic Management. All the other units are As I came to understand that a sheep (or any As I’ve indicated above, I can’t just manage managed with very conventional and ruminant) is just something created by microbes the sheep. I’ve found that my approach to people predictable processes. Students who have spent as a way to get to the next meal, I began to better associated with the sheep unit has changed as time at the sheep unit or in our Holistic balance the nutritional bounty as created by well. In addition to including the students in Management class can easily see the difference solar energy flow with the nutritional needs of a more of the decision making, I’ve found my and feel frustrated that decisions made at the sheep that vary with stages of reproduction and relationships with other users of the land to be other units (which are all substantially larger lactation. As we’ve moved to January - March evolving. Being state owned property, university and occupy far more resources) can’t be made lambing, we no longer have to put sheep in access is open to any who want to visit. My as we are doing it. barns for protection from the elements and to previous attitude was to treat this land more as Because the sheep operations are so small feed concentrate feeds to support the high private property, and my association with joggers, relative to the size of the college and university demands of lactation. When the sheep are out on bike riders, horse riders, and others was probably undertakings, we virtually operate un-noticed. forages –and we keep in mind the needs of the in the realm of confrontational.

This university, as is the case with most of them plants for recovery from being grazed–we have As I now understand the value of this property across the country, is heavily dependent upon successfully attacked the weak link in the to the community at large, relationships have non-governmental sources of income. Because biological cycle of internal parasites. Because we the relative size of the beef, horse, poultry, and continued on page 8 N u m b e r 10 6

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Decisions–Sheepishly

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“good stuff”–like grazing planning. changed substantially. We have embraced Management more than undergrads –which However, before decision making can change, several restoration projects on the property that I may be a result of having to deal with more so must paradigms, and that takes some time would have likely opposed at one time. As result reality about their lives. A big challenge with and stimulation. I’ve operated under the of these partnerships, the concepts of tool use in our students is getting them to deeply, in-theassumption that my students would readily adapt riparian areas are changing. The relationship gut, realize that they are in charge of to a new decision-making framework. I’ve that I now have with my employees has also themselves and, therefore, the decisions that chosen to believe this because they have had less changed as a result of Holistic Management. I’ve they make are leading to their life ahead. We years to become entrenched in long-held consulted with them a lot more, and provided have found that when we can create a sincere beliefs–and because the current generation is them the flexibility to better manage the conversation with our students–and that we less inclined to be bound by traditions. operations. This all derives from paying attention can inter-relate with challenges that they are And yet, our experience has been that the to what must be produced to create that which I facing–we can generally generate a bridge of shift to new decision making is just as difficult desire. understanding as to how Holistic Management Holistic Management holds the key for the has also helped to change resolution of their the management of sheep dilemmas. at our own property. My The television wife, Martie, and I own and commercial touting a live on a small piece of particular sports drink asks land, most of which is best the question “Is It In You?” suited for grazing. Over the A challenge we face with years, we have used sheep students is to try to get as the grazing animal of Holistic Management “In choice in order to cycle Them.” When we only are carbon and enhance the rein contact with them for a establishment of perennial few hours a week–and all grasses. While both of us the rest of the hours are have expressed the interest conventional decision and importance of making–it is challenging changing the landscape to create successful from what it is to what it infusion. might be, our individual This is no different from holistic goals found us in a people attending their first Cal Poly students are monitoring a spot where a head cut (erosion gully) had started to bit of conflict. seminar–and then being form, and they had done some high level animal impact with some bucking horses last Whereas my choice enveloped in the same old would be to virtually leave spring. It’s healed up well, and they have a nice crop of Nasella coming in (they didn’t world upon their return the sheep alone (other than plant anything–just put out some grass hay and caused some excitement). home. Part of our being controlled as to grazing areas), my wife for them as it is for some adults. I suspect that it continued learning about Holistic Management tended towards a more nurturing attitude, and has a lot to do with where I am and who my will be the process by which we can cause the felt that we ought to spend a lot more time with students are. It is my impression that I and my learning to continue beyond the hours in the them at lambing. The decision we made was to students live in a very protected world with a lot class sessions. We will no doubt understand that sell our sheep–and we now rent the pasture out of safety nets in place. It is a world that goes to infusion can be a process that will take longer for to one of my former students. In this way, the great lengths to mitigate the down side of bad some than others. plants get grazed according to our grazing plan. decisions we’ve made–which tends to negate the This is a proud industry whose national We do have sheep around for part of the year for need to improve our making decisions. organization pre-dates all the other livestock Martie to enjoy, and there is no conflict between These are students who have grown up with groups. To admit after all this time that we were us at lambing time. video games that allow them to “restart” if they responsible for most of the problems we’ve made a major mistake (oops! I totaled the car, I faced–what we have is what we created–is a very The Power of Paradigms killed the wrong person, etc.)– no penalty. Those tough thing to do. It’s just not in the nature of students who may have had to face up to a real Managing the sheep is relatively simple. proud sheep owners to be sheepish-and that world crisis–and that can realize that decision Changing the way we make decisions is a little makes a transition to new decision making a lot making had something (or everything) to do more involved. Talking about paradigms is a harder task than just changing how we manage with that crisis–are more likely to search for relatively painless bit of social intercourse. To the sheep. answers in a different way. This is a generation actually face up to and change them is Rob Rutherford teaches in the Animal that is being told that technology will solve all something else indeed. It has been my experience Sciences Department at California problems. that as people have been introduced to Holistic Polytechnic State University at San Luis It has been our observation that graduate Management–reading about the key insights is Obispo, California. He can be reached at: students recognize the importance of Holistic accomplished quickly on the way to getting to the rrutherf@calpoly.edu or at 805/756-1475.

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LIVESTOCK

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Amazing Grazing – Can Grazing Corn Be a Good Option?

by Terry Gompert

ecently Dave Wetzel of Page, Nebraska asked me, “If corn is worth $1.70 at harvest time and fuel is $2.50 a gallon, what savings would one incur if a pivot of corn was grazed?”

SAVING BY GRAZING ‘05 Assumptions:

Corn Worth Fuel Corn Moisture Bin Storage Cost

$1.70/bu $2.50/bu 20% 5 miles from field 3¢/month/bu

Combining Drying Hauling Storage Nutrients, Hauled Off LDP Value Totals

intuitively known using an animal to do the work (harvest) and recycle crop nutrients seems to be the right thing to do. I have been grazing and teaching grazing corn since 1996.

As a Holistic Management practitioner and Certified Educator, I am now convinced grazing crops is the best decision for many producers.

Savings Savings For my personal holistic goal, when using the per Acre per Pivot testing guide for grazing standing crops, I have $35 $4,725 discovered that this grazing is a positive tool for me $9 $28 $16 $25 -($21)

$1,215 $3,780 $2,160 $3,375 -($2,997)

$92

$12,258

GRAZING CORN (Gain Summary)

• Animal Gain—2 or more pounds gain per day (1 kg) • Acre Gain—500 to 1,000 pounds gain per acre (563-1,125kg/ha)

As I write this article, corn is $1.35 per bushel and fuel is $2.79 per gallon. in the following areas: The unfair wildcard for the grazier is the LDP payment. If corn was $1.70 1) addressing • Cost/lb of gain—15 to 45 cents there would be a 12¢ LDP payment per bushel on the pivot that would biological and (7-20 cents/kg of gain) amount to $2,997. Still, more than $12,000 gain for grazing is worthwhile. financial weak links; Our experience is you can put gain on for about $.35 per pound of gain 2) good use of time by grazing it. It will cost about $.50 per pound of gain in the feedlot. The and money; 3) leads my options for gross profit analysis; 4) passes the gain per acre is about the same if grazed or put in a feedlot. energy/money source and use test; and 5) is very sustainable (taking into The price of corn does affect the account the ecosystem processes). cost of gain when grazing, however Producers ask me, “Why graze GRAZING CORN that cost seems to always be less corn?”

The six reasons I give are: #800 pound steer @ 2.25 pounds daily gain than a commercial feedlot cost.

