Healthy Land. Healthy Food. Healthy Lives.
M AY / J U N E 2 0 1 7
In Practice a publication of Holistic Management International
NUMBER 173
W W W. H O L I S T I C M A N A G E M E N T. O R G
Scaling a Sustainable Food System BY ANN ADAMS
O
ver the last couple of months I have been involved in numerous conversations and providing feedback to several national nonprofit organizations about the tools, incentives, and investments that might help to scale the burgeoning sustainable food system in the U.S. Much of this activity is due to the change in leadership in the U.S. and preparation for the negotiations which will follow for the 2018 Farm Bill. In the 2014 Farm Bill one of the provisions was a “Local Food Marketing Practices Survey”—conducted by U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Agriculture Statistics Service (NASS). What that survey showed was that the “local food” market is now a major economic force for farmers, ranchers, and the rural communities in which they live. The time to scale it is now as the demand continues to rise. There has been much contention as to how serious a market “local foods” is, so this survey provided some much needed quantification to the discussion. The survey shows that in 2015 over 167,000 U.S. farms produced and sold food locally—through a combination of food hubs and other business-to-business distribution methods or direct marketing for a total of $8.7 billion in sales. In the same year the organic industry sold $6.2 billion in direct sales. Considering how much longer the organic industry as an entity has been around and how rapidly it has grown, the fact that the local food market is outpacing it in direct sales shows that local food is clearly a significant income stream for farmers. In 2012 the total value of all agricultural products in the U.S. was almost $395 billion. At the time, local food sales was approximately 3.5% of food sales. The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition noted that a Farm Credit Council report stated that the “direct-toconsumer” market is the fourth largest market
if you count the number of farms engaged in the practice. How has this growth happened so quickly? I believe there are a number of factors at play. Certainly the body of knowledge continues to grow about the health challenges that have arisen because of the direct effect on the human body of nutritionally-minimal food as well as the chemicals used to grow them. There is also greater citizen awareness of how agriculture can be either a major contributor to carbon emissions into the atmosphere or a major contributor to sequestering more carbon into the soil to address that pressing need. I would also say the issues of not knowing how animals are treated or how food is processed in large confined animal operations and processing plants has left many people unsettled enough that they are taking action by building local relationships with local farmers and ranchers, people they can talk to and get to know. Likewise, there has been an increase in the investment in a number of governmentfunded programs such as the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture’s Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program that has funded entities like HMI to deliver INSIDE THIS ISSUE Almost 92 million acres of farmland will be transferring in the U.S. in the next 5 years. The need for a well-trained cadre of new farmers and ranchers is greater than ever. Training programs like HMI’s beginning women farmers (see stories on pages 4 and 6) as well as the Dairy Grazing Apprentice Program on page 2 are helping to bring new people to farming.
beginning farmer/rancher training to the growing populace who wants to help grow healthy, local food sustainably. There is a host of other government programs that have largely grown out of a grassroots movement of agricultural producers and food activists who have decided they will no longer sit idly by and see our food system manipulated so that it no longer serves the producer, the consumer, the animals, or the land. So as I talk to this various non-profits, I tell them that while it would be great to have more investments in government programs that actually pay producers for the tangible results that have created on the land—more organic matter, more ground cover, more diversity, etc., we see holistic managers already doing this and reaping the rewards of a decreased need for inputs and an increase in land production. Likewise, it would be great to have more government funding for more local processing and value-added facilities to address the bottleneck in that area. Again, we see holistic managers stepping up and creating their own cooperatives and developing new processing facilities or relationships with processors to CONTINUED ON PAGE 5
Agricultural Transitions
Training the Next Generation of Conservation Farmers—
Passing on Critical Skills through Apprenticeships
Healthy Land. Healthy Food. Healthy Lives.
In Practice a publication of Hollistic Management International
HMI educates people in regenerative agriculture for healthy land and thriving communities. STAFF Ann Adams. . . . . . . . . . . . Executive Director Kelly Curtis. . . . . . . . . . . . Finance and Operations Director Jennifer Klass . . . . . . . . . Development Director Kathy Harris. . . . . . . . . . . Program Director Peggy Cole. . . . . . . . . . . . Program Manager, Texas Mary Girsch-Bock. . . . . . Development Manager Carrie Stearns . . . . . . . . . Communications & Outreach Manager Valerie Grubbs. . . . . . . . . Accounting Manager Julie Fierro. . . . . . . . . . . . Education Manager Stephanie Von Ancken . . Programs / Office Assistant
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Daniel Nuckols, Chair Walter Lynn, Vice-Chair Kelly Sidoryk, Past Board Chair Gerardo Bezanilla Kirrily Blomfield Kevin Boyer Guy Glosson Wayne Knight Robert Potts Jim Shelton Sarah Williford
HOLISTIC MANAGEMENT In Practice (ISSN: 1098-8157) is published six times a year by: Holistic Management International 5941 Jefferson St. NE, Suite B Albuquerque, NM 87109 505/842-5252, fax: 505/843-7900; email: hmi@holisticmanagement.org.; website: www.holisticmanagement.org Copyright © 2017 Holistic Management® is a registered trademark of Holistic Management International
BY LAURA PAINE
F
or centuries, Apprenticeship has been the means of passing on the skills of many trades, from engravers and silversmiths in the middle ages to electricians and plumbers today. In this way, these trades have established a tradition of using work-based learning alongside experienced practitioners to ensure that skills needed for a functional society are maintained across the generations. I find it amazing that no similar formal training tradition has been institutionalized for farming, this most basic societal function of producing the food that sustains us and stewarding the natural resources on which we depend. Now that has changed. Dairy Grazing Apprenticeship (DGA) is the first ever beginning farmer training program registered as a formal Apprenticeship with the U.S. Department of Labor. There are many valuable beginning farmer training programs in existence today that are not formal Apprenticeships. Where DGA differs is that, by becoming a federally registered Apprenticeship, we have created a template and a standard for the profession of grazing-based dairy farming and, with this national template, we can take the program anywhere there are dairy farmers who meet the standards and wish to contribute to training the next generation. We have created the foundation for what we hope will become a self-sustaining skilled trade tradition. Here is how it works: The Apprentice works beside a DGA approved Master Dairy Grazier for two years (4,000 hours), completes a ‘Job Book’ of dairy farming skills, takes 288 hours of related instruction, and graduates from the program with a Journey Dairy Grazier certificate. That credential provides evidence that they have management level skills that can give them a leg-up in getting a beginning
farmer loan, make them an attractive partner or manager on an expanding farm, or be in a good position to transition into farm ownership from a retiring farmer. Today, DGA has over 100 approved Masters in nine states, 15 graduates, 36 current Apprentices, and over 160 Apprentice candidates registered on our website (dga-national.org). Our long-term vision is that the framework DGA creates will build a cultural awareness and commitment within the farming community to dairy grazing as a skilled trade and a profession. As dairy farming becomes more and more industrialized, grazing and organic dairies are a profitable, family scale model that represent an attainable goal for a beginning farmer and can keep the complex craft of managing a farm business alive. The more skilled people we have in this profession, the more secure our food system will be.
DGA and Holistic Management
I’ve worked in sustainable agriculture research, education, and market development here in Wisconsin for a quarter century. For half that time, I’ve been a Holistic Management Certified Educator. Since receiving the training, Holistic Management has become an underpinning of both my personal and work life, guiding the management of my own grass-fed beef operation and coloring the character of the programs I’ve developed and managed for farmers across the state. In my current role as Program Director for DGA, I’ve had the pleasure and honor of teaching these valuable skills to aspiring dairy farmers. My Holistic Management goal-setting/decision-making class is a required course for DGA Apprentices. At the heart of Holistic Management is a unique and profound premise that we can do all
FEATURE STORIES
LAND & LIVESTOCK
NEWS & NETWORK
Training the Next Generation of Conservation Farmers— Passing on Critical Skills through Apprenticeships
Wild Idea Buffalo Company— Conservation, Education, & Healthy Food Holistically
Reviewing the Holistic Management Framework.... 17
Farmer Brown — Providing Grassfed, Animal Welfare Approved Meat for the Educated Customer
White Oak Pastures— A Holistic Approach to Healthy Food & Thriving Rural Communities
LAURA PAINE............................................................................... 2
HEATHER SMITH THOMAS......................................................... 4
Late Bloomer Farm— Making the Transition from Playing Fields to Cropfields HEATHER SMITH THOMAS......................................................... 6
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HEATHER SMITH THOMAS......................................................... 8
ANN ADAMS...............................................................................13
From the Board Chair.............................................. 17 Grapevine................................................................ 18 Certified Educators.................................................. 20 Marketplace............................................................. 21 Development Corner............................................... 24
the research and cost-sharing and education and regulating we want, but these things in and of themselves are not going to solve our planet’s environmental challenges. The truth is we know how to take care of the planet, we’re just not doing it. The key is in the hands of the farmer and the management choices s/he makes. The key is the value that farmer places on those natural resources, and whether or not those values are taken into consideration in day-to-day decision-making. Holistic Management provides a framework to give voice to those values and to discipline ourselves to make land management and business decisions based on them. This represents, not so much a learning process, but rather a change in mindset. Each practitioner must ‘see the light’ in their own time. It is a slow process and we are running out of time both for the planet and with this generation of farmers.
