#192, IN PRACTICE July/August 2020

In Practice

A Holistic Response to a Crisis

like COVID-19

BY ANN ADAMS

On a “normal” day people make hundreds of decisions. Because they are “routine” decisions, we don’t really think about them. They are part of our daily “policies and procedures.” It may be that we stop for a cup of coffee at a certain coffee shop or we stop at the gym in the evening.

In the spring of 2020, that “normal” changed for everyone in the developed world in one degree or another. Suddenly, so much of what we took for granted has become disrupted and a potentially dangerous activity. Of course, this is not the first time that the world has had to

deal with an epidemic, and we have a lot of resources and knowledge to aid us. And, because it has been awhile since we are on this global emergency level footing, our decision-making must be at a more conscious level for us to survive and potentially find the opportunities for positive outcomes. It is a time that calls for great faith, vigilance, and adaptation.

In March 2020 I was on a “known” path. Today, I find myself questioning almost every action when I go “outside.” I am blessed to live on land where I can graze my goats so my daily routine of taking them out to pasture in uninterrupted. Likewise, because I was already working from home, my daily work routine has not been severely interrupted, although the number of zoom calls has increased exponentially.

But, my “outside” is going into town for groceries or going to the post office. Our family has had to develop new policies and procedures based on what we believe to be safe, not necessarily what we are hearing from the news (since those procedures continue to evolve). The toughest part is staying away from extended family, like the grandkids. There’s a temptation to address those short-term needs in ways that may have long-term consequences.

That’s why having some formal decisionmaking process that forces you to consider the big picture and the long-term outcomes is so critical in an emergency. I have found myself taking the time to question each facet of my life based on responding to new realities. Whom do we allow into our homes? Whom do we visit? What precautions should we take when we go

On the business level, we have to consider

customer changes, labor shortages, and delays in vendor and customer distribution. HMI held a webinar on “Effective Decision-Making during Challenging Times.” During the webinar we dove into the Holistic Management® DecisionMaking questions and how they helped people determine if they were going to invest in multi-

species pasture cropping or shift their grazing operation to a stocker operation or any number of other options. While this holistic decisionmaking tool has been helpful in less-stressful times, so many people are saying how helpful it is to have this tool in a time of emergency. For that reason, I want to articulate what this decision-making process does to help you to respond to an emergency or crisis and adapt to new realities.

The connection between soil health and human health is now a key focus of regenerative agriculture. Learn how the Freelands are improving their soil health on page 8 and how some Holistic Management ® Certified Educators are working to engage more Holistic Management practitioners as Soil Health Champions on page 2.

“We all are very concerned about how this virus is and could potentially affect our loved ones and communities, and we need to keep the big picture in mind as we determine the appropriate course of action.”

Holistic Soil Health Champions

BY CHRISTINA ALLDAY-BONDY

HMI educates people in regenerative agriculture for healthy land and thriving communities.

STAFF

Ann Adams

Executive Director

Wayne Knight Director of Strategic Initiatives

Kathy Harris Program Director

Carrie Stearns Director of Communications & Outreach

Stephanie Von Ancken Program Manager

Oris Salazar Program Assistant

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Walter Lynn, Chair

Avery Anderson-Sponholtz, Secretary

Gerardo Bezanilla

Kevin Boyer

Jonathan Cobb

Guy Glosson

Ariel Greenwood

Colin Nott

Daniel Nuckols

Breanna Owen

Brad Schmidt

Jim Shelton

Kelly Sidoryk

HOLISTIC MANAGEMENT® IN PRACTICE

(ISSN: 1098-8157) is published six times a year by:

Holistic Management International 2425 San Pedro Dr. NE, Ste A Albuquerque, NM 87110 505/842-5252, fax: 505/843-7900; email: hmi@holisticmanagement.org.; website: www.holisticmanagement.org

Copyright © 2020

Holistic Management® is a registered trademark of Holistic Management International

One of the unifying themes of Holistic Management is care for the soil. In biological monitoring we check (among other things) the percent bare ground, evidence of animals, hints of soil movement/erosion, changes in plant species and numbers of perennials. All of these relate to the five soil health principles: 1) maintain soil cover; 2) minimize disturbance, and inputs (which speaks loudly to our financial plan;) 3) keep a living root; 4) maximize biodiversity; and 5) farm with animals. If you are engaged in Holistic Management and an advocate for soil health—or willing to be—read on.

In cooperation with the National Association of Conservation Districts (NACD) the New Mexico Healthy Soil Working Group is looking for Holistic Management practitioners, particularly in New Mexico, to participate in the Soil Health Champions Network.