1) lowers harvesting and storage Price of Corn Per Bushel Steer gains, when grazing corn, costs; 2) lowers animal gain costs; tend to exceed 2 pounds per day.

3) fills a grazing gap (corn can be Items Needed for Herd Per $1.60 $2.20 $4.00 Extremes in gains (producer grazed 12 months of the year); 4) Corn Value (22.5 bu) $36.00 $40.00 $80.00 experience) reported to me ranged allows me to use damaged corn if 65# SBM $6.50 $6.50 $6.50 from 1.7 pounds (.8 kg) per day to available; 5) gives more options; Less Harvest Costs $15.75 $15.75 $15.75 3.2 pounds per day. Those animals and 6) it’s fun and makes the who gained 3.2 pounds (1.4 kg) neighbors talk.

Value of Nutrient Recycling $4.50 $4.50 $4.50 per day had a significant part of A few years ago, I would have Total Feed Cost per Day $22.25 $26.25 $66.25 their ration supplemented. told you the best use for grazing Feed Cost Per Pound Gain 15¢ 18¢ 45¢ For nearly twenty years, I have continued on page 10 N u m b e r 10 6

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Can Corn Grazing Be a Good Option?

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corn is feeding yearlings. I still think that is a good use; however, maybe the best use is to use either dry cows or cow/calf pairs.

A study in Illinois showed that grazing corn in the winter resulted in a daily cost of less than 25¢ per day.

THREE-YEAR SUMMARY Year

Yield

Acres

Cows

Days

Days/acre

Days/bu

1998

168

2.2

106

20

963

5.73

1999

182

4.5

138

33

1012

5.56

2000

156

10.0

93

80

744

4.77

Source: WIU Beef Research

Kirk Bruns giving cow/calf pairs their daily ration of standing The deeper the snow and the harder the winter, the better grazing corn corn in the summer of 2005. sounds. One needs to remember that the tallest grass Nebraska can grow is corn. Temporary fencing is easy on snow. If the ground is bare, the middle of the corn stock is soft making an easy place to insert the temporary post. If there is no stock, you can use a portable drill and drill a hole that can support the plastic post.

All in all, it is easy to winter graze. s pasture better than a crop? A messed up pasture is a messed up pasture, What are the risks to grazing corn? The greatest risk is which is not good. An excellent crop field is, too, just that. It all goes back acidosis. It is no different from in a feedlot. The bugs in the gut to your holistic goal. If your holistic goal says no single plant need to change to handle higher amounts of corn. My monocultures are present in my future resource base, that person might want diversity and perennials. One can build litter and create life in the soil by grazing corn–maybe faster than most pastures. Corn does have the ability to produce a lot of bio-mass–perhaps more than pasture. Sustainability is about enhancing the ecosystem, providing a profit for the individual, and improving and growing the community. Those who argue for pasture only are bias against crops and may not be looking at the whole picture.

Now that being said, I, too, would prefer great diversity and the ground well covered. I would hope that one does not only graze corn. I would hope it is only part of the whole. We have to remember that raising corn is not evil! It can be a part of a healthy whole.

Certainly one could consider grazing corn a transition into a pasture. One might always want to use corn as part of the rotation, and that is OK. This week a Wisconsin Amish farmer called to update me on his activities. He has contracted grainfed organic cattle with Organic Valley for $2 per carcass pound. The corn is part of his rotation–organic grainfed cattle are a major income generator. Since he does not use fuel for harvesting the corn (previously all hand harvested), he is Marvin DeBlauw from Hartington, Nebraska, has used extremely excited about having the animals do the work. My mind says it passes standing corn for his winter dry cow feed for more than 10 sustainability. The soil builds, the profits increase, and this should continue. years. Here fall pairs strip graze standing corn.

Off the Cuff

I

recommendation is to give up to 1 percent of the animal’s body weight in corn weight. The amount can be increased about 10 percent per day until they are on full feed.

To be successful at grazing corn, one needs to be able to control the animals. Move the fence daily to give the animal only what you want them to have.

This year, Kirk Bruns of Bloomfield, Nebraska took in cow/calf pairs at $1 per day. After paying for expenses, including land rent, he made $90 per acre on this venture. The neighbors are losing their shirts.

Terry Gompert is a University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension Educator. He can be reached at: tgompert1@unl.edu or 402/288-5611. This article originally appeared in Educator Edition, September 2005, Volume 8, Number 8.

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Grazing Corn vs. Harvesting • Increases dollars by $88 per acre.

• It reduces the need for a feedlot.

• It gives flexibility in varied livestock numbers to take care of extreme markets.

• It recycles minerals, builds litter, and builds soil life.

• It leads in Gross Profit Analysis.

• Uses animal energy.

• Improves mineral cycle (When grazing, up to 85 percent of the minerals consumed is recycled in the soil. Harvesting and feeding in the feedlot is a total loss of nutrients.)

• Increases community dynamics (The livestock increase the life, the extra residue protects the soil with its litter giving a good habitat for the bugs.)

–Terry Gompert

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Pampas to Patagonia – A Journey through Argentina

by Jim Howell

I

love being in Argentina. There is a passion for being alive that, though I’m sure all humans feel at some level, we don’t all necessarily express. In November of 2005, Daniela, our daughter Savanna, and I led our latest excursion to South America’s bottom end. It was our first Argentine ranch tour in two and a half years, and I was excited to be among the people, the cities, and the breathtaking landscapes–to be immersed in the excitement, the vitality, and even the unpredictability of Latin America. In addition to ourselves, our group of twelve consisted of a fun-loving but well-behaved group of Australian farmers, a female high-country sheep farmer from Central Otago, New Zealand, and a 20-something ranch kid from Wyoming. Between us, we spanned five decades of life, and the diversity of experience and perspective created a rich balance.

twenties, but there was a sprinkling of old-timers, too. One guy must have been pushing sixty. His horse bolted from his post at a mad, crowhopping gallop, put the brakes on at the far end of the arena, and sent this seasoned gaucho reeling into the fence. Slightly dazed, the ol’ guy struggled up and gave a wave of thanks to the grateful, awestruck, madly cheering crowd.

Most Argentines gorge on beef–at the rate of nearly half a pound per head per day. Most of ‘em are skinny, too, because the main sidedish usually consists of some sort of fresh salad–the hunter-gatherer diet.

Back behind the grandstand and beneath the towering trees was a twenty-yard long bed of coals, generated during the previous night and morning through the slow combustion of massive cross-sections of dessicated eucalypts. Ringing the perimeter of this coalbed were An Argentine Rodeo enormous slabs of beef on vertical Our ranch tours, with their steel skewers stabbed into the ground, holistic focus, are necessarily slowly roasting to perfection. Lunch is interwoven with a strong element of ordered by the kilogram– “Tres kilos local culture. In Argentina, not only de carne, por favor.” A gaucho with a do we spend a lot of time looking at huge knife slices off your portion, beautiful, grass-raised and -finished hucks it onto a piece of cardboard, cattle, we complete the experience and lunch is served. with as many or more hours This day on the pampas happened learning the Argentine methods of to be “La Fiesta del Ombú,” cooking and, of course, eating them. celebrated across this fertile tract of On this trip, we were fortunate to Argentina, and named after the only happen upon another cultural event tree native to the pampean grasslands. unique to the Argentine countryside-a Gaucho families show up in their genuine “domada,” or horsefanciest duds (the men especially), breaking. In the small, typical with new baggy “bombachas” (pants) pampean town of Cachari, about four tucked into handmade leather riding Our tour group admiring a herd of Angus cows and calves, and lush hours outside Buenos Aires, the locals boots, “boinas,” or berets (typical perennial pasture, on Estancia El Fortin. had gathered on a Sunday afternoon gaucho headwear), tilted at the for this celebratory exhibition of bravery. Each gaucho (Argentine perfect angle, fancy rastras (huge wide leather belts adorned with dozens cowboy) first ponies his drawn mount at a collected lope around the of coins), and giant hand-crafted (and sheathless) facónes (knives) arena. Yes, these wild broncs are halter-broke, but, as we were to see, most tucked at an angle between rastra and waist. The photographers among definitely are not saddle broke. us had a field day, and the gauchos were most happy to oblige. In the The bucking stock is then tied in a pen at the far end of the arena. At remote pampas, it’s not often a funny-looking bunch of gringos the other end, three twelve-foot-long posts are set in the ground, maybe (especially Australian gringos) happens by, so we were as much a novelty 15 yards/meters apart. When the riders’ turns are imminent, each leads for them as they for us. his mount at a full gallop to his designated post. Helpers snub bronc to Pampean Productivity post, and rider proceeds to ready himself with spurs and his mount with The domada happened three days into our trip, and up to that point saddle. Depending on the horse, the latter can be a major ordeal, nearly our learning was mostly cultural in nature. By day four we were all ready always requiring a blindfold. The rider carefully mounts, braces his feet for some grass and cows. Our first stop, Estancia Santa Elena, managed in the stirrups, initiates a wild overhead whirl with his “rebenque” by 37-year-old Diego Fontenla, lies in the southwest corner of the highly (leather strap that all the gauchos ride with), and nods. The blindfold productive province of Buenos Aires, the heart of the humid pampas. On comes off, and the struggling equine is set free.