program, we feel that it is critical that each Apprentice has this opportunity to deeply assess their plans at this pivotal point in their careers (before they make one of the most significant commitments of their lives) and acquire effective tools for balancing short-term goals and long term vision, and making sound decisions for business and life. The workshops are most effective with four to six Apprentices, spouses, and one or two Masters or DGA staff (most of whom are farmers themselves). It creates an intimate, friendly setting conducive to good discussion and sharing, allowing Apprentices to meet one another and make connections that can last long after they graduate. The older generation
can help their peers think through decisions and problem-solving. If we have time at the end of the day, we introduce the Holistic Management planning processes. The goals that they create and the decisions they bring forward to test give me a window into the future they aspire to and the future of dairy farming. DGA Apprentices are diverse: ranging in age from 19 to 53, some single, some with young families, some with degrees in agriculture, and others with experience in fields such as social sciences, culinary arts, electrical engineering, and the military. And while they all come into the program with the goal of becoming a dairy farmer, not all of them finish. If the program and the dairy farming lifestyle is not a good fit, this is a time when that becomes apparent to them and once in a while we lose someone after they’ve gone through my workshop. Better now than after they’ve taken out a $100,000 loan Millennials as to buy cows. For most of them, Fertile Ground though, the Holistic Management Having worked over the years workshop is an opportunity to with farmers of all ages, I am reinforce their goals, perhaps to finding the younger generations to discuss them more deeply with a be more fertile ground for planting spouse or partner, and to begin the seeds of Holistic Management identifying a path forward. They and land stewardship. Perhaps it have many decisions to make is the idealism of youth, or maybe to get where they want to be. it is true differences between my The workshop will make it more Baby Boomer generation and likely that the decisions will be Dairy Grazing Apprentices had the opportunity to learn on the Millennials, or probably some of good ones that balance financial job with master dairy graziers as part of this national formal both. Although we witnessed the security, land stewardship and apprentice program. birth of environmental science and quality of life. agroecology, many farmers of my generation provides a voice of experience and allows the Our staff and participants see DGA as a remain ignorant of these principles or at least Apprentices to see how those of us who have a training program for beginning land stewards. skeptical of them. In contrast, Millennials grew few more years under our belts have weathered Through formal Apprenticeship, we can train a up in an era when a lot of the premises of the challenges of life. It is also an opportunity to whole generation of dairy farmers in managed ecology and environmentalism had become grouse or commiserate about their Masters and grazing practices that are not only profitable, but well-known and widely accepted. For many of their work experiences in a trust-based setting enhance soil health, protect water quality and them, they are a given. I find the Millennials I and for me to do a check-in on their progress. provide high quality habitat for wildlife and work with in DGA to be much more receptive We spend our first day of the workshop pollinators. Investing in the next generation, and to the notion of a triple bottom line in which on an introduction to Holistic Management, making sure there is a next generation, may be financial security is balanced with land background material on ecosystem processes a much more cost effective solution than the stewardship and quality of life. They are looking and managed grazing in our eastern, humid billions of dollars we are spending trying to for meaningful work and thirsty for opportunities climate, and exploring their values both create changes in the current system. As more to connect with the land and manage it in individually and through group discussion. In the and more Apprentices are trained in Holistic a way that takes care of themselves and evening, we share a meal and more discussion. Management and begin farming, land Mother Nature. Using worksheets I’ve created, they complete stewardship and the tools to practice it will What this means is that not only are my a draft Holistic Goal by the end of the day. On become embedded in the culture of dairy Holistic Management workshops a lot of fun, the second day, the Apprentices come back farming. Problem solved in a generation! but we can get a whole lot accomplished to class armed with their Holistic Goal and over the course of the brief two-day intensive their own personal decisions to test. After an Laura Paine is a Holistic Management ® training—we have a head start! The purpose of introduction to the decision-testing process, we Certified Educator and Dairy Grazing the workshop is for Apprentices to write their first test their decisions as a group—at least one Apprenticeship Program Director. She can be Holistic Goal and to learn how to test decisions decision for each participant. This, too, creates reached at: laura@dga-national.org. HMI is toward that goal. As a beginning farmer training a mutually supportive setting, where Apprentices an educational partner for the DGA. Num ber 173
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Farmer Brown—
Providing Grassfed, Animal Welfare Approved Meat for the Educated Customer BY HEATHER SMITH THOMAS
A
nnette Brown and her husband, Todd, operate a grass-based meat-production farm on 45 acres in Vermont (near Enosburg Falls), producing beef, pork and poultry. “We have red and black Angus for our beef, heritage mixed breeds for our pigs, and we also have laying hens and do meat birds in the summer months on pasture,” she says. “I grew up on a dairy farm near here, and bought my land in 1995. To begin with, I had horses and my farm was just a hobby. I milked cows at my parents’ farm. When I met my husband and got married, he moved here to the farm with me and we started raising more animals, just for ourselves”, Annette says. “We started out with a few animals just to provide meat and eggs for our own family, and then we had people asking us about meat to purchase. We started raising meat for the community, and it grew from there. Our customers enjoy what we produce, so we started selling our meat retail in 2010. We have a website people can order from, and I do two farmers markets during the summer months and the website goes along with that; people can order whatever we have in stock, from the website. Then I deliver it right to their home or they can pick it up at the market,” Annette explains. There are also several co-ops in the area that buy meat from their farm, along with a few stores. “Our farm name is Farmer Brown, so this is our meat label. The beef is grassfed under the
AGA label, and our farm is AWA (Animal Welfare Approved),” she says. The customers know what they are getting, and how the animals were raised. The chickens and pigs are fed organic grain. “We are working on getting an organic certification for our animals. This is another important thing that our customers are looking for. They are happy right now that we feed organic grain. We mention that on our display at The Browns’ dairy cows are Jersey crosses. They are moving the farmers’ markets. I think we toward starting a raw-milk micro-dairy. would get a few more sales with the organic label on the meat, however. People The Right Mix are very aware of these things. They want food “We finish 8 to 12 beef animals each year. that is non-GMO; this is very important to a lot of Currently we have 17 adult cattle plus our customers,” she says. finishers. A lot of our pork goes to a senior living “The AWA label was very good for our community; they buy 2 whole pigs from us every customers to know about. Some of them other month and break it down themselves in recognize it right off and are very happy about their own kitchen. This provides a steady market it. Others don’t know what it means until we tell for our pigs. We also have some customers who them. Then they are really pleased with it.” Part like to buy a quarter, half or whole animal each of a farmer’s job is simply to educate the public year and they can have it cut however they want about their food. it for their family. We sell beef in quarters, halves “When we started marketing our beef as and whole, and pork as halves and whole. Our grassfed 6 years ago people were puzzled and customers can save a little money that way, or asked, don’t all cows eat grass? They didn’t they can buy it by the cuts, out of our freezer. understand the difference, and that grassfed Right now we have 3 sows and one just had a means no grain. I have a few customers who litter of 8 piglets and the others are due soon. can’t have any grain in their own diet, and many We have 12 other pigs of varying ages, mostly people don’t understand that if the animal has finishers, right now.” eaten grain and you With the cattle, Annette and her husband eat the animal, you strive to select genetics for efficient grass are getting grain and finished beef. “We brought in a new bull 4 years may still have health ago and have been raising his offspring a couple issues. Now people are times over now. When we feel we need a new starting to understand bloodline we’ll buy a young bull as a yearling that you are eating from someone and raise him up over the winter what the animal eats. and then he’s ready the next year to go with the People are becoming cows,” she says. better educated about “Because we are short on acreage, we can’t their food, to help them keep very many heifers, to raise as cows, but stay healthier,” Annette we usually keep one or two each year. We are says. It is always a good trying to go more toward the Lowline Angus program to take the time because they have better feed conversion on to educate customers grass and are very efficient. We bought our The Browns feed their chickens and pigs organic feed as the demand and the public about original cattle in 2008 and they were a larger is high for organic products for their market. They are working toward their food and where it breed Angus. So we are slowly downsizing organic certification as part of their marketing plan. comes from. them, breeding them to smaller bulls. When we
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got our bull he was short and stocky—and not as big. We are breeding him to our larger cows, but also culling out the cows that don’t produce as well on grass.” It takes time to get exactly what you want; selecting and breeding livestock is always a work in progress. “We also have two dairy cows, a Jersey and a Jersey cross, and my husband and I want to eventually have a small raw milk dairy. We are working toward that right now. I’ve noticed that the Jersey cross (part Holstein) is too big for what I want. I am feeding her more, and getting less milk than we get from the Jersey. So we are looking to move toward a Jersey dairy.
Creating a Holistic Business Plan
“My husband and I went to some grazing conferences and signed up for some newsletters, about 4 years ago. One of the e-mails that came to us at the signup mentioned the beginning farmer class for women. Because it was only offered for women, I went to it, although my husband would have loved to go. He did go to a couple classes with me, where they allowed the partners to attend. This helped, because ordinarily I would come home from the class and try to tell him what we did, and he would have other questions, and I’d have to tell him that I would have to ask those the next time I went. It was better when we could both attend, and be on the same page.” She participated in this beginning farmer program for women through the winter months that year. “This helped us focus on what we needed to do for marketing and branding our product. It helped us write up a business plan to see where we wanted to be heading. It helped us focus in on what we really wanted to do,” she says. “This helped us figure out how to get an accurate account of how much we were putting into these animals, to make sure we are getting
enough return on our product,” Annette says. Often people go eagerly into a farming project or business but spend more on it than they make. “Our prices per pound, for our customers, were way low when we started, because we didn’t want to overcharge people. After going through that class The Browns market most of their pork to a senior living we took a closer look community nearby. at our business and separated all our little enterprises. With the beef good problem to have, with people wanting the we had to separate out the cow-calf pairs and product. “It is important now for people to know the finishers. They each had their own individual where their food comes from. They like to know sections and we needed to see which ones were that these animals are born on the farm, and we making money or not. It helped us to see what raised them up until harvest time. It’s important we were supposed to be doing and where we for us to be able to grow our herd to match our needed to be headed,” she explains. needs, but without enough grass land we can’t Goals for the future include getting more quite do that yet,” says Annette. acreage, to be able to expand their meat So she and her husband are looking for a programs. “Right now we have 45 acres and are larger farm. “When I purchased my land, it was leasing an additional 40 acres from neighbors. not very expensive. It was all woods, so I started We’d like to purchase a farm about twice the from scratch, clearing the fields. We’ve been size of what we have, so that we can expand looking at farms, and some of the ones we’ve our beef herd. We are selling our product out looked at need almost as much work; we’d have too quickly. We only harvest during the growing to start clearing the land all over again! We’ve season because its grassfed beef and we been putting all our efforts into this piece for 20 can only finish these animals during summer years, but it’s just not enough land given our months. By the next April we are running out market,” she says. of our supply for customers. We had two beef Acquiring more land is clearly the next that we held off butchering last year; they could major business move for Farmer Brown. But have been finished in October/November, but with their holistic goal to guide them, the we held them off so we could finish them early Browns are better equipped to use the tool of this spring because we were going to be out of human creativity to determine the best way to meat. We ran out of ground beef in February address their resource conversion challenges though we still had some of the other cuts.” now that they’ve addressed their marketing The demand exceeds the supply, but that’s a weak link.
Scaling a Sustainable Food System CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
serve the needs of their cooperatives. In other words, the models are already out there to scale sustainable agriculture locally. It’s up to the corporations to decide how much they want to change their procurement practices to actually engage in local food distribution. Or it is up to the consumer to take responsibility to buy directly from the growers or local food hubs to
support this growth in their regions. HMI has collaborated with over 100 organizations internationally to help provide whole farm/ranch training around the world. We believe that with this growing interest in local foods is the interest in regenerative agriculture that provides multiple benefits within a community. We are happy to collaborate with
any entity that would like to incorporate Holistic Management training as they work to grow more local food sustainably. Ultimately, these local food networks and the trained regenerative agriculturalists are the leaders in this movement and they are already taking the lead on scaling this movement.
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Late Bloomer Farm—
Making the Transition from Playing Fields to Cropfields BY HEATHER SMITH THOMAS
K
risti Duchscherer is a teacher in Groton, Connecticut who has been an athlete and has taught and coached athletics. “I have always been interested in growing things, and even though I went through most of my life focused on school and athletics, my interest in gardening continued. Years ago, when I was an athlete and then a coach, I thought about food, but I wasn’t thinking about how it is grown (nutrients, organics, etc.) as much as thinking about the ‘basics’ of carbohydrates, fats and proteins—and whether I was getting enough of them to fuel me through a practice or competition or tournament, or to build muscle mass,” she says. “I guess I really got into growing food when I shifted gears and got out of coaching and into teaching. I went back to school and became a teacher of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, working with young children. My first job was with pre-school. I wanted to work with the littlest ones because I think that’s the foundation; that’s where you need to be to make the most difference with kids,” she explains. “They all wanted to get their hands on the seeds, and as many as possible, so we grew a lot of things—and our projects each year got bigger. Those first two springs, we took the seedlings and filled the atrium at school with boxes and pots and the kids all took such joy in watering everything every morning. Then the plants went home for Mother’s Days, and compost went home for Father’s Days—but we had just grown so much! “So, my garden got bigger, and I loved it. It got to the point where I started putting in raised beds, all over the places we’d rented. We didn’t even own a house at that time. Then, my partner found an ad from some organic farmers, Joanie and Mark, who own Wild Carrot Farm here in Connecticut. They were looking for work shares. That was my first real foray into ‘organic farming’, working with a lot of different vegetables and on a much larger scale,” says Kristi. “Now we are leasing a little plot of land, at the Community Farm of Simsbury (CFS). They have what they call an incubator farmer program—a beginner farmer program through which beginners can get access to a little piece 6 IN PRACTICE
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of land for a little bit of money, and have the opportunity to just go at it and grow things. For just a small deposit, you can also gain access to and learn to use lots of different equipment, including things I couldn’t even imagine buying on my own (like tractors!) My first summer, the farm manager was able to get me about 1⁄5 of an acre, on which I could grow whatever I wanted,” she says.
Kristi at one of her farmers’ markets. “That first summer I basically just grew flowers for my wedding. I was so busy with summer school that I only tried flowers, and bigger quantities of tomatoes, peppers, sweet potato and leek than I had ever tried to grow before,” she says. Most of these were for her own use. She only took vegetables to market once, because she had to do that in order to comply with the contract she’d signed to lease that land.