The NACD created the Soil Health Champions program to identify advocates for soil health across the United States and its territories. (So wherever you live in the US you can join the Champions Network.) “Champion” is intended to emphasize advocacy and continuing curiosity about soil health more than mastery. There is so much to learn! Soil stewards and scientists make important discoveries every year.

Each Champion is associated with his/her conservation district. A board vote is not required, just an informal agreement to participate. Member Champions and their districts receive quarterly emails with information about the activities of Champions across the country.

Champions only have a few responsibilities: practicing soil health principles, outreach in their communities and sharing their activities with NACD. Advocacy can take many forms, for example, open gate events, coffee shop meetups, workshops, kids programs, neighborhood

meetings, or simply sharing on their website or at their market booth that they are a soil health advocate, to name a few.

In return, Champions receive membership in an exclusive network, a quarterly soil health bulletin, and national recognition for their work in soil health in NACD publications. In New Mexico the Healthy Soil Working Group is hosting monthly webinars for champions and others.

Also in support of the Network, NACD holds educational conference calls, provides technical and promotional resources, and offers scholarships to Champions to attend topical meetings. NACD also manages a closed Facebook group in which members can share photos, videos, articles and updates on their extraordinary work to improve America’s soils.

I’m sure, like mine, your desired future includes both a healthy human community and a healthy ecosystem. The Soil Health Champions Network provides an opportunity not only for outreach, but also for learning and sharing insights with your local community while being connected to the larger soil health movement. The more Holistic Management practitioners show up in programs like the Champions the more influence we will have in conversations about soil health and ecosystem resilience.

For more information visit the NACD website. If in New Mexico, you may also email or call me, Christina Allday-Bondy (512) 658-2051, or Jeff Goebel (541) 610-7084— both HMI Certified Educators, Soil Health Champions, and co-founders of the New Mexico Healthy Soil Working Group (nmhealthysoil.org.)

Soil Health Workshop in Montana.

Keeping It in the Family— My Start Down the Path of Succession Planning

BY SARAH PARMAR

Last summer, I told my colleagues that I would be taking a sabbatical from work to develop a succession plan for my family ranch, a 300-head cow-calf operation in southern Arizona. “Succession plan” was such a nebulous term that I felt like I needed dedicated time just to figure out what it meant before I could create one. It was overdue. In 2013, one week before my son’s birth, my father had an accident while riding that could have easily killed him, and nearly did. I already knew of cases where a sudden death or medical emergency had cost a family their ranch. We had been lucky, but thoughts of how things might have gone haunted me. However, I had my own subsequent turmoil emerge in the form of a challenging divorce, and succession planning went back to the bottom of the priority list. It wasn’t until my parents shared

out how to be a non-wealthy absentee rancher, because it is my desire to move onto the ranch when I am able.

I have come to believe that every family’s situation is unique and therefore every succession plan is uniquely challenging. This may be one of the reasons we put it off for so long: because it feels overwhelming and we’re not quite sure where to begin. I’d like to share how I got started and key resources that I found on my journey.

Prepare Yourself First

Many experts will tell you that this process begins by talking with everyone who has a stake in the future. I almost agree, but I can’t tell you how glad I am that I took the time to prepare myself for those conversations. First, by getting really clear on my own hopes and goals, skills I have and what I still need, and what I am willing to put into working toward my goals. But just as importantly, I did some deep thinking about the dynamics of my family.

it felt a bit strange to propose ground rules for our conversation, we all understood what an important talk this was and wanted it to be productive (we also had this talk on a 14-hour drive, so the stakes were extra high to keep the conversation positive!). I took notes and shared those back afterward to give everyone an opportunity to ensure that they felt their thoughts

their decision to move off the ranch within a few years that I knew I needed to make planning a priority, especially if I wanted my son to have the same opportunities I had.

Striving to be a Non-Wealthy Absentee Rancher

I am the sixth generation to be fortunate enough to grow up on our ranch and I am an only child, so succession planning seems simple enough—no messy financial equitability to be fought over. However, I am also a single mom living nearly 1,000 miles away, with shared child custody that will keep me from being able to live on the ranch for another twelve years. I joke that part of my succession planning is trying to figure

I worked through the document Farm Succession and Transfer: Strategies for the Junior Generation from Land for Good, which forced me to identify the different communications styles of the people involved. Does one person speak over others? Does one person tend to think big picture while another immediately dives into details and logistics? You’re going to be talking about uncomfortable and emotional things, so helping yourself and others have space to speak and listen is critical.

Set Ground Rules and Establish Shared Principles

For our first conversation, my mother, father, and I agreed on a set of questions to work through and each person took turns answering. Our ground rules were that there would be no interrupting, but there could be clarifying questions after the person finished, and that if someone raised something that they felt was important, but not relevant to the immediate discussion, we would write it down to make sure that person knew it wouldn’t be “lost.” While

were accurately reflected. I know that for some families, having a neutral third party to facilitate can be incredibly helpful.