Santa Elena, an average year sees 31 inches (780 mm) of precipitation, These same horses, that a few minutes ago were being docilely loped well-spread throughout the year. Like most of the pampas, temperatures at halter in big, easy circles, transform into possessed, maniacal, tend to be mild all year. Frosts can happen in the dead of winter–June gyrating, twisting, bounding, leaping, snorting, farting, exploding and July–but snow is unheard of, and summertime temperatures seldom bundles of flesh. Every horse had its individual strategy for gaucholaunching. Like North American rodeos, most riders looked to be in their continued from page 12 N u m b e r 10 6

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exceed 95 F (35 C). That means that cool- and warm- season plants When fast growth occurs and pastures recover to 70 SDH of grazeable are often green and growing simultaneously, and that pastures stay green forage (about 40 percent of the forage mass is grazed, and the balance all year long. Species composition is dominated by alfalfa, but dozens of left as residual) after only twenty to thirty days, Diego is able to drop out other introduced and native grasses and forbs round out the mix (white large areas for hay production. In a typical year, 2,000 round bales are and red clover, orchard grass, paspalums, phalaris, brome grasses, and put up, which then supplement winter dry cow pasture to enable Diego plantain). to slow down moves and manage for longer recovery periods during Santa Elena has been certified organic since 1995, and produces beef “slow” growth. (I know, a maximum recovery period of sixty days in the for the branded beef label “Ecopampa,” which markets Argentine-grown dead of winter probably sounds a little fantastical to many of you, but it’s organic beef both domestically and internationally. The ranch is owned true.) High quality grazing of winter oats by the fattening stock by the Buenos Aires-based Schneider supplements their winter perennial Family, who initially bought the pasture. These cattle are grown out to property to raise organic cereal 924 pounds (420 kg) at 21-26 grains for their specialty retail bakery months, and are all marketed outlets in Buenos Aires. Currently the through Ecopampa at a 7-15 percent ranch farms approximately 50 premium over the conventional percent of its 3,750 acres (1,500 ha), market. with the balance in perennial It was tough to fault anything at pasture. A crop/pasture rotation Santa Elena. The cattle were typically includes six years of pasture moderate-sized and efficient, pastures followed by four years of cropping. were incredibly diverse and thrivingWheat follows pasture, then even in the current year, which by sunflowers, wheat, sunflowers, and mid-November had only received 17 back to pasture. All cropped areas inches (430 mm) of their normal 31 also include a winter oat crop for inches (780mm)–and fields were direct winter grazing. After wheat generally small with abundant harvest in December, oats are planted shelter belts and hedges throughout into the wheat residue in February, the property. The Schneider Family Ranch owner and administrator Jorge Guzman (left) with long-time grazed in late May, June, and July, was generating a 5 percent return on on-the-ground manager Don Ernesto. worked in October, and then their investment, and in addition to sunflowers are planted in November as a summer crop. After sunflower Diego’s family, five other workers’ families were supported by the ranch. harvest in late summer/early fall, wheat is planted again. All field work is The Schneiders and Diego are clear about what they value and act done with contractors. Soil fertility and structure is maintained by the six accordingly, which, at the end of the day, is the heart of Holistic years of high legume perennial pasture. Diego takes soil samples every Management. year, and in the ten years since becoming organically certified, soil Flood-Irrigated Salad Bar organic matter, despite the four years of cultivation, has remained constant.

The next ranch visit on our itinerary, Estancia El Fortín, lies even All the wheat (plus small plots of rye and barley) goes straight into further to the southwest of Buenos Aires province. By now we had left the the bakery business. The sunflower is sold commercially for sunflower productive humid pampas and had entered a shrub-dominated, more oil, and due to their organic status, both crops command a 20-40 brittle grassland. With 16 inches (400 mm) of natural precipitation, it is percent premium over conventional prices. The ranch’s beef herd similar to lots of central Texas and north-central South Africa. But, just comprises 1,500 head of commercial Herefords, including brood cows, to our south flowed the Río Colorado, originating in the snowfall-laden replacement heifers, and the finishing herd. Due to water constraints, Andes Mountains 480 miles (800 km) to the west. herd size can’t be any larger than 400 head, so the ranch usually deals Complex irrigation schemes have been developed, creating a with four main herds. Young and finishing cattle are moved daily to mosaic of well-watered pasture and cropland amidst the brittle fresh grass, while grazing periods for brood cows stretch out to a week at shrubland. El Fortín (and adjacent El Fortín Chico) has been owned by most. All stock is controlled with one wire electric fences–both the Guzman family since 1970, at which point none of the irrigation permanent and portable–and all gates are made by propping the wire up had been developed. Development began in 1978, and the very first with a “vela,” which creates an opening the cattle walk under when planted pasture is still there. They have had no need to replant moving pastures or accessing lanes leading to water points. anything and have been managing organically since day one, Recovery periods contract down to as short as twenty days in the spring, debunking the common assumption that improved pastures “wear lengthen to thirty in the summer, forty-five in the fall, and sixty in winter. out” and need to be renovated from scratch. They actually have proved Diego is a skilled practitioner of Andre Voisin’s Rational Grazing the opposite.

Principles. Recovery periods are shortened or lengthened to ensure that Our guide for the day, ranch manager Jorge Guzman, explained that pastures have recovered to a pre-grazing pasture mass containing seventy those initial pastures were planted down with a mix of alfalfa, native “raciónes” per hectare. A ración is the quantity of feed necessary to feed a wheatgrass, and orchardgrass. Over the years, tall fescue, bromes, standard large animal unit for a day, so is the equivalent of stock days per ryegrasses, phalaris, several native needle grasses, dozens of forbs, and hectare (or acre–70 SDH is the equivalent of 28 SDA). red and white clover have volunteered in, creating perhaps the healthiest, 12