HMI Beginning Farmer Training
Then in 2014, she attended HMI’s Beginning Women Farmer Training (BWF). “That class
extended my knowledge exponentially. That was my first year of actually growing for market. I grew everything but fruit; I grew a lot of vegetables, herbs and flowers and sold them at four different markets throughout the season. With that experience, I came up with a plan for this year, and this is just my second year of growing produce for sale,” says Kristi. The garden kept her very busy, overlapping with teaching. “I started a small CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) this year and currently have 5 members. I wanted to keep it small because I would rather make a few people overly happy with a lot of vegetables rather than not having enough. Last year, even though I canned and froze a huge amount of vegetables like a madwoman, lots of produce went to waste or just ended up being fed to the animals at the Community Farm. I was happy to do that (I love animals!), but didn’t want quite so much to end up going down that marketing avenue. This farm is young and new, and I am excited to be a part of it. I am a learning junkie and go to whatever conferences and clinics I can get to, in order to learn more about farming in general,” she says. “I can be an incubator farmer in this program for 3 growing seasons. I am kind of learning how I want my own farm to be, yet at the same time getting three years of data and financial experience under my belt and on paper—so I can eventually apply for and get my own land,” she explains. Kristi learned about the HMI Beginning Women Farmer program through Connecticut NOFA (Northeast Organic Farming Association). “At that time my farm manager at CFS was Maggie Saska. She mentioned it to me and I just kept my eyes open and waited to see when they were taking applications for the next year’s program. I applied and totally lucked out and was accepted. I wanted to take on anything that might help me learn and get better at this craft,” says Kristi. “After I got into that class (fall of 2014) I was amazed. “There was so much information! Last year, being my first actual growing season, I really needed that data—to apply the class information to my own experiences. I remember
going through the different examples in class and good humor,” she says. I wanted something that big (they were on and trying to do it—because at that point I had “I feel like, right now, I am just thinking about 11 acres),” says Kristi. “I wanted to have no idea how many pounds of things I grew the about growing and doing more with food and educational groups coming out to learn things. previous season or when I planted them, how I flowers, with the goal of eventually being on my One thing I’ve learned in the 4 or 5 years since treated them, etc. All of that record-keeping was own farm and following my own desires rather then is that even though I appreciated teaching something new.” than thinking about numbers. Long-term goals and learning, I definitely have an appreciation It helped her plan her next projects. “The however might include animals but I have to for keeping them separate, or to have just small class gave me a lot of ideas, and once I got be aware of the cost involved and the financial groups that really want to learn or help out. I’m into it I realized a lot of things I could have aspects, so I won’t dig myself into a hole. I think not as interested in having entire classrooms done differently. The notes, and keeping track that now with the HMI training, I have the ability come out to the farm at one time. Before, I was of everything, are things that I knew I can to do that, whereas before I was just making my really gung ho about bringing together these two apply this year’s growing, and that was huge,” best guess, educating myself as I went along, things that I am really passionate about (farming she says. but kind of ‘shooting in the dark’ since so much and teaching), but now I am figuring out that It also helped her focus on some goals for of it was new to me,” says Kristi. the enjoyment of both decline significantly when the future. “With my age and athletic injuries, “I was spending money without thinking they are brought together. and what I am learning about tractors and everything through, like deciding to buy plants “Being up at Community Farm at Simsbury equipment, I realize I like that kind of farming, to set out, rather than seeds. When you think helped me realize that, because they really but I want to know that I can always do it myself, about scaling up, doing that, it would get crazy are an educational farm. Gaining exposure without the equipment. to that aspect has been For me, getting out and invaluable. Nowadays having the opportunity to I still get the fun of it see how other people farm, occasionally--when there’s has been very beneficial. I a big volunteer group and met a couple in Hampton, the farm manager needs Connecticut who are older me to take a few people. than I am and they started It’s a huge help to have farming when they were more hands out there. But older, as well. They use sometimes it can create raised beds and nearly more of a mess, and loss. everything is in high The motivations of the tunnels, for amazing season people who come out extension. They kept adding there are different; they more and more every year, might be more concerned by applying for matching about getting their fancy grants and building things shoes dirty or they are over time,” says Kristi. busy using their cell “I am thinking that, for phones. They are stepping my long-term health and on the plants, and it’s more Kristi learned how to drive a tractor when she worked on an incubator farm as part of longevity in farming, as stress for me.” her beginning farmer training. well as for climate reasons, But Kristi loves sharing those techniques are the with her students and direction I want to go, even though there will expensive! If you start from seeds you have their parents. “There are many of those families always be some other things I’ll want to grow other costs (your time, on top of the containers, that I’ve stayed in touch with over the years outside, like garlic and corn and squashes. I am seed starting equipment, etc.), so it’s a matter and they come out to the farm as a family or a really drawn to that indoor model, however,” she of learning about all these things, including small group. I enjoy staying in touch and the says. different germination needs of things that I had close interaction with them, and it’s a better “Regarding animals, Holistic Management is never really given so much thought to before. environment for teaching them—and things go going to be a big help because I want to know The holistic class was so helpful for helping me well on the farm,” says Kristi. how to do it—and how to do it well—before I to connect what I considered my goals to all Gaining clarity about what she wanted from jump into something like animals because we of the things involved in the process of getting her farm was a critical step for Kristi to be able are responsible for their well-being. I want to there, successfully, and profitably,” she explains. to create a sustainable farm for her and her know that I can care for them appropriately. family as well as be a resource of her Holistic Management is all about planning and A Place for Education community. As she uses the skills she learned in being able to put it all together. Sherry (my BWF Creating her holistic goal helped Kristi HMI’s Beginning Women Farmer program she instructor) is amazing with her spreadsheets. begin to tease apart what she valued in life will be able to hone in on the enterprises that will Having spreadsheets to put data into, on top and what the farm could provide for her and provide the profit necessary to continue to grow of the day to day care for animals, is essential. where she needed to look elsewhere to provide her products for years to come, providing the In my pie-in-the-sky dream, I want to have other values. “At first when I started working healthy food that drew her to farming in the chickens for eggs and probably goats for milk on Joanie and Mark’s farm, I was thinking first place. Num ber 173
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Conservation, Education, & Healthy Food Holistically BY HEATHER SMITH THOMAS
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an O’Brien and his family utilize native grazing animals to help gone; we’ve plowed up too much of it, sucked too much water out, etc. restore and improve prairie pastures on his Cheyenne River But where I live, on the northern plains, there is still quite a lot of species Ranch near Rapid City, South Dakota (west of the Badlands diversity left and some parts are pretty good,” he says. National Park, and north of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation). “All the pieces are there, except one—and it’s a huge one. When They raise buffalo and market the meat, and recently started a unique you take 35 million buffalo out of an ecosystem everything suffers, in enterprise for low-stress harvesting of these animals. one way or another. I feel you also need a grazer that is appropriate for “I am basically a writer, but I also worked as a biologist for almost 20 the habitat. For instance, llamas won’t do it, in this environment,” says years, starting with South Dakota Game and Fish Department,” says Dan. Dan. Domestic cattle come close, but it partly depends on how they are “My specialty has always been birds bred and managed; some breeds/ of prey and I am a falconer as well. types definitely work better in this When the Peregrine Fund, out of environment than others. Cornell University (now Center for Best, of course, is the native Birds of Prey, in Boise, Idaho) came grazer that evolved here—the to do some work in South Dakota, I buffalo. “I wrote a book about was assigned to work with them. At this, called Buffalo for the Broken that time I was single, young, and Hearted (the broken heart is my strong, and after that summer they cattle brand). Writing about my asked if I would work for them.” venture into raising buffalo was a The job they wanted him to do way of me getting my feet wet in was to re-habituate baby falcons learning about buffalo. I got a few that were raised in Cornell, or at buffalo and started replacing our Fort Collins (at that time), taking cattle with buffalo,” he says. them out and trying to successfully “I had been sending cattle to the release them into the wild. “I was to feedlot for years, and I didn’t like that Because buffalo are adapted to the Plains they are a low-input supervise the people who were out idea very much. Cattle are meant animal that can more effectively utilize the forage and help meet there camping on this job. I did this, to graze, and not be confined in the conservation goals for the ranches that produce this meat. and also had a little ranch, and was feedlots. They do have some issues, writing all the time. When the peregrine falcon came off the endangered however, as far as grazing is concerned—at least in our part of the country species list I had to decide what to do next.” He was caught up in the idea where the riparian zones are the areas with the most species diversity.” of actually doing something to help wildlife. Cattle can be very hard on riparian zones unless they are managed properly or trained to use the uplands more than the riparian areas. Cattle Managing Toward a Whole Ecosystem are very trainable, if a person has time to train them. “What I had learned from that experience was that concentrating “One of the problems with this, and with most holistic grazing systems on recovery of a single species, whether it be a peregrine falcon or a is that they are management intensive. One of the things I was trying to narwhale, western wheatgrass, or whatever, is a fool’s errand,” says Dan. do was find a way to take the pressure off me as a manager, because I “The important view looks at the whole ecosystem,” he says. You can’t am not a range scientist nor a veterinarian.” Dan wanted the animals to be focus on just one small part while ignoring the whole. able to take care of themselves without much human input. “You can’t recover any species in solitude. It doesn’t work that way. “They can do a better job than I can! I wanted something easier to take One thing always affects another. So I looked around to see what I could care of, especially in this country where we have hard winters. This is a focus on. I’ve always had a fascination with the Great Plains, and I looked hard place to be a cow. We feed the buffalo very little, but I have spent a at the plains and realized it’s a mess. The southern plains are pretty much lot of time, in earlier years, hauling hay to cattle out in a blizzard. Calving