We agreed that we could develop a shared vision for the next twenty years and work backward according to certain principles. For example, the ranch should continue to be financially self-sustaining. Also, if animal care was compromised or land stewardship was suffering irreversibly during my absentee management, then we should sell. From that conversation, we began to develop a game plan for the three primary components of succession:

1. Transfer of management

2. Transfer of ownership

3. Division of income

We focused on transfer of management first because my parents plan to move off of the ranch before I am able to move on, so we all agreed that it would be imperative for me to fill gaps in institutional knowledge as much as possible while they were still on the ranch. However, for families where there are multiple heirs or other family stakeholders, division of income may be the first thing to tackle.

As part of our management transition plan, we agreed that for one year, my father would send me a daily email summary of what was done on the ranch, and we have now begun weekly planning calls. We agreed to begin making joint management decisions in years two and three and my fiancé and I will take on

The author’s father and son ride horses just ahead of her on a trail on the working lands where she grew up, Sycamore Canyon Ranch in southern Arizona.

The author and her father saddling up in 2018.

Communication Skills for Resolving Conflict

BY VAL FARMER

Before launching off into a discussion of communication, I want to describe how important it is to families and couples who have chosen a life in agriculture. What you are doing is complex, and risky. It requires your very best business and personal communication skills. It also is crucial to help you make a transition from hands-on production oriented management to the next level of success in ag—human resource management.

How you integrate marriage and ranching, how you raise a family when the home and the workplace are the same, how you prepare your children for success in life or as potential partners and successors, and how you organize and communicate with your business partners and employees makes a huge difference in success or failure.

I’ve written about these topics before but in this article I am going to review the basics on what it takes to be a good communicator. It is not easy.

If you and your associates follow these principles, you will 1) unleash creativity and innovation, 2) arrive at the best decisions for your operation and 3) you and your loved ones will enjoy each other’s company and form a united team as you pursue your treasured goals and dreams. That is a pretty good promise.

The key to problem-solving is solving the other person’s problem as you solve your own. When you come to a common definition of the problem and understand each other’s viewpoints, then you are in a position to propose and generate solutions. Too many people skip the understanding and listening part and jump into problem-solving. That doesn’t work well.

Setting the Stage for Communications

The communication process should be positive, not an ordeal. It is vitally important to know how to disagree with another’s point of view without being disagreeable. Here are some things to consider:

• Time and place. Sensitivity to time and location should be take into account. Stress levels, privacy, and a partner’s readiness to engage on the topic should be considered.

Why Conflict Can Be a Good Thing

• Conflict indicates genuine concern. It represents the values and assumptions that underlie emotions. Emotions, even raw anger, are a sign that people care.

• Conflict shows engagement. People feel safe enough to bring up their ideas with the goal of working through their differences. For this to occur, the process has to be respectful and courteous.

• Conflict gives participants a chance to clarify their own and other’s emotions and values.

• When problems aren’t confronted, conflict can escalate and easily grow in intensity and magnitude.

• While engaging in conflict resolution, concerns that are large in scope emerge. Better ideas and solutions are generated as a result.

Conflict resolution is difficult when parties often jump too quickly into finding solutions without taking time to really understand each other.

By communicating and understanding each other, each party can learn about the perceptions, needs, motivations and desires of the other. How? It is the art of asking good questions and really listening to the answers. In addition, it requires identifying and explaining one’s own interests, perspective and feelings in such a way that your partner can understand your point of view.

• Listen first to understand. By listening to your partner first, you may prevent saying things based on wrong assumptions. If your partner feels heard, it will lower his or her defensiveness when it is your turn to take the floor. Understanding each other is a prelude to problem-solving and negotiations. Solutions have to fit both of your needs. Try to learn and understand what problem your partner needs to have solved. Workable solutions have to fit both of your needs.

• State positive intent. Affirm love and concern for the relationship and willingness to be constructive and resolve the issue to his or her satisfaction. Acknowledge the validity of your partner’s point of view and indicate your willingness to listen.

• One person has the floor at a time. Whoever is speaking deserves respect, a good listener, and the right to be heard and understood. Only one person should speak at a time. If the listener asks to have the floor and his or her request is granted, the former speaker becomes the new listener. Asking for the floor is effective if you have first demonstrated that you understand. Let the speaker finish his or her thoughts before requesting the floor. Don’t use it as a ploy to take over the conversation. The speaker is the judge on whether or not to yield the floor. Both speaker and listener should use conversational etiquette to offer or request the floor when the timing is right.