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The Extremes of Patagonia diverse pasture salad bar I’ve seen anywhere in the world. Each of these The next leg of our journey took us south to the region of Patagonia, species fills specific niches, the combination of which extends the which officially or unofficially, depending on who you talk to, begins on growing season both early and late relative to the more typical pasture the southern bank of the Rio Colorado, and extends right through Tierra mix of the region-alfalfa/ orchardgrass. Indeed these two species provide del Fuego (the bottom tip of South America), and includes both the the bulk of grazing during the mid-summer months, with the energyChilean and Argentine sides of the Andes. We began in the Argentine rich orchardgrass balancing the protein-rich alfalfa. The clovers and province of Chubut, flying into the town of Esquel, right at the base of other more cool season-active grasses, however, get going earlier in the the Andes. The next morning we skirted the Andean fringe on a threespring and last longer into the fall. hour trek to our next ranch destination, Estancia Rio Pico, owned and Jorge emphasized that the focus of their management is rooted in managed by the Julian Gonzalo family. finding an “economically viable equilibrium between cattle nutritional The western border of Argentine Patagonia is delineated by a line demand, forage supply, and ecological health.” As all graziers know, connecting the highest peaks of the Andean range, “La Cordillera”, as it this is a complex task which requires the artful application of scientific is known locally. Going eastward, the high, rugged peaks and forested principles. Jorge believes they have a better chance of being successful slopes give way to grassy foothills and lesser mountain ranges, which by keeping their operation simple and focused on beef production then transition into the relatively flat, arid Patagonian steppe. rather than following an even more complex model integrating a The peaks of the Andes can accumulate 160 inches (4 meters) of mixed cropping program like Santa Elena. Between both their cow/calf precipitation annually, mostly in the form of snow. After the Pacific and finishing phases of production, the ranch consistently generates a storms roll over the Andean crest, precipitation drops off to 40 inches 6 percent return on investment–with a price of $.45/lb ($1.00/kg) for a (1000 mm) pretty quickly (in the native beech-forested slopes), then to finished 924- to 990-pound (420-450 kg) animal, and Jorge 20 inches (500 mm) in the grassy foothills, and then just another 24 emphasizes that, with the primary inputs being sunlight and miles (40 km) away, down to 8 inches (200 mm) on the shrubby, knowledge, this is a predictable, safe return over the long term. The sparsely vegetated steppe. The uplands of the foothills are dominated by Guzman family is also involved in the construction industry in Buenos upright growing needlegrasses (stipa Aires, and while immediate returns bunchgrasses), and the bottomland to most of their projects far exceed 6 basins and valleys are quite percent, there is also great cyclical productive with sub-surface moisture, uncertainty and a myriad of creating a much tighter, softer soil additional details that can make a cover. The landscape is amazing in good deal go bad. The stability of its beauty, topography, remoteness, the ranch evens out the peaks and and dearth of human inhabitants. troughs of construction.

The Gonzalos own 62,500 acres Of El Fortín’s and El Fortín (25,000 ha) in the rolling foothill Chico’s total of 4,500 acres (1,800 region, with 65 percent at a slightly ha), 2,750 acres (1,100 ha) are higher elevation comprising the irrigated and the balance is native summer country, or “la veranada” shrub/grassland. Irrigated pastures, (from “verano”, which means on average, receive 4 inches (100 summer in Spanish), and the bottom mm) of water per irrigation and are 35 percent, “la invernada” (from irrigated four times per year, invierno–winter) comprising their effectively doubling their 16 inches wintering grounds. With 20,000 fine (400 mm) to 32 inches (800 mm).

A border-dyke flood system is used.

Gaucho in the pen with a mob of Merino wethers, the day before shearing. wool Merino sheep and 500 Hereford Initial development costs, including This gaucho is trying to find a fat one to feed the shearing crew for lunch. cows, the Gonzalos have a lot to do.

They have been ranching in this spot laser-leveling of fields to create the since 1933, and are a unique Patagonian family in that they live on the perfect fall, run $200/acre ($500/ha). Virgin, undeveloped land sells ranch year-round and are intricately involved in every phase of planning for $200/acre ($500/ha), so a developed, irrigated ranch runs and operations. Father Julian Sr., mother Estela, and sons Julian Jr. and $400/acre ($1,000/ha). On these 2,750 acres (1,100 ha), the ranch Rodrigo (who have both completed university degrees in veterinary carries 800 cows, 280 developing heifers, and on the order of 1,000 science and agronomy, and returned to work on the ranch) comprise the finishing stock, nearly all of which are of excellent black angus management team. Julian Sr. says that all decisions are made breeding. They own another 1,700 cows that are run on leased land. collaboratively between the entire family, but that his vote is still worth Like Santa Elena, they are pushing a stocking rate of .8 animal “a little bit more than one.” Daughter Maria Fernanda, still at university, unit/acre (two animal units/ha) on their irrigated country, and annual also plans to return to the ranch. liveweight production of beef/acre works out to 334 lb/acre (380 This is tough country. We were there in mid-late November (same as kg/ha). Their target is 440 lb/acre (500 kg/ha) under the organic May north of the equator) at a southern latitude equivalent to northern model. The Guzmans also market most of their finished animals Montana. The day was cool (actually cold from the point of view of our through Ecopampa. subtropical-adapted Aussies) and windy, with a reluctant tinge of green at Like Santa Elena, herd size is limited to about 400 large stock units a time when most of Argentina was at the explosive peak of spring. From due to watering limitations, but even with quite a number of herds, high June through August, daytime highs seldom exceed 32 F (0 C), with paddock numbers enable one- to three-day grazing periods and recovery periods of 30 to 60 days. continued on page 14 N u m b e r 10 6

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A Journey through Argentina

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extremes of -31 F (-35 C). Standard wintertime gear includes angora 18 months and sold as finished cattle at 836 pounds (380 kg) at around goatskin leggings (covered with shaggy mohair) and catskin (yes, actual $.45/lb ($1.00/kg). These Herefords are early maturing, eliminating the cat skin with the fur on) gloves. Snow cover can last from May to October, need to hold them through a second winter. Calving commences on even on the bottomlands of the winter country, but usually is less than 12 October 10 (April 10 in the northern hemisphere) and is mostly over in inches (300 mm) in depth. The upright growing stipa grasses penetrate 45 days. Prior to that it’s too cold, and there’s still too much snow. Any the snow cover, and provide the sole winter feed source. Even with deeper later, the cattle don’t finish before their second winter. snow, the animals rummage through the drifts and survive. The closest The primary culling criterion is fertility. An empty uterus at fall preg hay is hundreds of miles away. checking comes with a ticket to town, as does an aborted calf during The greatest wintertime challenge occurs when a fresh snow thaws winter. The second cut is based on weaning weight. Each cow has to wean on the surface and crusts, then receives another 2-4 inches (50-100 mm) at least 40 percent of her own weight. on top of the crust. The sheep have an extremely difficult time Living with Business penetrating this icy combination, and to deal with it, the cattle are daily pushed onto undisturbed ground to break the crust and render After a beautiful tour of the ranch, we sat down for a feast of slowaccessible the ice-bound forage to roasted Patagonian lamb, and a few the sheep. The Gonzalos emphasized of us engaged Julian Sr. in a topic that having the animals as fat as that had perplexed us since leaving possible just prior to winter is the Buenos Aires. Why, with their only way to deal with the predictable incredible natural resource base, hardships. were the Argentines not outSpring comes slowly and competing the Australians in the reluctantly and always includes an global commodity market? Opinions abundance of wind. Snowmelt (among our hosts and ourselves) up creates a saturated soil profile, so to that point had mostly concluded spring green-up, at least, is that, though some elements of predictable. Summers can arrive Argentine culture were rich with abruptly, however, and temperatures vitality and a zest for living, certain can suddenly reach 95 F (35 C), and other aspects of society weren’t still be accompanied by the famous necessarily conducive to the Patagonian wind. Summers are also execution of efficient, competitive dry, so the green season, though business practices. Like much of predictable, is fleeting. Fall brings a Hereford cows on Estancia Santa Elena wondering if we going to get with Latin America, the Argentine political welcome respite from wind, heat, sector is well-entrenched in a culture it and move them onto a fresh pasture, or just stand around and talk. and cold, but just when it seems of corruption, and, unfortunately, Patagonia will bask in bucolic bliss forever, the frigid forces of winter this propensity to bend or break the rules permeates many aspects of life shock all inhabitants back into reality. and business, creating costs and inefficiencies that hinder meaningful Despite these rigors of nature, a Patagonian ranch, we discovered, progress. As you will hear many Argentines admit (half seriously, half can thrive. The ranch’s 20,000 sheep produce an average of 11-12 lbs jokingly), “The trouble with Argentina is the Argentine people.”