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is also a big issue. If you have 100 heifers ready to calve and it’s 40 below buys bulls now and then, to add new genetics, and tries to get them from zero, you must have shelter for them,” he says. as far away as he can. “When you look at the numbers of cattle in America, the northern “I was really naive when I started out, but this was the only way I knew states don’t produce as many cattle as southern states like Texas and how to approach it, 20 years ago, by getting a few buffalo from several Florida. Buffalo are made for this northern country.” In extreme situations, sources, and trying to use them as a tool to manage the land. As this historically large numbers of buffalo were wiped out in severe winters, or project went along I realized that this was important. My little ranch was when crossing rivers in floodwater, but for the most part they thrive on the the beginning, however, and it was really a poor-boy operation. I kept northern plains without human care. thinking about this, however, and got some good people working with me. In winter they can root down through snow better than a cow, and Soon it dawned on me that the focus needed to be more holistic. I had the most years don’t need to be fed. “We always try to have a little hay on buffalo but that was only part of the equation. Marketing them is the other hand, however (about 50 tons), just for the bad times. If we get a deep piece; you have to be able to do something with them if you are using snow the buffalo will survive, but they might go over a fence and be on the them to restore the land,” he says. neighbor’s place. So we do keep some hay around for whenever it might “I’ve talked to many conservation groups that don’t have a clue about be necessary. It may go several years without being needed, however, the realities of raising buffalo. When you tell them these buffalo have and just gets old and we end up selling it and replacing it, but we always babies every year, those folks have a blank look on their faces. A person have some for emergencies,” says Dan. has to figure out what to do with them, if this is going to work. We don’t “Raising cattle worked, economically, but I didn’t think we were getting have bears, we don’t have wolves here, so we must be able to harvest the kind of species diversity here that we could have, like we might be able them,” says Dan. And, in our modern world where ranches are fenced, to do if we had a native grazer. This is part of what my book (Buffalo for these animals have to be managed; they can’t just migrate around the Broken Hearted) was the plains. about. I wrote a second “We have the use of about book—a sequel to that 23,000 acres for our buffalo, and one—called Wild Idea, figure about 40 acres per animal which moves past just the unit (cow/calf). It’s never perfect, production conversion because weather is always different (from cattle to buffalo) into from one year to the next, but being a business, and how this average seems to work. With we went about doing that buffalo it’s a little different than on our ranch,” he says. raising cattle. You can’t just go out “This was part of the and buy another 100 head if it rains holistic element I was and you have plenty of grass. You looking for: to find the right just live with what you’ve got. We try animal for our environment. to have a stocking rate that works Every rancher has to in the bad years, and on the good figure this out for his/her years we have extra feed. Whatever own situation. It might be is left is for wildlife,” says Dan. a Brahma or a Brahman “People talk about the return These hardy animals can survive in situations where cattle could not. On cross in the South of the buffalo, but increasing their average the stocking rate for the O’Brien’s herd is 40 acres for a (something that can handle numbers today will only work with cow/calf pair. the heat and is insect some modification, because there resistant), or it might be a Charolais, or whatever, or it might be a buffalo. are fences. So I started thinking about how to construct a model where we The big thing is the environment, and matching your animals to where are basically working with the ecosystem but using buffalo as the tool. I they have to live. I don’t have much science to prove it, but buffalo tend have been on some panel discussions with Allan Savory and got to know to utilize a more varied diet, eating forbs and brush as well as grass; they him, and we hit it off right away. I’ve also worked with Roland Kroos; I’ve will eat about anything.” As a species, the buffalo come closer to what Dan taken the holistic courses and read the book, Holistic Management. I don’t was trying to do. agree with all of it, but I certainly agree with the concept,” says Dan. These were some of the reasons that he chose buffalo to replace his “In my case, I am a grass person. Grass is what I do. My wife Jill and I cattle. He wanted to find some that were hardy and would thrive on the started a business harvesting the buffalo, first of all because a person has northern plains, so he didn’t select his first ones from just one herd. “No to make some money to pay for this obsession! We have to survive, and one had gene mapped buffalo yet, so I chose 5 locations and got a few with limited land we can’t raise tens of thousands of buffalo,” he explains. buffalo from each one—Utah, Colorado, South Dakota, etc. I was able to get some from various state parks, when they were selling off some of Harvesting Buffalo their extra animals.” These varied areas would provide a broad enough Dan’s basic production model is to only harvest some of the younger gene pool to give his buffalo herd a good chance to work adequately in his animals. “We don’t take any old cows or bulls to market. We just let them environment. grow old—reproducing as long as they are able—and then let them die out “That was 20 years ago, and they have thrived. I’ve never paid a vet there,” says Dan. “They keep going into their twenties. By letting them die bill. We knew that if they had trouble calving they would probably die. It’s out there on the land, we keep all the nutrition out on our pastures—rather hard, as a human, to not try to help an animal that has a problem, and than putting those animals into a truck and sending them off the ranch to with buffalo it doesn’t happen very often,” he says. To avoid inbreeding, he CONTINUED ON PAGE 10 N um ber 173
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a feedlot in Kansas, depleting the ground we live on. We let them stay, though we occasionally cull a few if it’s a very dry year and grass is short,” says Dan. The meat project is mainly utilizing two and three-year-old animals, to help keep herd numbers relatively steady. “I studied the feasibility of our harvesting projects, and went to feedlots and to slaughterhouses to watch and see how it works. I came to the conclusion that I can’t do this kind of harvest. It’s hard enough for me to send cattle to feedlots and slaughter plants. I realized that if I had to do that with these buffalo (that are more easily stressed than cattle) I had to do something else. The stress on buffalo is enormous. Cattle are a bit different because they’ve been bred for this and are more accustomed to being handled.” If you handle cattle quietly and carefully they don’t become as stressed because of the conditions we’ve acclimated them to. Buffalo, by contrast are a challenge. “One thing led to another and we ended up looking at the mobile abattoirs, like for chickens. We had someone build a small mobile abattoir for buffalo, using a small semi, so we could bring it to the animals instead of taking the animals to the slaughtering facility. Then they wouldn’t have to take a truck ride, or go into a feedlot. We wanted to just let them eat grass and then we’d harvest them right off the grass,” he says. “This has worked even better than I thought it would. We’ve gotten a larger facility now—a 53-foot trailer and semi—and we just drive it out in the pasture and park it as close as we can to the buffalo. We harvest them right in the field, with a State inspector. We have very skilled people working for us; we are not cowboys or hunters. The rifle is just a tool. Everything is calm and in slow motion, and we’re talking about shots at 30 yards or closer. It is very strategically planned. It might take the shooter an hour to get the right shot, but the buffalo are not disturbed by this,” he says. The buffalo are not afraid of people, and they are also not aggressive. You wouldn’t want to grab a young calf, because mama would be very protective, but in general they are not going to charge after you. “They are big and strong, and very fast and athletic, so you have to respect them, but when they are out in a 1,000-acre pasture they are not dangerous,” he says. After he acquired the mobile slaughter unit, he compared this new method with the traditional methods of harvesting cattle, using 20 buffalo.
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“We killed 10 of them out in the pasture, using our method, and the other 10 we loaded up and hauled to the slaughter plant. We measured the cortisol levels in the blood in these two groups, and it was completely off the chart in the ones we brought in, and zero in the ones we harvested on the pasture. That was a huge difference,” says O’Brien. “It’s not uncommon for us to shoot 10 or 12 buffalo in a day and not have the rest of the herd disturbed. They might walk away for 10 to 50 yards, but they are not upset. There is nothing in their evolutionary experience to make them afraid of a bullet or a single animal dropping to the ground. The others just continue to lie or stand there, chewing their cud. There may be three or four lying around resting when we shoot one (we try to shoot them standing because it’s a less difficult shot) and it will drop right among them and the others never bother to get up,” he explains. “Humane harvest is very important to us. We feel that forcing the buffalo down a chute, squeezing them, and approaching them with a bolt gun is not humane. Carefully shooting them in pastures where they are at home and at ease is far superior,” he says. “We’ve done a lot of experimenting to figure out the best way to shoot them. We carry two rifles, but the main one we use is just a .30-06. We load it way down, so the bullet is slower, because we don’t want it to go through the animal. We use a special load, a brass bullet, and the inspector is with us all the time. We have one shot to do this, and it’s a very serious procedure. It’s always a head shot, so we don’t damage any meat. The animal has to go down with one shot; we are only allowed one shot, or there might be risk for having the meat condemned. We’ve never had one condemned, but this takes a bit of skill because these animals are harder to kill than you might think.” It is very important to hit them in the head at exactly the right place, about the size of a 50-cent piece, so this takes skill and accuracy. “We’ve been doing this for about 10 years and have it pretty well down pat, but I’ve been to other places where people have really made a mess of it. We can’t have that happen,” he says. “We are now harvesting about 20 animals a week, and travel to other ranches to harvest their buffalo as well as our own, and are licensed to operate in South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming. This keeps us busier than I want to be, but we don’t have enough buffalo ourselves to supply our demand. Our niche is that no one else does it this way, and we are filling a need. Many people understand the effects of stress and cortisol on the meat, and the importance of humane treatment and low stress handling. Those people are our meat customers,” he explains. “We have a strong demand for our product so I started talking to other buffalo ranchers—and I’m amazed at how many of them agree with me. These are very independent people. But if you sit down and have a cup of coffee or a beer with them, they’ll tell you that they don’t really want to send their buffalo to a feedlot, yet that’s the structure that we have, for marketing meat. At this point there is no infrastructure for grass finished animals, so we set about building that infrastructure,” he says. “It’s very small scale at this point; we don’t kill that many buffalo compared with all the buffalo in the world, but we are making a small difference. We are doing 1,000 each year now, and these are two- and three-year-olds, producing about 400 pounds of meat per animal. So it begins to add up.” The model started out as conservation as the goal, with buffalo meat as a by-product. “We hope to soon put together a big herd—maybe 1,200 head—on a reservation, using our model. These things are starting to happen,” he says. “Our little herd (350 animals) is much too small to supply the demand; our ranch produces only about 8% of our total production. We have a
lot of different relationships with other producers, and do a lot of work with the tribes because they raise their buffalo in a way that matches our model. These animals are free-roaming and grazing in a system of benign neglect on the reservation—large landscapes and just grass. They are never confined. We don’t buy any animals unless the producer signs a certificate saying that the animals have not been grain fed or in confinement—no hormones, no veterinary work or treatments, etc. We have that level of control on everything that is sold through our market,” he explains. These animals are raised in a variety of environments and terrain and some of the grasses are different, but they are all roaming and grazing. “Some of them are a long haul for us, like some of the ones in Montana, and it is different country—but the same concept,” he says.
Sustainable Food Education
Wild Idea Buffalo Company has about 20 employees now, and almost all the product is sold via the internet. “This is a family business involving me and my wife Jill, our daughter Jilian Jones and her husband Colton and a grandson, Lincoln. We also have a son, Lukas, who works in the shipping end of it the business,” says Dan. Yvon Chouimard (who owns the Patagonia clothing company and is interested in ecological issues) bought a percentage of the company a couple years ago. “This gave us a needed shot of capital for expansion. But this is still a small family-run business based on species diversity as our main product and buffalo meat as our happy by-product.” “We have a presence on the internet. If people are searching for buffalo meat or grassfed buffalo meat, they will find us. We do not do much advertising or looking to find customers; we just make ourselves available and they find us. We have a marketing crew and they do some things on Facebook and social media as a marketing tool,” says Dan. “Since this is a family business, people tend to feel connected with us and they like to feel they are a part of this because they know who we are. We do some blogging and try to make it as personal as we can. We want input from our customers. Many people are intrigued with the romance of the ranch and the buffalo, and the health issue (healthy meat).” His wife Jill does a lot on the cooking end of it and comes up with good recipes for the meat. “This is a huge aspect. I didn’t realize at first how much interest there would be in how to cook this meat and what it goes with. Jill’s recipes and photos are a big help,” he says. Jill has a great background for this. “I’m a farm kid,” she says. “I grew up on a dairy farm doing chores and cooking. This is what our family did. This meant working out in the field, the garden, the barn or the kitchen. Food was a major part of our family life; mealtime was when we gathered and this was a precious time. This stuck with me—my love for food and my time in the kitchen. I had a grandmother who was an amazing cook and so was my mother. They were good at creating and preparing recipes but also in making it beautiful. They enjoyed getting people around the table and making it a special and pleasing experience. Our Sunday meals were especially extraordinary because that’s when the pot roast came out or the chicken. Meat was not always a daily occurrence; we ate a lot of beans and rice, garden vegetables, etc.” After Jill grew up she went into the hospitality industry and worked in a variety of positions in hotels. “I finally ended up back in the kitchen cooking and learning—and started my own catering business. This was the right place for me, where I felt comfortable. I enjoy creating beautiful tables and making meals special,” Jill says. “This was my journey into a food career. I opened a couple of restaurants and Dan walked into one of them when he was just starting in the buffalo business. I fell for his charm. At that time I was already
Teaching consumers about the connection between the food they eat and the effect it has on the planet is a critical part of Wild Idea Buffalo Company and a passion of Jill O’Brien who has a background in the food and catering industry. preparing some bison dishes, but not 100% grass fed meat. When he brought a box of grass fed finished bison meat for me to try, it was a game changer for me. I had been poking and prodding my meats and trying to tenderize it and take away any gamey flavor with marinades and spices. His buffalo meat didn’t have that gamey flavor and I didn’t have to manipulate it so much to bring out all its natural flavor. I had to relearn how to cook bison meat,” she says. “This is a continuing process; a person is always learning/growing/ changing, but that was an ‘aha’ moment for me. I realized this is what the Sunday pot roast should be like. Those flavors came back to my memory. So then I started looking more closely at all of the products I was bringing in. I started rating those, searching for a higher quality—whether it be organic or sustainably raised, which are terms that don’t mean much anymore because they’ve all been hijacked and tossed around too much,” Jill says. She searched out products that would bring true flavor to the plate, as opposed to having to manipulate those flavors. “I started creating recipes for buffalo meat. By that time Dan and I had a serious relationship. I fell into the business side of it a bit accidentally, but sales, people, and customer service was something that was already a part of what I did. That was easy for me, along with talking to people about food, since that’s my passion,” she explains. She found that food can be a tool to help bring people a little closer to the environment, and open the door for having environmental conversations. “This is a crucial topic and some of it is difficult to wrap your mind around, like carbon sequestration, etc. and trying to figure out what this means. To pull consumers into a great environmental conversation through talking about food choices, and turning them onto amazing, deliciously healthy red meat and arming them with a recipe that can help them be successful in the kitchen can bring them closer. They feel like they are a part of it and contributing to the whole,” she says. She continues to experiment with recipes and enjoys cooking. She is currently working on a cookbook she plans to publish. “It is tentatively titled Eating for the Earth. This book will include stories that talk about sustainability or how to sustainably source your food and the difference between the two—but not in a preachy kind of way. This is just opening a door for discussion and allowing people to make their own decisions. These stories will be woven through the book of recipes. It’s a food recipe CONTINUED ON PAGE 12
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“The holistic part of it is the fact that what we are doing here is longterm and a three-generational effort. We are here to stay. It’s not just a business we are going to build up and sell. We are in it for the long haul book, not necessarily a health book, and filled with photographs of food and this is what we do. Thus, it is very important that we realize every and nature.” This could introduce people to things they might not have decision we make affects our grandkids and their future. That’s the holistic been aware of before. part that I think is most important,” Dan says. “I am not just telling the story, but showing the story. It will tell people This is also why customers keep coming back again. They know that where their food comes from or where it could or should come from— this is a dependable enterprise. “They know who to call, and that they can and not just bison but also looking at other healthy ranches, gardens or rely on us, and be confident that we will be here a long time. They can chicken farms. It all goes back to that Sunday meal, and that pot roast or count on us doing our very best to do things right. Sometimes we don’t roast chicken. We can find a sustainably raised chicken and have it for a get it right, because it’s a work in progress and some things go wrong. special meal,” says Jill. Shipping is a business in itself—to get frozen product all around the country,” She also participates in ranch tours, showing people the land and the he says. There are multiple enterprises involved here, to make it work. buffalo, and she says the photography in her book is a similar educational “There are issues that come up, but people know that if they get a box tool. “It’s not just showing a landscape, but also showing a species of of meat that isn’t quite right, they can call me and I will get to the bottom of animal and asking if this is important to us. Our eating choices and the it and make it right. This is where the holistic concept comes in—involving ramification of those choices the whole picture. There is are important. We offer ranch grass, there is meat, there is tours to all our Wild Idea Buffalo shipping, and the internet, and customers, and we want to ranch tours, and all kinds of have complete transparency. people involved,” he says. We discuss some of the things From the holistic point of we are doing to conserve land view, he is also very interested as well as to restore it. People in social justice. “We have a lot get to see that for themselves, of Native Americans working and see a large pasture that for us. We think we understand has never seen a plow, and a and agree with their traditional pasture that has been plowed— way of looking at buffalo.” This that we are trying to bring back is all part of the holistic idea of to grassland. They can wrap community, and interaction with their minds around it once they the people around us, as well see it,” she explains. as with the land. “They can see the bison “We source a lot of our grazing, and all kinds of wildlife. meat from tribal herds and from The O’Briens are working with various Native American nations to get more It makes an impact. You can individual Native Americans of them raising buffalo meat. They hope to eventually have a herd of 1,200 read about these things, but and these are relationships we on one of the reservations to meet more of the market demand and provide when you can actually see, work very hard to cement and economic opportunities in these areas. taste and hear all of this in your continue, and sometimes it is own experience, it can be very powerful.” People can ask questions and very difficult,” he says. learn a lot from these conversations. Another part of the picture is education, teaching people about the “They often bring their kids, or sometimes grandparents bring their land. “During the summer we do a couple tours a week. People come grandchildren and this is the generation we are trying to engage. The here from all over the world, especially a lot of European people. This is baton is going to be handed to the younger generation and we want something we always have to schedule in, but it slows down a lot after them to know about their environment. We want them to be able to enjoy September. No one wants to go out there during the winter!” the same natural luxuries that we have had the opportunity to witness,” Jill says that education is hugely important and that people need to she says. understand where their food comes from and the differences in various food-raising systems. “There are so many certifications we talk about, For the Long Haul and all the terminology we use that has been hijacked. Even within those “The definition of Holistic Management is often a little ‘squishy’ and certifications, there are still parts of the whole that are missed, like the depends a bit on who you talk to,” says Dan. “Our main goal is to have a soil, and carbon, and species diversity. These are part of the whole and healthy, balanced ecosystem—and the buffalo are a tool to help us move we can’t forget about this when we talk about land and land use. We need toward that goal.” to look at more than just how many animal units we can get on our land,” Often people think of Holistic Management as just a grazing system, she says. but it is much more than that. “There are many kinds of rotational grazing It’s too easy to segment and compartmentalize, looking at bits and systems and many people don’t quite understand what is involved in terms pieces instead of the whole. “We worry about whether something is GMO of holistic programs. It’s more about the big picture, the whole picture, free, or whatever,” she says. “We define things in simplistic terms, black and we let the buffalo do their own grazing system. If we can put them and white, with no gray areas or paradox because it’s easier to understand in a pasture that has 4,000 or 5,000 acres, we don’t have to move them by itself. It’s harder to grasp the multi-faceted picture. Yet for our future around; they know how to do that,” he says. we’ll have to know more than just parts of the picture.” 12
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White Oak Pastures—
A Holistic Approach to Healthy Food & Thriving Rural Communities BY ANN ADAMS
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ill Harris is the fourth generation of Harrises owning and managing White Oak Pastures in Bluffton, Georgia. This 1,500-acre farm has been in the family for 150 years and Will is passionate about the farm and what he, his family, and his 130 employees are working to create now through a holistic approach to raising and hand butchering 10 species of animals and then direct marketing that product throughout the South and the Atlantic seaboard. With his daughters, Jenni and Jodi, involved as the fifth generation of Harrises, White Oak Pastures is working hard to show that sustainable farming can improve the land and create healthy food and healthy profits that feed not only the farm but the surrounding community.
A Farm Committed to Sustainability
Will earned an Animal Science degree from the University of Georgia and returned to the farm in 1976 to work with his father on raising cattle conventionally, using herbicides, pesticides, and synthetic fertilizers and feeding the cattle soybeans and corn. He noted that they were able to make a good profit under this system, but he saw the land deteriorating, and he didn’t like the excesses of that system. So in 1995, he decided to begin creating a farming system more similar to the one his greatgrandfather practiced. Today, Will is working to create a closed loop system on the 2,500 acres they manage (1,500 acres are owned and 1,000 leased) that is regenerative by grazing and foraging with 10 species (cattle, goats, sheep, hogs, chickens, duck, geese, turkeys, guineas, and rabbits). He uses liquid waste from other enterprises along with waste from abattoirs, compost, and using holistic planned grazing on his pastures to feed the soil. In turn, the soil feeds the animals which are turned into meat, eggs, hides, and fat which is sold to finance the farm. Certainly there is a very clear focus on creating a profit to sustain the farm, but the number one focus over the last 20 years is to improve land health and develop farming systems that will reduce inputs and recycle products on the farm. For example, Will used to have a bunch of different cattle herds as he wanted to offer each class of stock different types of nutrition based on their nutritional needs. But, he quickly realized this production method cut down on recovery for other pastures, so he started consolidating herds and using weaning rings on his calves so he could run
them with his cows. He still has two calving herds (spring and fall) in order to keep a steady supply of meat to his abbatoir. But, he keeps the cows and sheep together as one unit grazing pastures and the goats and pigs together (except during kidding) as another unit. His paddocks range from 4–40 acres as he always makes sure that shade and water are available. Each paddock is grazed three to four times a year. Using a grazing plan he has been able to overgraze less and has grown more soil (increasing organic matter from the .5% he originally measured to 5% in some fields now). He also has seen an increase in the number of species he has growing on his farm. Will also leases a 300-acre field where he grows hay and uses a liquid manure spray as a fertilizer. Other than that hay, they are working to graze pasture year round unless they are working to regenerate a pasture with haylage. He has a 90-day breeding period for both the spring and fall herds and he works to harvest his cattle at 20–24 months. White Oaks averages a 30-day recovery period for pasture, working to get grasses at least a foot tall before moving the cows in. Their main forage species are Bermuda Bahai, Clover, and Rye. The animal performance goal for the beef cattle is a two pound/day weight gain. They found that using the Grazing Chart helps them plan the grazing for all species. It also helps them adapt to the drought. They have chosen to do some supplemental feeding to be able to slow movement through the pasture and keep to the recovery goals. Besides his own herd of 750 mama cows, Will also has a producer group that provides a steady supply of cattle for his abattoir. He uses his own herd as the buffer to take up slack if the supply from his producers does not fill the abattoir. He has an Angus-based herd that is a descendent of the Cracker cattle and has decided to close the herd to work on his line breeding. When Will brings a new piece of land into the system, he puts cows on it with haylage for eight weeks to regenerate it. He notes that the cows aren’t too happy and would rather be back on the White Oak Pastures’ land, but he tells them that if they feed the land now, it will feed them later. “It takes about two to three years before you can see the benefit of that treatment,” says Will. “But, then you can really begin to build soil from there.” In 2016, Peter Byck, Professor of Practice at the School of
Many homes and buildings are falling into disrepair in Bluffton, Georgia and throughout rural America. White Oak Pastures is buying older buildings in Bluffton and renovating them, like their new general store and employee housing that is then offered at affordable rents. CONTINUED ON PAGE 14
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birds, 12,000 layers (Highland Brown and Golden Nugget), and 4,000 turkeys and geese, and 750 cows. “The pastures are better than they’ve ever been,” says Will. “They are teeming with life. The organic matter has gone from less than .5% to 5% in 15 years. We also had bald eagles come to the farm five years ago. Now we have the largest eagle population in Georgia with 26.” That’s good news and bad news. The bald eagles are a great sign of improved habitat, but they can take as much as $1,000 of “poultry product” from the field per day. That means Will is looking at other predation control options. But, he is also renting out his cabins to birders who want to see the eagles and are willing to pay for the opportunity.