(5-5.5 kg) of wool (with an average diameter of 19 microns) per head Julian Sr., however, had the most specific, well-reasoned take on the per year, and at a price ranging from $6.60-8.80/lb ($3.00-4.00/kg), issue. In the process of sourcing his elite ram genetics, he has had the that works out to a pretty good wool check. Shearing costs run 2.6 opportunity to spend significant quality time interacting with Australian pesos per head, or a little under a dollar. Sheep are typically drenched farmers, and has observed that “Australians live working with their for internal parasites and dipped for ticks once per year. The Gonzalos heads in their businesses.” They live on their farms, and their farms are would like to go the organic route, and it would be a simple transition their lives. This model is rare–very rare–in Argentina. Most farms are (no fertilizers or herbicides are used on the ranch), but they don’t feel owned (and have been historically) by families living in Buenos Aires, current organic prices justify the shift. usually conducting other business interests in the city. Their agricultural Julian Sr. has sourced a handful of elite rams from top Merino studs pursuits have always been secondary, and have always suffered in Australia. These rams are collected and AI’ed to 3,000-4,000 ewes/year, accordingly. from which 400-500 commercial rams are sold/year. An elite herd of 250 Both Santa Elena and El Fortin follow this model, but they are both ewes is also bred to these rams, and the rams used for the balance of very well-managed exceptions to the rule. Julian Sr. is convinced that their 10,000 ewes (10,000 of the 20,000 total are dry wethers and the gap between Australian success and the perpetual Argentine struggle growing ewe replacements) are selected from this elite herd. is rooted in this ownership/management structure, and emphatically Of the 500-head cow herd, 250 are registered Polled Herefords, from states, “If you don’t live with your business, you have a half business.” which 60-70 bulls are sold at private treaty per year, between two and As the saying goes, “El ojo del amo engorda el ganado,” which three years of age. Julian emphasized the critical point that the only translates to, “The eye of the farmer fattens the cattle.” My take on the input into these bulls is Patagonian grass grown with free sunshine, and whole deal: If you put your mind and your back to it, there are at prices ranging from $1,500-1,800/bull, these boys are real moneyunlimited opportunities to thrive in Argentina. Stay tuned. We’re makers. The rest of the cattle not destined for breeding are grown out to heading back with two more groups in March 2006.

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effort will be made to encourage female participation. The responsibility for the day to day implementation of the project rests with the Africa Centre for Holistic Management. Africa Now will be responsible for monitoring the project.

T he news from holistic management international

HMI Members Win Award

G

eorge Whitten and Julie Sullivan from Saguache, Colorado and Jim and Carol Thorpe of Newkirk, New Mexico share this year’s Clarence Burch Award from the Quivira Coalition Conference for their work in sustainable ranching, environmental education, and their commitment to collaboration. These Holistic Management International members will also share the $15,000 prize money that comes with this prestigious award.

As Shannon Horst, Executive Director for HMI, noted in her nomination for George and Julie: “For George and Julie, every day is a chance to bridge the gap between environmentalism and agriculture, urban and rural. Personally and professionally, they work to dissolve the prejudices between ranchers and environmentalists, urban and rural people, and build bridges between them. They strive to find real solutions that heal the planet and keep family agriculture alive in the U.S. They believe nature is the model for an agricultural operation, and that ranching must be sustainable both economically and ecologically in order to remain a viable enterprise in today’s world.

In his 25 years as an active member of the ranching community, George has worked towards collaborative forward-thinking management of resources in the San Luis Valley of Colorado. A practitioner of Holistic Management for 20 years, Whitten adjusts these practices to fit the land and operation under his management. Julie has taught interdisciplinary environmental education and studies at the college level for 15 years, challenging students to look beyond surface conflicts between environmentalism and agriculture, to see the common values and goals shared by both points of view.”

Jim and Carol Thorpe spent most of their adult lives in Santa Fe, helping to manage a family-owned hotel on a historic downtown property. They are relatively new to ranching but now own and operate a 12,000-acre cow/calf ranch in eastern New Mexico. They have both been eager learners and have willingly shared their ranch as a demonstration site for various research institutions. Jim has also been recently elected to the Board of the New Mexico branch of the Society for Range Management. In 2003 they

people, programs & projects

were recognized as Conservation Ranchers of the Year by the Guadalupe Soil and Water Conservation District. They also qualified for the New Mexico State Land Office’s Range Stewardship Incentive Program.

As Courtney White, Executive Director of the Quivira Coalition, noted: “For both of these couples, it has not been enough to simply exemplify how urban and rural can coexist, however. Both families have also dedicated themselves to sharing their knowledge through speaking, writing, getting involved in collaborative projects, teaching interns, learning, and innovating.

“They have also come to understand profoundly that it is all about relationships– between husband and wife as partners in their particular adventure; between themselves and their communities, both urban and rural; between themselves and the land which sustains them and between the ecological processes within the soil, which provides the foundation for all of the above.”

Congratulations to all of you!

Conference Outreach

Ivan Aguirre (right) speaking with Sterling Grogan at the Quivira Coalition Conference. ertified Educator Ivan Aguirre from Sonora, Mexico spoke at the Quivira Coalition Conference on January 13, 2006.

Holistic Management International sponsored his talk as part of our outreach efforts this year.

His talk was well-received by the approximately 500 participants in attendance.

HMI would also like to thank Heather Flashinski, Abe Collins, Phil Metzger, Peggy Cole, and Jim Weaver for their efforts in helping HMI get our materials to other conferences in Wisconsin, Vermont, New York, Texas, and Pennsylvania.

C

New Africa Centre Project

T

he Africa Centre for Holistic Management has a new project contract with Africa Now, a Non-Governmental Organization, for the European Union. This project, “Improving Livelihoods Security Through Sustainably Harvesting Devil’s Claw”, began in late fall of 2005.

The project aim is to enable poor rural households in western Zimbabwe to sustainably improve their livelihoods by 1) obtaining significant additional and predictable income through the harvest and sale of devil’s claw, 2) enabling participants to harvest devil’s claw sustainably and preserve it as a source of income, 3) researching the potential benefit to participants of additional trade in other resources, and 4) reducing vulnerability to HIV and AIDS through increasing nutritional status, providing appropriate awareness training, and distributing male and female condoms.

The project will focus on 490 extremely vulnerable households (representing 2,940 people) which will have one member registered as a devil’s claw harvester with the project. An additional 490 non-registered, similarly vulnerable households (2,940 people) will also take part in capacity building training. Every

HMI shows off our new look at the trade conferences this winter. HMI also took its tradebooth to the Ecological Farming Association Conference in Pacific Grove, California and to the New Mexico Organic Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, If you know of any conferences at which HMI should have our materials, please contact us at: 505/842-5252 or hmi@holisticmanagement.org.

In the News

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dvisory Council member, Guillermo Osuna, has been recently featured in a beautiful new book titled The Call of the continued on page 16 N u m b e r 10 6

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Grapevine

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Mountains by Patricio Robles Gil. This book focuses on the story of conservation in El Carmen Natural Province, a land in Coahuila and Chihuahua, Mexico and southwest Texas.

Guillermo is the President of the Board of Directors for the Fondo Mexicano para la Conservacion de la Naturaleza, one of the most prestigious institutions in Mexico.

Another Advisory Council member, Gretel Ehrlich, recently had an article published in the January 2006 issue of National Geographic titled, “Last Days of the Ice Hunters?” Gretel

Reader’s Forum A Year-End Greeting

T

his time of year causes us to reflect on where we have been and where we are going, regardless of our religious affiliation.

I guess there is a reason Thanksgiving comes first as it turns our focus to gratitude and for me that becomes my focus as I begin a new year.

Those of us who own land, regardless whether we are talking about a tiny piece, from a yard around our house or garden, to a large rambling farm or ranch, we become aware of the incredible endowment we have been given. The land is so much more than describable acreage composed of dirt, weeds, and trees. We learn that it is a magical place that, if treated with respect and gratitude, can actually create healthy food and sustain us forever. It is not dirt, weeds and trees, but it can be rich soil that is alive with billions of “bugs” that create a system which works, along with grasses, forages, and a variety of woody plants and trees. What a gift!! We occupy something that can actually sustain a healthy life forever.