Sustainability and Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University, created a video about White Oak Pastures, titled “100,000 Beating Hearts.” In this video, Will chronicles how and why he decided to change his farming practices to the point where there is so many species of animals that there are literally 100,000 beating hearts on the farm today. Will talks about how his father’s practices and how he used ammonium nitrate fertilizer from 1946–1995 and it killed the soil. Will also practiced standard commodity beef protocols with his father for 20 years, but didn’t like what he was doing. He didn’t like industrialized agriculture and grassfed beef appealed to him so he gave up corn, hormone implants, and Multiple Enterprises for Resiliency antibiotics, then decided not to do the fertilizer as well. In 2007 White Oak built a zero waste abattoir (only one of two in the There were many times he questioned his decisions about this country) which can handle 150 head of cattle per week at full capacity. In monumental transition. Prior to these practices, the farm had not been in 2010, they built a separate poultry abattoir because there was no one else debt and they made a good profit. But when they had to invest $7.5 million that could do their poultry processing for them. That is also at full capacity. in the processing plants and other infrastructure, they lost money for Next to these abattoirs they also built a restaurant which was first used several years. He didn’t know if he was going to lose the farm. He realized to feed employees for $1/meal. The restaurant is now open to the public, he was taking an incredible risk. But in his mind it was a necessary risk. including the guests at the cabins they have also built so they can offer “I’m very glad that I farm stays. made the changes that White Oak Pastures I made,” says Will. “The only slaughters 35 farm is again profitable head of cattle per day and I have two daughters and 1,000 chickens per and their spouses who day. In comparison, an have come back to work industrial processing on farm. That wouldn’t plant may slaughter over have happened without 6,000 cattle per day, or the changes we made. It 200,000 chickens per was very simple with corn day. That’s not a goal and cows. Then, I got for White Oak Pastures. even simpler. We don’t They want to make sure feed animals, we feed the that the conditions in their soils. It’s really a beautiful abattoirs are humane for system. Every generation both the animals and the the animals are more workers. The plants are beautiful and healthier.” both zero-waste with the As Will explored how blood digested to make to improve soil health, he liquid organic fertilizer. All Bald eagles have returned to White Oak Pastures and avid birders flock to see them. also realized that they the bones are ground to The eagles will fight each other over the couldn’t just graze cattle; make bone meal, and all White Oak’s chicken. they needed more than eviscerate is composted. the monoculture of graziers. Sheep provided more symbiosis and synergy, All of these organic fertilizers are used as soil amendments for the certified creating a polyculture which also helped with the different parasites each organic pastures. They also have their own water treatment plant to turn species deals with. “If you’ve got the two species together, it’s like a dead the wash down water from the processing facility into irrigation water end cycle,” says Will. “I don’t know why any serious cattlemen wouldn’t for their pastures. Lastly, the plants are powered by a 50,000 watt solar have this system.” voltaic array that is used as a shed to protect supplies, which supplies White Oaks Pasture also raises poultry with portable housing to give 40% of the abattoirs’ power. They also use solar thermal technology to them an area free from pathogens and to spread their dung for fertilizer heat their wash down water. and to help them break the parasite cycle for the other grazing species. Animal Welfare is a huge part of White Oak Pasture’s mission. All The chickens are moved once a week. For their meat birds they use Red their chickens are Certified Humane ®, Step 5+ rated by the Global Animal Ranger, purchasing the cockerels in the mail. They process them at 12 Partnership, and the processing abattoirs are Animal Welfare Approved. weeks with a goal of 3.5 lbs/bird with the neck on. They are currently Their grassfed beef is Animal Welfare Approved, Step 4 in the Global feeding a non-GMO feed that contains soy. Will notes that the pasture Animal Partnership, and Certified Grassfed by the American Grassfed caloric intake is very small for these birds, but the dietary impact is huge Association. As part of the Animal Welfare Approved regulations and to on the animal’s health and the nutritional quality of the bird. reduce labor and animal stress, White Oak has ceased to castrate any Prior to 1995, the farm carried 700 cows. They have now increased animal on the farm now. They had Temple Grandin develop the handling their carrying capacity to 1,000 goats and ewes, 100 sows, 72,000 meat facilities as well to reduce animal stress. They also use an electrical stun 14
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knife for processing the poultry. Because of the desire to develop a full complement of farm products, White Oak Pastures also raises organic vegetables. Their Organic Farm Manager, Ryan Carnley, and Mary Bruce, Assistant Farm Manager, cultivate 5+ acres of vegetables along with a half-acre heirloom fruit and nut orchard. They had managed a 200-share CSA, with food dropped in three states, Georgia, Florida and Alabama, but they are now using all the produce for the Dining Pavilion. They have even learned how to create biodiesel from the cooking grease and tallow from the Dining Pavilion and use it to run their tractors. Even the flies are put to use here. White Oak received a Southern Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education (SARE) Producer Grant to turn the black soldier fly into a value-added tool of making compost and as a protein source for their chickens. The black soldier fly larvae, which is native to North America, is a scavenger, thriving on several kinds of decaying matter such as carrion, manure, plant refuse and waste products. It has a 42% dry weight protein content and a 34% fat content. The idea was to “farm” the black soldier fly larvae, using on-farm collection or encouraging the females to lay eggs in corrugated cardboard incubators, and caring for the larvae until they were large enough to be transferred to suitable decaying matter. They used composting containers and let the grubs repopulate or fed them to the chickens. Another experiment is the recent purchase in 2014 of Iberian pigs. Normally these pigs are finished on acorns in the Mediterranean climate. The plan in Georgia is to finish them on pecans and peanuts. While they have Berkshire, Gloucester Old Spots, and Tamsworth hogs, the Iberian pigs produce the “Jamon Iberico” worth $1,200/ham—making this a super high-end, artisanal product. The Harrises will be working to develop a “Jamon Georgia” and seeing if they can create the same quality of ham, Southern style. All the pigs and the goats are used to open up brushy areas of the farm or to till or prepare cropland as the White Oak team works toward their vision of a savannah style landscape for the farm.
Rebuilding a Community
The ethic of stewardship is a continual theme in any conversation with Will. He is always looking at how he can make the land better, asking questions and exploring new ideas. “I think about ‘What if I graze it this way? What can I do to make the land better?’ Improving the land is what
The Dining Pavilion feeds employees and on-farm guests alike.
continues to motivate me,” says Will. “But, I’m still one of the good ole boys and I still talk to the other farmers even though I’ve changed my practices. I don’t try to change their minds because they feel like their businesses are working for them. They tell me ‘You can’t feed the world like that (the way I’m farming).’ I tell them I don’t know I’m supposed to
The new White Oak Pastures’ general store now supplies locally grown meat and produce as well as basic grocery staples. The next closest grocery store is 50 miles away. feed the world, I’m just supposed to try to feed my region.” While Will had begun making changes as early as 1995, he really began making this shift to grassfed beef at the time of “Food, Inc” and The Omnivore’s Dilemma. White Oak now sells to Whole Foods all up and down the eastern U.S. He has also collaborated with Kroger, Sysco, U.S. Food and other grocery distributors to help expand their market. White Oak also focuses extensively on their own direct marketing activities with the farm store in Bluffton and the online store on White Oak Pastures’ website. White Oak is indeed feeding their region and then some. As Will has gained attention in the sustainable agriculture industry, he has also gotten more interest from those wanting to learn from him. To that end, White Oak has implemented an internship program. They start out with an introductory period, “Freshman Session,” of 12-weeks where interns move fence and learn those types of job for which they are paid $8/hr. If you stay a whole year and work up through other responsibilities you are offered a job. “I don’t make money from the interns,” says Will, “but I got some new employees from this program.” In fact, half of White Oak staff has been attracted from outside the area and many of them are under the age of 35. And employment at White Oak Pastures is a pretty sweet deal. As one of the largest employers in the county, White Oak offers on average double the average wage earned in the county, says Jean Turn, financial controller for White Oak. There’s also the $1/meal at the Pavilion and the potential for nicer housing. “We are the largest employer in the area with over 130 employees, but there is no good housing near the farm because there has been such a decline in this area,” says Will. “So, we’ve started to buy old buildings and renovate them for employee housing and farm office buildings.” Once the homes are renovated White Oak rents them to the employees for $300–400/month. Will is also working with the USDA to get a CONTINUED ON PAGE 16
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Community Development low-interest loan of $2 million to renovate more homes in the area. White Oak also renovated the old general store on the main street of Bluffton to serve as a farm store and a grocery store for the community. Holistic Management is one of the key tools that White Oak uses to help them manage their business sustainably. Due to the complexity of the farm’s business (with the different operations so dependent on each other), White Oak has weekly staff meeting with all managers and there are also monthly financial meetings. In the managers meeting the holistic context/holistic goal is front and center, directing the decisions on both a strategic and tactical level. Currently 25 of the staff have had some training in Holistic Management. “The holistic context gives the employees ownership and alignment,” says Jean Turn. “You have to give employees a reason to work other than a paycheck.”
the most advantageous).” So with the idea of bringing more species on, he added rabbits, guineas, ducks, layers, and organic vegetables. These are ancillary businesses that wouldn’t survive without White Oak Pastures beef and chicken, but they also bring much to the farm. “We try to be zero waste and use everything we can,” says Will. “We sell a lot of organ meat and we also sell pet chews. What little bit we can’t sell, we have a big render and grinder, and we compost everything using the Cornell system of lasagna compost. We alternate the rendering with peanut shells and let that set for one year.” The fifth generation of Harrises are also adding their contributions to White Oak as this eclectic group of local employees mingle with college graduates from all over the world. Jenni Harris is Will’s middle daughter and has come back to be the Marketing Manager for White Oak Pasture. After graduating from Valdosta State University with a Business Marketing degree in 2009, she interned with Buckhead Beef, a SYSCO company, and learned all aspects of the beef fabrication business before returning to White Oak Pastures. Her passion is figuring out how to differentiate White
Jodi Harris Benoit (left) is the fifth generation of Harrises farming White Oak Pastures and Will Harris (standing next to her) couldn’t be prouder of her or his other daughter, Jenni (right), who are helping make White Oak Pastures a success (next to Bilal Sarwari, Farm Ambassador for White Oak Pastures). Holistic Management also made Will look harder at soil health and his production practices. “Cotton, corn, and peanuts are the trifecta of Southern agriculture,” says Will. “But growing those crops is incredibly damaging to the soil. I knew we had to find other ways to build soil, and I believe that restorative agriculture has to include animal impact. As I explored that more, I learned about Holistic Management and I decided to be trained and make White Oaks Pasture a Savory Hub with the Savory Institute. I began learning about the ecosystem processes and worked to make my landscape function better. We get 54 inches of rain/year. I’m working to keep that rain on my land. With conventionally managed land around here, the rain and soil comes off like a strawberry milkshake.” Will also is focusing on capturing more sunlight by creating more biodiversity in his fields to keep his soil covered year round. Likewise, those different plants are helping him bring up minerals from different parts of the soil profile and helps him improve the carbon cycle by pumping more carbon into the soil through improved grazing. “I took all the soil classes when I was at the University of Georgia, but I didn’t hear about soil biology then,” says Will. He also is spending a lot of time figuring out how to maximize the relationships at play on the farm. “Here in the coastal plains of Southeast, everything dies and decomposes,” says Will. “It wants to get back to forest unless you till it, spray it, burn it, mow it, or graze it (the last option being 16
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Oak product and maximize the margins for their unique product. Jodi Harris Benoit is Will’s youngest daughter and is the Farm Events Manager. She is responsible for guided farm tours, in-house marketing, and event planning as part of a burgeoning agri-tourism enterprise. She graduated from Valdosta State University with a Speech/Communication degree in 2012 and took her obligatory year away from the farm before returning to take over her enterprise which now includes the rental cabins as more people come to personally witness one of the largest experiments of a grassfed livestock operation in the country. Will Harris has had his share of challenges making this transition to a regenerative agriculture that feeds the land and revitalizes the local community. When you ask him what jazzes him most about the farm, he says: “First is the land restoration. Second is the animal husbandry. Then, there is the processing and marketing.” But, when you watch him observe his family and employees as they engage with their myriad customers, you can also see that Will is passionate about the people—his family, employees, and community. He is a man with a large vision and the willingness to risk it all to make it happen. He is well aware of the “rural brain drain” and is working hard to reverse it. With Holistic Management he has found a tool that has helped the Harris family stay focused on their core value: “We take care of the land and the herd, and they take care of us.”
The Ethics and Participation Needed For Cross-Movement Coalitions BY DR. DANNY NUCKOLS, HMI BOARD CHAIR
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ross-movement environmental coalitions are one of the more exciting social movements of recent years. One example is the HMI and Quivira Coalition partnership that provides multiple benefits for all our members. The interactions of organizations across boundaries can sometimes become exceedingly complex, especially when their policies and agendas are seemingly sometimes at cross-purposes and ideologically inconsistent. This can be observed when coalitions heartily promote sustainable economic development, and renewable agriculture in particular, but seem relatively withdrawn from national discourse when cultivating and proselytizing the ethical acumen needed to revive humans’ healthy relationship with nature. The ethics needed to renew a robust and regenerative link to the environment calls for effectively sustained coalitions to progressively evolve, by improving upon their record in the skills of citizenship and governance, as argued by Soule and Piper in their text, Farming in Nature’s Image: An Ecological Approach to Agriculture. They must recognize that any successful attempt at sustainability will warrant
constant citizen participation in the building and monitoring of democratically controlled governments. In his book, Five Policy Recommendations for a Sustainable Planet, Herman Daly claims that only governments can stop such neoliberal policies of, for example, counting the consumption of natural capital as income and placing taxes on labor and income instead of resource consumption. Moreover, David Carruthers, in Debating the Earth, asserts that sustainable development discourse should see coalitions demanding that governments put forth macro-policies that acknowledge and correct for the following: 1) both distributional and intergenerational inequity; 2) market prices that do not properly reflect the spillover external social and ecological damage of private-firm production; 3) capital flows to desperate Third World and post-communist regions, when the result is child labor, little or no environmental and health compliance, human rights violations, and below-the-table financial exchanges between the public and private sector; and 4) the belief in a philosophy of continued and infinite growth in population and GDP that is not sustainable on a bounded planet—with environmental coalitions vigorously arguing that more and “rational” technology will never deflect from these facts. David Orr’s article, “Four Challenges to Sustainability” best describes what the transition to sustainability will require from an active citizenry: “Only governments moved by an ethically robust and organized citizenry can act to ensure the fair distribution of wealth within CONTINUED ON PAGE 19
Reviewing the Holistic Management Framework As HMI continues to review our internal policy and governance processes, the HMI Board of Directors has developed a review process to determine if any changes should be made to the current HMI Holistic Management ® Framework (See at: http://bit.ly/2mPMy6c). The Framework Review Committee (FRC) consists of HMI Executive Director, Program Director, and Education Manager and 3 members of the HMI Board who are HMI Certified Educators and are selected by the Board. The purpose of the FRC is to determine if changes to the HMI Framework are necessary and put recommendations to the HMI Board of Directors for approval. Consensus using Holistic Management Decision Testing Process and HMI’s holistic goal is the decision-making process for this committee. If you have any suggested changes for the framework, please review the process outlined below. You have until July 31st to submit your suggestions to the HMI Framework Committee via: anna@holisticmanagement.org; fax: 505-843-7900; 5941 Jefferson St. NE, Ste B, Albuquerque, NM 87109. You will be contacted by a committee member to confirm receipt of your submission and potentially to request further information.
HMI Framework Review Process
1) Once a year (starting in May IN PRACTICE and HMI e-newsletter and listserves), FRC puts out an announcement that we are looking for stakeholder suggestions for any changes that stakeholders believe are critical changes needed for the framework. Comments/ suggestions will be reviewed by FRC. Also any Board/Staff member
of FRC at any time may bring forth recommendations for change based on valid/consistent stakeholder feedback that merits a change to HMI’s Holistic Management Framework or has been solicited the year before. Those bringing forth the proposals will demonstrate depth of stakeholder survey, need and reason for change and concerns about change (examples and documentation), and how these changes improve the framework (i.e. More user friendly, universally clear to understand, and applicability in diverse settings). 2) Discussion by FRC will follow surveying of larger stakeholder group about proposed changes 3) FRC develops consensus on change and articulates recommended changes. These first three steps shall not be any shorter than a 90day period for comments and review. 4) Notice of proposed changes is provided to stakeholders at least 6 times through a combination of IN PRACTICE, CE listserve, and HMI e-newsletter with a 75-day notification/comment period. 5) This will be followed by a 45-day period for FRC to review comments and make final recommendations or extend comment period if recommended changes have been changed through first comment period. 6) The Board votes on FRC recommendations at next place-based Board meeting when final recommendations are provided to the Board. 7) Notice of changes shared with stakeholders. 8) Changes to Framework are then integrated into HMI curriculum as quickly as possible given constraints of budget/resources.
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N E W S F R O M H O L I S T I C M A N AG E M E N T I N T E R N AT I O N A L
Like most nonprofit organizations, HMI often relies on grant funding in order to make our programs available to farmers and ranchers across the country and around the world. But who we partner with is important as well. That’s why we’re particularly proud to announce that HMI has recently received funding from two leaders in the sustainability community: Patagonia and Simply Organic. Through their environmental grants program, Patagonia gives 1% of their sales each year to support environmental organizations around the world. The Simply Organic 1% Fund does the same, working to support the growth of organic and sustainable agriculture through the funding of projects that research, develop, teach or promote organic agriculture. We’d like to thank both Patagonia and Simply Organic for their support of the work that we do, and we’re proud to add their names to our list of supporters.
HMI at Austin College
At the end of February HMI’s Executive Director, Dr. Ann Adams, gave two presentations to students at Austin College. A lunch time presentation on Holistic Management Austin College Environmental was part of the Environmental Science Science Lunch Lecture Series lecture series at the college. An afternoon presentation on “The Value of Holistic Management” dug deeper into the various ecosystem services that Holistic Management supports on farms and ranches as well as the additional profitability and increased resilience to agricultural businesses as quality of life improves and the increased opportunities for succession. The Environmental Economics students were engaged with the information, asking many thoughtful questions. HMI Certified Educator Dr. Lisa Bellows, Chair of the Science Department of North Central Texas College and Director of the Josey Institute for Agroecology, also participated in the presentation, sharing her experience with applying Holistic Management at the Thomsen Foundation, an environmental education location near the college that gives students an opportunity for experiential learning in biological monitoring and surveying. Our thanks to Dr. Danny Nuckols for working with the Environmental Science program to arrange these educational events at Austin College.
New Agrarian Training
In February, HMI Executive Director, Ann Adams, participated in a New Agrarian Convening held at the Paicines Ranch in Paicines, California. Over 22 organizations from across the U.S. participated in this event to develop new strategies and collaborations to increase and improve new agrarian training to train more young people as successful, sustainable farmers and ranchers. The event was organized and
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supported by Globetrotter Foundation and the Quivira Coalition. HMI is currently partnering with the Quivira Coalition to offer online training in Holistic Management to support the Quivira Coalition’s New Agrarian Program which offers apprentice positions on farms and ranches practicing regenerative agriculture. The goal of the program is to give these young people sufficient experience so that the apprentices will be ready to start their own businesses or become farm or ranch managers for other operations. There were other agricultural education programs there that offer internships or extended residential training programs. HMI is proud to offer our training support to these programs.
Holistic Management Conferences
The winter months are a busy time for conferences, and HMI and our network have been busy presenting, coordinating events, and staffing trade booths. Western Canada Holistic Management Conference The 2017 Western Canada Holistic Management Conference was held on February 17–18, 2017 in Lacombe, Alberta. The theme for the conference this year was Regenerating Soil. Regenerating Land. Regenerating Communities. Holistic Management Canada coordinated the event in conjunction with Organic Alberta. Over 380 people attended this conference to hear many Holistic Management speakers including Dr. Richard Teague, Blain Hjertaas, Tom and Margaret Towers, and Don Campbell among others. EcoFarm Conference Holistic Management practitioner and educator in training, Doniga Markegard, of Markegard Farm near Pescadero, California presented at the Ecofarm Conference in Monterey, California in January on the challenges of Carbon Farming and how to use livestock to restore natural biodiversity and ecosystem health. Southwest Missouri Spring Forage Conference Ben Bartlett, HMI Certified Educator and past Board Chair, from Traunik, Michigan presented on Holistic Grazing Management to 75 participants at the Southwest Missouri Spring Forage Conference at the end of February. Mother Earth News Fair HMI had a booth at the giant Mother Earth News Fair in Belton, Texas in February which over 12,500 attended. HMI’s booth was constantly full of people, many of whom had never heard of Holistic Management. Tracy Litle providing live soil Holistic Management Certified health demos at the Mother Educator Tracy Litle gave live demos Earth News Fair at our booth, explaining how the soil enriches and holds more water with every pass of the cattle after complete recovery of the grasses. Tracy has been studying the soil food web with Betsy Ross and others. She demonstrated how water runs right off dirt (represented by a pile of flour) without the sponge-like structure of a healthy soil food web, while soaking into a slice of bread (representing the soil) without losing a drop to run-off. Tracy also had
a set of slides to accompany her demonstration. But the best part was when she pulled out the baggies of soil from her own ranch. It was clear to see the change in color and texture as the gray lifeless soil became brown and crumbly after 2 passes, and amazing rich, dark and fragrant after more passes of the cattle. Texas Land Conservation Conference HMI attended the Texas Land Conservation Conference at the beginning of March in Austin, Texas. This conference is especially for The Texas Land Trusts, their boards and staffs, but all are welcome to attend. HMI worked with some of our Texas practitioners to develop a panel presentation titled “Regenerative Agriculture Practices that Create Healthy Land and Sustainable Incomes.” HMI Program Manager Peggy Cole started with a couple of short stories about the power of Holistic Management, then introduced our wonderful panel of Robert Potts, Casey Wade, Joseph Fitzsimons, Dr. Chase Curry and Dr. Richard Teague.
Holistic Management and Regenerative Agriculture
HMI is pleased to have offered assistance in the development of the formal Regenerative Agriculture definition that has just been released by the Regenerative Agriculture Initiative at California State University at Chico as well as the Carbon Underground and 56 other leading organizations from over 100 countries working in this critical field. The regenerative agriculture definition notes: “Specifically, Regenerative Agriculture is a holistic land management practice that leverages the power of photosynthesis in plants to close the carbon cycle, and build soil health, crop resilience and nutrient density. Regenerative agriculture improves soil health, primarily through the practices that increase soil organic matter. This not only aids in increasing soil biota diversity and health, but increases biodiversity both above and below the soil surface, while increasing both water holding capacity and sequestering carbon at greater depths, thus drawing down climate-damaging levels of atmospheric CO2, and improving soil structure to reverse civilization-threatening human-caused soil loss. Research continues to reveal the damaging effects to soil from tillage, applications of agricultural chemicals and salt based fertilizers, and carbon mining. Regenerative Agriculture reverses this paradigm to build for the future.” In particular 4 main practices are noted as critical to regenerative agriculture including: 1. No-till/minimum-till 2. Soil fertility building practices like cover crops and applying compost 3. Increasing active biological systems on working landscapes through increased biodiversity through such practices as polyseeding, intercropping, hedgerows, etc.
4. Well-managed grazing practices to build soil fertility and increase health and diversity of biological systems. The need for moving beyond organics to regenerative agriculture is best summed up by Ronnie Cummins, head of the Organic Consumers Association, “Organic food keeps people healthy. Regenerative agriculture keeps the planet healthy.”
UK Grazing/Financial Planning Course
Twenty-three participants from all over the United Kingdom participated in the Advanced Grazing and Financial Planning course offered by ReGenAg UK and Rob Havard co-sponsored by HMI on January 16–18, 2017 in Worcestershire. These participants manage 12,377 acres. 100% of the participants noted in a post-program survey that they would change practices as a result of this program. The instructor for the course was HMI Certified Educator Tony McQuail from Ontario, Canada, assisted by Rob Havard, a Holistic Management grazier from the UK. There was much appreciation for the practical knowledge shared by both Tony and Rob, which helped participants learn more quickly the key principles and practices for holistic financial and grazing planning. Thanks to Natasha Giddings of ReGenAg UK for a great job of coordinating this event.
Holistic Management in the Heartland
HMI collaborated with Practical Farmers of Iowa to offer a twoday whole farm financial planning for experienced fruit and vegetable farmers at Strawberry Point, Iowa. This course provided key financial principles that help you learn how to work on your business, not just in your business. 8 participants influencing 250 acres worked on developing a financial plan and identifying ways to implement and monitor that plan. They also learned the key economic analysis tools for improved financial decisions for both annual budgets and for long term investment so that they can make financial decisions and plans toward the mission and values of their farm to create a sustainable business. Cindy Dvergsten was the Certified Educator teaching this course which was held in conjunction with the PFI Beginning Farmer Retreat. 100% of the participants increased their ability to determine viable enterprises on their farms, getting the profit they need from their farms, and prioritizing their investments in their farms. 100% said they intended to develop or adapt their financial plans as a result of this training.
The Ethics and Participation Needed For Cross-Movement Coalitions and between generations. Only governments prodded by their citizens can act to limit risks posed by technology or clean up the mess afterward. Only governments acting on a public mandate can license corporations and control their activities for the public benefit over the long-term. Only governments can create the financial wherewithal to rebuild
ecologically sound cities and dependable public transportation systems. And only governments acting with an informed public can set standards for the use of common property resources, including the air, water, wildlife, and soils.” Thus, it should go without saying that environmental coalitions must confront governments at the local, state and federal
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 17
levels to enforce the values and ethics that underlay their policies, while always recognizing that the higher forces of wisdom, love, compassion, understanding, and empathy resolve what science cannot, because science alone will never be able to offer a reason for sustaining the planet and its inhabitants. Num ber 173
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Certified
Educators
The following Certified Educators listed have been trained to teach and coach individuals in Holistic Management. 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 and to seek out opportunities for staying current with the latest developments in Holistic Management.