Many people will never know the joy of “having their little piece of land.” Many who own land will never understand the beauty of “being good to the land, so it will be good to us.” Today, we are being told we are only as healthy as our land, and so it is.

As President of Holistic Resource Management of Texas, I am committed to learning more about the magical “land” I am privileged to “own.”

This journey has proven to be one of the most exciting adventures I have ever traveled, as I am learning that healthy systems and healthy bodies are possible for all of us. I invite you to participate in this adventure with me and begin with an overflowing sense of gratitude for the “gift” that has been given us.

Richard Sechrist lives in Fredricksburg, Texas. This letter was first printed in the HRM of 16

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followed a team of Greenland hunters who are struggling with the sea ice that gets thinner and less stable each year.

The American Farmland Trust, in collaboration with Coleman Natural Foods, has recently released a new publication titled, Rocky Mountain Agricultural Landowners Guide to Conservation and Sustainability, which you can download for free at: http://www.farmlandinfo.org /documents/30427/FINAL_Rocky_Mountain_ Guide.pdf. They dedicate a full-page of this 28-

page document to Holistic Management International as well as featuring HMI members Mike and Cathy McNeil and Sid Goodloe.

Joe and Peggy Maddox, managers of the West Station for Holistic Management in Ozona, Texas were mentioned in the Valles Caldera Trust Newsletter for their participation in the Working Ranch Meetings for the Valles Caldera Trust in northern New Mexico. This preserve is to operate as a working ranch while protecting and preserving all the scientific, scenic, wildlife, and recreational values.

Texas newsletter. To learn more about HRM of Texas visit their website at: www.hrm-texas.org.

Farms could use more poets, and fewer MBAs. When young farmers return home with college degrees, they’re more often schooled in business than in the arts. The most creative kids are the least inclined to farm. They’d rather leave the field work to siblings fonder of machinery or numbers. Then they take jobs in the city, where creativity is more marketable than in the commodity business.

This no-nonsense approach has weeded the most creative young people from an entire rural generation. Without them, farming slips into a pattern of cold, calculated efficiency. The creative are our natural storytellers, and agriculture needs to tell its creation story.

Agriculture is creativity at its most raw.

Newborn calves squirm on clean meadows as mama cows lick them to their feet. Milk streams white and frothy out of pink udders. Wheat stalks bend their ripe heads toward the soil. Nothing else–not medicine, nor any other technical field–can generate new life. Only sun, soil, air and water can do that.

But a growing number of farmers, so preoccupied with inputs and outputs and spreadsheets, no longer tell these stories, or even know how.

So it’s no wonder that consumers have lost touch with their food’s creation. They’ve come to imagine farms as factories where food rolls from assembly lines. While faceless industrial markets certainly give that impression, people need to know that their meal was grown in clean soil, beneath skies clearer than those of any city.

But until we start encouraging rural America’s most creative young minds to return to the land, the human side of agriculture will continue to lie buried beneath heaps of commodities.

Farms Need More Poets, Fewer MBAs

N

ot long ago, yet another farmer left my eastern Colorado community. Over three generations his family had accumulated a patchwork of fields that stretched for several miles. After his children moved away he put the land up for sale.

As the auctioneer tapped a gavel to open the bidding, one local farmer opened a laptop computer on top of an oil drum and tinkered with a spreadsheet. He had done his homework, analyzing each field’s slope, soil type and history.

He only bid while the prices fit his projections.

When the auction closed, he clicked a button and annoyed his neighbors by boasting he’d bought 44 percent of the acres offered.

This farmer represents a trend that continues to cull creative young people from agriculture.

The most business-minded, established farmers buy out their retiring neighbors, cut out opportunities for new blood, and so shrink and gray their own rural communities.

At the same time that rural America loses some of its most talented youth, it has also lost much of the public’s trust. Americans don’t fear famine, for they imagine–though incorrectly– that the food supply is endless. They fear that food is no longer safe to eat. They worry about pesticides or genetically modified crops, or other unknowns that might contaminate what they eat.

There is a connection between this erosion of trust and the loss of youth. Young people leave rural communities as farming’s scale grows too large and mechanized to include them. This scale depends on ever-increasing technology, some of it labor-saving in the old-fashioned sense, but some of it in forms that consumers distrust, such as genetic engineering. Farming may be more efficient than ever, but it has lost much of its humanity.

March / April 2 0 0 6

Chris Frasier is a Holistic Management International member and ranches with his family near Limon, Colorado. This article first appeared in the Land Institute’s Prairie Writers Circle in Salina, Kansas in December 2004.

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Book Review Out of Eden– An Odyssey of Ecological Invasion

by Jim Weaver

By Alan Burdic Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005

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ike most of us who have studied Holistic Management and listened to Allan Savory rant about “there are no invasive species,” I still find myself doubting the idea that there can’t be invasives. The number of programs addressing it, issues surrounding it, the number of well-meaning people that have created a career out of it is mind boggling. My main defense when talking with someone, or when asked to put the idea of invasive species into perspective, has been to “cop out” by saying: “Well it’s pretty hypocritical for the most invasive species on the planet to get sanctimonious about it!”

So it was an impulse to address that cop out that spurred me to purchase Burdick’s book and search for ammunition to counter the argument of exotics–that, and the allegory of the serpent in the garden. The cover is graced with the most serpent-looking of snakes, the Brown Tree Snake that has wreaked so much havoc on the island of Guam.

Little did I know at the time what a wonderful odyssey on which I would be embarking. The book is a delightful read. Alan Burdick’s command of the facts, mastery of prose and “pitch-perfect wit” made the book a 10. Throughout the book, the argument for invasive species as a must conquer issue never came up. Instead the writer wove a tapestry of ecological processes and how humans have disturbed the fabric of nature from every angle.

Instead of ammunition I was led on a tour of how we have...and here’s the best part....impacted our mudball with our decision making!!! All the way through the book, Alan Burdick dances around Holistic Management and never makes the connection that the common denominator in all of the examples he gives is our decision-making process. Time after time he comes right to the brink and stops short.

Burdick also incorporates a smattering of Thoreau (no nature book is complete without Thoreau) to elaborate his points: “To see the scarlet oak, the scarlet oak must, in a sense, be

in your eye when you go forth; we cannot see anything until we are possessed with the idea of it, and then we can hardly see anything else.”

When I read those words, again I thought of how easy it is to see once you have a holistic paradigm, to begin at least to ask the right questions that allow you to explore your relationship with nature and understand your part of that whole. But, always, it takes that paradigm shift.

The meat and potatoes of the book is Chapter Eight. Here Burdick explores the underpinnings of invasives and the history of how and why we got to this point. It’s fascinating reading for biologists and anyone interested in ecosystem processes. It includes a discussion of experimental models and predator-prey relations that eventually ends with a pretty good definition of biodiversity and why it’s important.

Perhaps the most interesting and fundamentally important lesson in the book, however, is in the exploration of semantics. We all know how important it is to say what we mean, and we all know how easy it is to mess up with a turn of phrase. For example, in the early work in invasion biology, researchers used neutral terms to describe plant and animal movements–terms like introduced, nonnative and founding populations. Then, at some point, we started using terms like alien, exotic and invader to emphasize a threat. To make it more complicated, we then mixed up the meanings of invaders, weeds and colonizing species. Burdick then brings us back with a dose of reality when he says, “Weeds sprout from human opinion,” and the house of cards that is invasive species comes tumbling down. He reminds us that how we talk about nature (and any other important topic) is as important has how we deal with it. To me that is a critical component of the Holistic Management® model.

Burdick traces earth’s evolution from a prelapsarian (nature before humans) world to a world of humans who “live small local lives

grateful for whatever thrives (alphadiversity) to a more worldly, traveled experience (beta-diversity).” These spatial differences result in a huge difference in perspective and our expectations and understanding of the ecosystem. And with that change comes a different demand on the ecosystem and an even greater need for thoughtful ecosystem management–something that Holistic Management offers in spades. In an interview with a biologist, Burdick gets to the heart of his thesis and to the heart of where we are today with Holistic Management–“Our role here is to provide information to clarify the risks ... a process that allows for a dialogue.”

In that manner, Out of Eden delves into much that is holistic, much that is important in the dialogue we weave, and much that we must consider as we disseminate our new framework for decision making.

While there are many books on ecology, ecosystems and natural resources that can, and do, provide insights for us as practitioners, those insights are spoon fed, prescriptive and reductive. The contrary is so with Burdick’s book. Here we find the sort of non-linear reasoning that we will need to understand the ecosystem processes better as we develop and strive for not only our own holistic goals but also for our communities and watersheds. Just the future resource base alone becomes much more complex and potentially much more interesting and difficult to monitor and control at these larger scales. By expanding our perspective and exploring new information from potent thinkers, we can build our knowledge base and our success as managers.

Give Out of Eden a spin and expand your perspective of not only invasive species but the ecosystems that we all manage.

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Certified

Educators

To our knowledge, Certified Educators are the best qualified individuals to help others learn to practice Holistic Management and to provide them with technical assistance when necessary. On a yearly basis, Certified Educators renew their agreement to be affiliated with HMI. This agreement requires their commitment to practice Holistic Management in their own lives, to seek out opportunities for staying current with the latest developments in Holistic Management and to maintain a high standard of ethical conduct in their work.

For more information about or application forms for the U.S., Africa, or International Certified Educator Training Programs, contact Kelly Pasztor or visit our website at: www.holisticmanagement.org * These educators provide Holistic Management instruction on behalf of the institutions they represent.

UNITED STATES ARIZONA Tim Morrison 230 1st Ave N, Phoenix, AZ 85003 602/280-8803 • tim.morrison@nacdnet.net CALIFORNIA Monte Bell 325 Meadowood Dr., Orland, CA 95963 530/865-3246 • mbell95963@yahoo.com Julie Bohannon 652 Milo Terrace, Los Angeles, CA 90042 323/257-1915 • JoeBoCom@pacbell.net Bill Burrows 12250 Colyear Springs Rd., Red Bluff, CA 96080 530/529-1535 • sunflowercrmp@msn.com Marquita Chamblee 960 Tulare Ave, Albany, CA 94707-2540 chamblee@msu.edu Richard King 1675 Adobe Rd., Petaluma, CA 94954 707/769-1490 • 707/794-8692 (w) richard.king@ca.usda.gov Tim McGaffic 13592 Bora Bora Way #327 Marina Del Rey, CA 90292 310/741-0167 • tim@timmcgaffic.com Kelly Mulville 225 Portola State Park, Lahonda, CA 94020 650/704-5157 (c) 650/917-6120 (w) jackofallterrains@hotmail.com Christopher Peck P.O. Box 2286, Sebastopol, CA 95472 707/758-0171 • ctopherp@holistic-solutions.net Rob Rutherford CA Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo, CA 93407 805/75-1475 • rrutherf@calpoly.edu Tom Walther 5550 Griffin St., Oakland, CA 94605 510/530-6410 • 510/482-1846 • tagjag@aol.com COLORADO Joel Benson P.O. Box 4924, Buena Vista, CO 81211 719/395-6119 • joel@outburstllc.com Cindy Dvergsten 17702 County Rd. 23, Dolores, CO 81323 970/882-4222 • info@wholenewconcepts.com Rio de la Vista P.O. Box 777, Monte Vista, CO 81144 719/850-2255 • riovista@rmi.net Daniela and Jim Howell P.O. Box 67, Cimarron, CO 81220-0067 970/249-0353 • howelljd@montrose.net Craig Leggett 2078 County Rd. 234, Durango, CO 81301 970/259-8998 • crleggett@sisna.com Chadwick McKellar 16775 Southwood Dr., Colorado Springs, CO 80908 719/495-4641 • wonderlandranch@yahoo.com

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Byron Shelton 33900 Surrey Lane, Buena Vista, CO 81211 719/395-8157 • landmark@my.amigo.net GEORGIA Constance Neely 1160 Twelve Oaks Circle, Watkinsville, GA 30677 706/310-0678 • cneely@holisticmanagement.org IDAHO Amy Driggs 1132 East E St., Moscow, ID 83843 208/310-6664 (w) • adriggs@orbusinternational.com IOWA Bill Casey 1800 Grand Ave., Keokuk, IA 52632-2944 319/524-5098 • wpccasey@interl.net LOUISIANA Tina Pilione P.O. 923, Eunice, LA 70535 phone: 337/580-0068 • tinamp@charter.net MAINE Vivianne Holmes 239 E. Buckfield Rd., Buckfield, ME 04220-4209 207/336-2484 • vholmes@umext.maine.edu Tobey Williamson 52 Center Street Portland, ME 04101 207/774-2458 x115 • tobey@bartongingold.com MASSACHUSETTS * Christine Jost Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine 200 Westboro Rd., North Grafton, MA 01536 508/887-4763 • christine.jost@tufts.edu MICHIGAN Ben Bartlett N 4632 ET Rd., Travnik, MI 49891 906/439-5210 (h) 906/439-5880 (w) bartle18@msu.edu MINNESOTA Gretchen Blank 4625 Cottonwood Lane N, Plymouth, MN 55442-2902 763/553-9922 • gretchenblank@comcast.net Terri Goodfellow-Heyer 4660 Cottonwood Lane North, Plymouth, MN 55442 763/559-0099 • tgheyer@comcast.net MISSISSIPPI Preston Sullivan 610 Ed Sullivan Lane, NE, Meadville, MS 39653 601/384-5310 • prestons@telepak.net MONTANA Elizabeth Bird 3009 Langohr Ave., Bozeman, MT 59715 406/586-8799 • ebird@montana.edu Wayne Burleson RT 1, Box 2780, Absarokee, MT 59001 406/328-6808 • rutbuster@montana.net

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Roland Kroos 4926 Itana Circle, Bozeman, MT 59715 406/522-3862 • KROOSING@msn.com * Cliff Montagne Montana State University Department of Land Resources & Environmental Science Bozeman, MT 59717 406/994-5079 • montagne@montana.edu NEBRASKA Terry Gompert P.O. Box 45, Center, NE 68724-0045 402/288-5611 (w) • tgompert1@unl.edu NEW HAMPSHIRE Seth Wilner 104 Cornish Turnpike, Newport, NH 03773 603/863-4497 (h) 603/863-9200 (w) seth.wilner@unh.edu NEW MEXICO * Ann Adams Holistic Management International 1010 Tijeras NW, Albuquerque, NM 87102 505/842-5252 • anna@holisticmanagement.org Mark Duran 58 Arroyo Salado #B, Santa Fe, NM 87508 505/422-2280 • markjodu@aol.com Kirk Gadzia P.O. Box 1100, Bernalillo, NM 87004 505/867-4685 • fax: 505/867-0262 kgadzia@earthlink.net Ken Jacobson 12101 Menaul Blvd. NE, Ste A Albuquerque, NM 87112; 505/293-7570 kbjacobson@orbusinternational.com * Kelly (Pasztor) White Holistic Management International 1010 Tijeras NW, Albuquerque, NM 87102 505/842-5252 • kellyp@holisticmanagement.org Sue Probart P.O. Box 81827, Albuquerque, NM 87198 505/265-4554 • tnm@treenm.com David Trew 369 Montezuma Ave. #243, Santa Fe, NM 87501 505/751-0471 • trewearth@aol.com Vicki Turpen 03 El Nido Amado SW, Albuquerque, NM 87121 505/873-0473 • kaytelnido@aol.com NEW YORK Erica Frenay 454 Old 76 Road, Brooktondale, NY 14817 607/539-3246 (h) 607/279-7978 (c) • efrenay22@yahoo.com Phil Metzger 99 N. Broad St., Norwich, NY 13815 607/334-3231 x4 (w); 607/334-2407 (h) phil.metzger@ny.usda.gov Karl North 3501 Hoxie Gorge Rd., Marathon, NY 13803 607/849-3328 • northsheep@juno.com John Thurgood 44 West St. Ste 1, Walton, NY 13856 607/832-4617 • 607/865-7090 • jmt20@cornell.edu NORTH CAROLINA Sam Bingham 394 Vanderbilt Rd., Asheville, NC 28803 828/274-1309 • sbingham@igc.org NORTH DAKOTA * Wayne Berry University of North Dakota—Williston P.O. Box 1326, Williston, ND 58802 701/774-4269 or 701/774-4200 wayne.berry@wsc.nodak.edu OKLAHOMA Kim Barker RT 2, Box 67, Waynoka, OK 73860 580/824-9011 • barker_k@hotmail.com