U N I T E D S TAT E S CALIFORNIA
Lee Altier *College of Agriculture, CSU
400 West First St., Chico, CA 95929-0310 laltier@csuchico.edu • 530/636-2525 Owen Hablutzel 4235 W. 63rd St., Los Angeles, CA 90043 310/567-6862 • go2owen@gmail.com Richard King 1675 Adobe Rd., Petaluma, CA 94954 rking1675@gmail.com • 707/217-2308 (c) 707/769-1490 (h) Kelly Mulville P.O. Box 23, Paicines, CA 95043 707/431-8060 • kmulville@gmail.com Donald D. Nelson 11728 Shafer Ave., Red Bluff, CA 96080-8994 208/301-5066 • nelson-don1@hotmail.com Rob Rutherford 4757 Bridgecreek Rd., San Luis Obispo, CA 93401 805/544-5781 (h) • 805/550-4858 (c) robtrutherford@gmail.com
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COLORADO Joel Benson P.O. Box 4924 Buena Vista, CO 81211 719/221-1547 • joel@holisticeffect.com Cindy Dvergsten 17702 County Rd. 23, Dolores, CO 81323 970/882-4222 • 970/739-2445 (c) wnc@gobrainstorm.net Katie Miller 22755 E Garrett Rd, Calhan, CO 80808 970/310-0852 • heritagebellefarms@gmail.com
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MICHIGAN
Larry Dyer 1113 Klondike Ave, Petoskey, MI 49770 231/347-7162 (h) • 231/881-2784 (c) ldyer3913@gmail.com MISSISSIPPI Preston Sullivan 610 Ed Sullivan Lane NE, Meadville, MS 39653 prestons@telepak.net 601/384-5310 (h) • 601/835-6124 (c)
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MONTANA
Amy Driggs 1551 Burma Road Eureka, MT 59917 208/310-6664 adriggs@ldagmachinery.com Roland Kroos 4926 Itana Circle, Bozeman, MT 59715 406/522-3862 406/581-3038 (c) kroosing@msn.com Cliff Montagne Montana State University 1105 S. Tracy, Bozeman, MT 59715 406/599-7755 (c) • montagne@montana.edu
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NEBRASKA Paul Swanson 5155 West 12th St., Hastings, NE 68901 402/463-8507 • 402/705-1241 (c) swanson5155@windstream.net
20 IN PRACTICE
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Ralph Tate 1109 Timber Dr., Papillion, NE 68046 402/932-3405 • 402/250-8981 (c) Tater2d2@cox.net NEW HAMPSHIRE Seth Wilner 24 Main Street, Newport, NH 03773 603/863-4497 (h) • 603/863-9200 (w) 603/543-7169 (c) seth.wilner@unh.edu NEW MEXICO
Ann Adams Holistic Management International 5941 Jefferson St. NE, Suite B Albuquerque, NM 87109 505/842-5252 anna@holisticmanagement.org Kirk Gadzia P.O. Box 1100, Bernalillo, NM 87004 505/263-8677 (c) • kirk@rmsgadzia.com Jeff Goebel 1033 N. Gabaldon Rd., Belen, NM 87002 541/610-7084 • goebel@aboutlistening.com Kathy Harris Holistic Management International 5941 Jefferson St. NE, Suite B Albuquerque, NM 87109 505/842-5252 kathyh@holisticmanagement.org
NEW YORK Craig Leggett 6143 SR 9, Chestertown, NY 12817 518/494-2324 (h) • 970/946-1771 (c) craigrleggett@gmail.com Erica Frenay Shelterbelt Farm 200 Creamery Rd., Brooktondale, NY 14817 607/539-6512 (h) • 607/342-3771 (c) info@shelterbeltfarm.com Elizabeth Marks 1024 State Rt. 66, Ghent, NY 12075 518/828-4385 x107 (w) • 518/567-9476 (c) Elizabeth.marks@ny.usda.gov Phillip Metzger 120 Thompson Creek Rd., Norwich, NY 13815 607/334-2407 (h) • pmetzger17@gmail.com
Tracy Litle 1277 S CR 305, Orange Grove, TX 78372 361/537-3417 (c) • tjlitle@hotmail.com Peggy Maddox 9460 East FM 1606, Hermleigh, TX 79526 325/226-3042 (c) • westgift@hughes.net Katherine Napper Ottmers 313 Lytle Street, Kerrville, TX 78028 830/896-1474 • katherineottmers@icloud.com CD Pounds 753 VZ CR 1114 Fruitvale, TX 75127 214/568-3377 • cdpounds@live.com Peggy Sechrist 106 Thunderbird Ranch Road Fredericksburg, TX 78624 830/456-5587 (c) • peggysechrist@gmail.com
NORTH DAKOTA Joshua Dukart 2539 Clover Place, Bismarck, ND 58503 701/870-1184 • Joshua_dukart@yahoo.com
WISCONSIN Heather Flashinski 16294 250th Street, Cadott, WI 54727 715/289-4896 (w) • 715/379-3742 (c) grassheather@hotmail.com Larry Johnson W886 State Rd. 92, Brooklyn, WI 53521-9102 608/455-1685 • 608/957-2935 (c) larrystillpointfarm@gmail.com Laura Paine N893 Kranz Rd., Columbus, WI 53925 920/623-4407 (h) • 608/338-9039 (c) lkpaine@gmail.com
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OREGON Angela Boudro PO Box 3444, Central Point, OR 97502 541/ 890-4014 • angelaboudro@gmail.com SOUTH DAKOTA Randal Holmquist 4870 Cliff Drive, Rapid City, SD 57702 605/730-0550 randy@zhvalley.com
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TEXAS
Bellows *NorthLisaCentral Texas College
1525 W. California St., Gainesville, TX 76240-4636 940/736-3996 (c) • 940/668-7731 ext. 4346 (o) lbellows@nctc.edu Guy Glosson 6717 Hwy. 380, Snyder, TX 79549 806/237-2554 • glosson@caprock-spur.com
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For more information about or application forms for the HMI’s Certified Educator Training Programs, contact Ann Adams or visit our website: www.holisticmanagement.org. associate educators provide * These educational services to their communities and peer groups.
I N T E R N AT I O N A L AUSTRAILIA Judi Earl “Glen Orton” 3843 Warialda Rd. Coolatai, NSW 2402 61-409-151-969 (c) • judi_earl@bigpond.com Paul Griffiths PO Box 186, Mudgee, NSW 2850 612-6373-3078 paul@holisticmudgee.com Graeme Hand 150 Caroona Lane, Branxholme, VIC 3302 61-3-5578-6272 (h) • 61-4-1853-2130 (c) graeme.hand@bigpond.com Dick Richardson “Spring Valley,” 165 Ironbark Lane Frogmore, Boorowa NSW 2586 61-0-429069001 (w) • 61-0-263856224 (h) dick@dickrichardson.com.au Jason Virtue P.O. Box 75 Cooran QLD 4569 61-0-754851997 • jason@spiderweb.com.au Brian Wehlburg Pine Scrub Creek, Kindee, NSW 2446 61-2-6587-4353 (h) • 61 04087 404 431 (c) brian@insideoutsidemgt.com.au CANADA Don Campbell Box 817 Meadow Lake, SK S0X 1Y6 306/236-6088 • 320/240-7660 (c) doncampbell@sasktel.net Ralph Corcoran Box 36, Langbank, SK S0G 2X0 306/532-4778 rlcorcoran@sasktel.net
May / June 2017
Blain Hjertaas Box 760, Redvers, Saskatchewan SOC 2HO 306/452-3882 • bhjer@sasktel.net Brian Luce RR #4, Ponoka, AB T4J 1R4 403/783-6518 • lucends@cciwireless.ca Noel McNaughton 5704-144 St NW, Edmonton, AB T6H 4H4 780/432-5492; noel@mcnaughton.ca Tony McQuail 86016 Creek Line, RR#1, Lucknow, ON N0G 2H0 519/528-2493 • mcqufarm@hurontel.on.ca Len Pigott Box 222, Dysart, SK, SOH 1HO 306/432-4583 • JLPigott@sasktel.net Kelly Sidoryk Box 72, Blackroot, A B TOB OLO 780/872-9761 (h) • 780/875-4418 (w) 780/872-2585 (c) • sidorykk@yahoo.ca
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KENYA Christine C. Jost ICRAF, Box 30677, Nairobi 00100 254-736-715-417 (c) • c.jost@cgiar.org NAMIBIA Usiel Seuakouje Kandjii P. O . Box 23319, Windhoek 9000 264-812840426 (c) • 264-61-244028 (h) kandjiiu@gmail.com Colin Nott PO Box 11977, Windhoek 9000 264-81-2418778 (c) • 264-61-225085 (h) canott@iafrica.com.na
Wiebke Volkmann P. O . Box 9285, Windhoek 264-61-225183 or 264-81-127-0081 wiebke@afol.com.na NEW ZEALAND John King P. O. Box 12011, Beckenha Christchurch 8242 64-276-737-885 john@succession.co.nz
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SOUTH AFRICA Wayne Knight Solar Addicts, P.O. Box 537, Mokopane, 0600 South Africa 27-0-15-491-5286 +27-87-550-0255 (h) +27-82-805-3274 (c) wayne@theknights.za.net Jozua Lambrechts PO Box 5070, Helderberg, Somerset West, 7135 +27-0-21 -851 5669 +27-0-08-310-1940 Ian Mitchell-Innes 14 Chevril Road, Ladysmith, 3370 +27-83-262-9030 ian@mitchell-innes.co.za UNITED KINGDOM Philip Bubb 32 Dart Close, St. Ives, Cambridge, PE27 3JB 44-1480-496-2925 (h) +44 7837 405483 (w) pjbubb99@gmail.com
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VISIT WWW.SHADEHAVEN.NET (855) 247 - 4233 Num ber 173
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CORRAL CORRAL DESIGNS DESIGNS
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How can RMS, LLC help you? On-Site Consulting: All aspects of holistic management, including financial, ecological and human resources. Training Events: Regularly scheduled and customized training sessions provided in a variety of locations. Ongoing Support: Follow-up training sessions and access to continued learning opportunities and developments. Land Health Monitoring: Biological monitoring of rangeland and riparian ecosystem health. Property Assessment: Land health and productivity assessment with recommended solutions.
22 ININ PRACTICE 22 PRACTICE
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Ph: 573/683-3880, Fax: 573/683-6227 www.kinseyag.com • info@kinseyag.com
Num ber 173
h IN PRACTICE 23
Nonprofit U.S POSTAGE
PAID Jefferson City, MO PERMIT 210
Healthy Land. Healthy Food. Healthy Lives.
a publication of Holistic Management International 5941 Jefferson St. NE, Suite B Albuquerque, NM 87109 USA
RETURN SERVICE REQUESTED
please send address corrections before moving so that we do not incur unnecessary postal fees
DEVELOPMENT CORNER Meet the Herd Quitters
O
n March 10, 2017, the “Herd Quitters” met for a two-day seminar on Holistic Management and soil health presented by Josh Dukart, an HMI Certified Educator. HMI staff members Jennifer Klass, Director of Development, and Kelly Curtis, Director of Operations, provided HMI outreach to the audience which included farmers, graziers, agriculture retailers and agricultural consultants.
Jim Crum, Greg Rebman, Walter Lynn, Kathy Kaesebier, and Rick Kaesebier The Herd Quitters are a group of Illinois land stewards with a common bond of creating diversity on their farms through cover crops, small grains, livestock and other Holistic Management tools. Their desire to improve soil utilizing Holistic Management practices drove them to create this group of like-minded land stewards with the collective goal of assembling a community to share ideas and knowledge, as well as failures and successes. This dynamic group answers the call to action many Illinois farmers feel when shifting from typical Illinois farming. Helping lead the charge of the Herd Quitters is Walter Lynn. Walter is a life-long Illinoisan and is currently vice-chair on HMI’s Board of
Directors, which he has served on for three years. His dedication to Holistic Management is evident in his continuous collaborative and outreach efforts. Kathy Kaesebier, a founding member of the Herd Quitters, says “bringing Josh Dukart and HMI to Central Illinois [was] an opportunity to learn to better improve our soil management skills and economic situations so we can Josh Dukart teaching about improve our farms.” Holistic Planned Grazing. Josh Dukart considers himself not only a facilitator of Holistic Management but also a practitioner working with individuals as well as groups. He has practiced Holistic Management on his own ranch in Hazen, North Dakota since 2008. Josh’s combination of enthusiasm and critical thinking challenges traditional thought processes while developing a confidence in Holistic Management decision-making. His current ranching involvement provides hand-on experiences, which allow him to integrate his educator knowledge and real-life practices into his teachings. HMI is always excited and thankful to be part of the lives of those who support healthy land, healthy food and healthy lives. Special thanks to the Herd Quitters, Illinois supporters and Josh Dukart for helping us to educate people in regenerative agriculture for healthy land and thriving communities.
These Illinois agriculturalists enjoyed learning from Josh Dukart and from each other.
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