160191SavoryCtr_NL

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PENNSYLVANIA Jim Weaver 428 Copp Hollow Rd. Wellsboro, PA 16901-8976 570/724-7788 • jaweaver@epix.net TEXAS Christina Allday-Bondy 2703 Grennock Dr., Austin, TX 78745 512/441-2019 • tododia@sbcglobal.net Guy Glosson 6717 Hwy 380, Snyder, TX 79549 806/237-2554 • glosson@caprock-spur.com Jennifer Hamre 602 W. St. Johns Ave., Austin, TX 78752 512/374-0104; yosefahanah@yahoo.com Peggy Maddox P.O. Box 694, Ozona, TX 76943-0694 325/392-2292 • westgift@earthlink.net * R.H. (Dick) Richardson University of Texas at Austin Department of Integrative Biology Austin, TX 78712 512/471-4128 • d.richardson@mail.utexas.edu Peggy Sechrist 25 Thunderbird Rd. Fredericksburg, TX 78624 830/990-2529 • sechrist@ktc.com Elizabeth Williams 4106 Avenue B Austin, TX 78751-4220 512/323-2858 • e-liz@austin.rr.com WASHINGTON Craig Madsen P.O. Box 107, Edwall, WA 99008 509/236-2451 madsen2fir@centurytel.net Sandra Matheson 228 E. Smith Rd. Bellingham, WA 98226 360/398-7866 • smm1@gte.net * Don Nelson Washington State University P.O. Box 646310, Pullman, WA 99164 509/335-2922 • nelsond@wsu.edu Maurice Robinette S. 16102 Wolfe Rd., Cheney, WA 99004 509/299-4942 • mlr@icehouse.net Doug Warnock 151 Cedar Cove Rd., Ellensburg, WA 98926 509/925-9127 • warnockd@elltel.net WEST VIRGINIA Fred Hays P.O. Box 241, Elkview, WV 25071 304/548-7117 • sustainableresources@hotmail.com Steve Ritz HC 63, Box 2240, Romney, WV 26757 304/822-5818; 304/822-3020 steve.ritz@wv.usda.gov WISCONSIN Heather Flashinski 1633 Valmont Ave., Eau Claire, WI 54701-4448 715/552-7861 • heather.flashinski@rcdnet.net Andy Hager W. 3597 Pine Ave., Stetsonville, WI 54480-9559 715/678-2465 • ahager@tds.net Larry Johnson W886 State Road 92, Brooklyn, WI 53521 608/455-1685 • lpjohn@rconnect.com Laura Paine P.O. Box 567, Portage, WI 53901-0567 608/742-9682 (h) 920/623-4407 (w) laura.paine@ces.uwex.edu

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INTERNATIONAL AUSTRALIA Mark Gardner P.O. Box 1395, Dubbo, NSW 2830 61-2-6882-0605 mark.g@ozemail.com.au George Gundry Willeroo, Tarago, NSW 2580 048-446-223 • ggundry@bigpond.net.au Steve Hailstone 5 Lampert Rd., Crafers, SA 5152 61-4-1882-2212 sh@internode.on.net Graeme Hand “Inverary” Caroona Lane, Branxholme, VIC 3302 61-3-5578-6272 • 61-4-1853-2130 gshand@hotkey.net.au Helen Lewis P.O. Box 1263, Warwick, QLD 4370 61-7-46617393 • 61-7-46670835 helen@insideoutmgt.com.au Paul Griffiths P.O. Box 3045 Horth Turramura, NSW 2074, Sydney, NSW 61-29-1443975 • pgpres@geko.net.au Brian Marshall P.O. Box 300, Guyra NSW 2365 61-2-6779-1927 • fax: 61-2-6779-1947 bkmrshl@northnet.com.au Bruce Ward P.O. Box 103, Milsons Pt., NSW 1565 61-2-9929-5568 • fax: 61-2-9929-5569 blward@holisticresults.com.au Brian Wehlburg c/o “Sunnyholt”, Injue, QLD 4454 61-7-4626-7187 • brian@insideoutmgt.com.au CANADA Don and Randee Halladay Box 2, Site 2, RR 1 Rocky Mountain House, AB, T0M 1T0 403/729-2472 • donran@telusplanet.net Noel McNaughton 5704-144 St., Edmondton, AB, T6H 4H4s 780/432-5492 • noel@mcnaughton.ca Len Pigott Box 222, Dysart, SK, SOH 1HO 306/432-4583 • JLPigott@sasktel.net Kelly Sidoryk Box 374, Lloydminster, AB, S9V 0Y4 403/875-4418 • hi-gain@telusplanet.net MEXICO Ivan Aguirre La Inmaculada Apdo. Postal 304, Hermosillo, Sonora 83000 tel/fax: 915-613-4282 rancho_inmaculada@yahoo.com Elco Blanco-Madrid Hacienda de la Luz 1803 Fracc. Haciendas del Valle II Chihuahua Chih., 31238 52-614-423-4413 (h) • 52-614-107-8960 (c) elco_blanco@hotmail.com Manuel Casas-Perez Calle Amarguva No. 61 Lomas Herradura Huixquilucan, Mexico City CP 52785 52-55-5291-3934 (w) 52-55-54020090 (c) Jose Ramon “Moncho” Villar Av. Las Americas #1178 Fracc. Cumbres, Saltillo, Coahuila 25270 52-844-415-1542 jrvilla@att.net.mx

NAMIBIA Gero Diekmann P.O. Box 363, Okahandja 9000 264-62-518091 • nam00132@mweb.com.na Colin Nott P.O. Box 11977, Windhoek 264-61-228506 canott@iafrica.com.na Wiebke Volkmann P.O. Box 182, Otavi 264-67-234-557 or 264-81-127-0081 wiebke@mweb.com.na NEW ZEALAND John King P.O. Box 12011 Beckenham, Christchurch 8030 64-3-338-5506 succession@clear.net.nz SOUTH AFRICA Sheldon Barnes P.O. Box 300, Kimberly 8300 barnesfarm@mweb.co.za Johan Blom P.O. Box 568, Graaf-Reinet 6280 27-49-891-0163 johanblom@cybertrade.co.za Ian Mitchell-Innes P.O. Box 52, Elandslaagte 2900 27-36-421-1747 blanerne@mweb.co.za Norman Neave P.O. Box 69, Mtubatuba 3935 27-084-2452/62 norberyl@telkomsa.net Dick Richardson P.O. Box 1806, Vryburg 8600 tel/fax: 27-53-927-4367 judyrich@cybertrade.co.za Colleen Todd P.O. Box 21, Hoedspruit 1380 27-82-335-3901 (cell) colleen_todd@yahoo.com SPAIN Aspen Edge Apartado de Correos 19 18420 Lanjaron Granada (0034)-958-347-053 aspen@holisticdecisions.com ZAMBIA Mutizwa Mukute Pelum Zambia Office P.O. Box 36524, Lusaka 260-1-261119/261124/261118/263514 pelum@kepa.org.zm ZIMBABWE Liberty Mabhena Spring Cabinet P.O. Box 853, Harare 263-4-210021/2 • 263-4-210577/8 fax: 263-4-210273 Huggins Matanga Private Bag 5950, Victoria Falls 263-11-404-979 hmatanga@mweb.co.zw Elias Ncube P. Bag 5950, Victoria Falls 263-3-454519 achmcom@africaonline.co.zw

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