“I see communication as a large umbrella that covers and affects all that goes on between human beings. Once a human being arrived on earth, communication is the largest single factor determining what kind of relationships he makes with others and what happens in the world about him. How he manages his survival, how he develops intimacy, how productive he is, how he makes sense, how he connects with his own divinity – all are largely dependent on his communication skills.”

—Virginia Satir, Peoplemaking.

“Communicating is not a matter of being right but starting a flow of energy between two people that can result in mutual understanding.”

—John A. Sanford

Guidelines for the Speaker

Part of communicating is to speak so the defenses of the other party are reduced. I’ve seen people state their truth in such an aggressive and abrasive manner that communication breaks down immediately. An action/reaction cycle defeats any meaningful communication almost from the start.

My usual advice is to be aware of body language, tone of voice, and to shorten up points to fit the attention span of the listener. I also encourage speakers to invite summaries that show understanding and to soften up communications by using conditional and tentative expressions that show respect and openness to other’s ideas. Non-abrasive words and expressions can be tactfully chosen to minimize defensiveness.

• Soft start up. Be calm. Ease into the discussion by stating what you agree on. Describe your feelings while consciously using approachable body language and a soft, caring tone of voice. Anger or emphatic language is likely to create defensiveness and anger in return. Describe problems in a way that preserves your partner’s dignity or self-respect.

• Minimize inflammatory or exaggerated statements. Avoid verbal expressions that can be disputed or be considered offensive or judgmental. Choose milder expressions that convey the meaning so that the listener isn’t distracted by the way something was said, factual inaccuracies or disrespect.

• Use “conditional” language. Start with conditional phrases such as, “It seems to me.”, or “You may feel differently but this how I feel”… By being tentative in your assertions, you acknowledge that there are two sides to the issue and you will be willing to hear your partner’s side at the appropriate time. By changing the way something is said, a tone of respect and openness is communicated. This is done

by qualifying one’s comments, by using tentative language and by acknowledging the validity of another’s point of view. A speaker communicates effectively when he or she becomes comfortable with softening up their language and opinions.

• Don’t overload. Be aware of your partner’s attention span. Pause periodically and ask for feedback that indicates understanding. Watch for signs of emotion that might interfere with his or her ability to concentrate. Be willing to yield the floor if your partner is unable to concentrate or listen.

• Stay on topic. Keep your focus on the problem you are trying to resolve. Be specific. Give “here and now” examples. Secondary issues will invite unneeded complexity to your objective.

• Develop an emotional vocabulary. Good communicators develop an emotional vocabulary to express their inner feelings and experiences. Describing emotions, talking from the heart, and giving nonjudgmental attention to others feelings promotes connection and unity.

People need to really open up and say their true feelings. With the miracle of dialogue and understanding, bridges can be crossed, helping hands are extended and genuine caring is shared.

The truth hurts. The truth also heals. The art of communicating is to tell the truth so that it can be understood. The art of communicating is to tell your truth with compassion. But the truth needs to be told. Even the best listeners can’t fill in the gap of what is not shared.

• Allow time for processing information. Be willing to let go and allow time for your partner to think about what was said and to re-engage on the topic when he or she is ready to respond.

• End on a positive note. Close with an expression of love and appreciation for the opportunity to discuss a difficult subject. Describe your hopeful outlook that further discussion will bring you closer together in resolving this issue. How a person feels about you after a discussion is more important than the problem you are trying to solve.

Guidelines for the Listener

Listening skills are important because:

• Listening communicates a willingness to learn about the speaker’s needs and feelings. To really know what those needs are is the first step to meeting those needs. Without empathic listening, we may

miss the mark in meeting the speaker’s most important emotional needs.

• Listening shows a willingness to engage in a reciprocal relationship where you allow your thoughts, feelings and decisions to be open to influence and persuasion. It palpably demonstrates equality in the marriage. It shows a recognition that accommodation and negotiations are essential to resolving differences.

• Listening demonstrates caring, a sacrifice of time and attention and a conscious effort to join together in unity. It is through listening that emotional intimacy is nurtured and true support and sustenance are exchanged. It is by listening that problems are understood and conflicts are resolved.

Listening takes time. Listening is an act of love. It is a gift to others who count on you as a trusted confidant and as a gentle and loving source of feedback. Become vulnerable to the truth of your partners’ and associates’ lives, knowing full well that what you hear may require

change, share burdens and to reorder priorities.

Why is listening hard? If listening opens the pathway to problem-solving and unity of effort, why is it so hard?

It could be that some people are hesitant because of what it may require. It does take a loving and humble heart to take responsibility for caring about what one learns. To listen well and not respond will cause greater pain than if the message was never heard.

In marriage, partnership or business relationship the choice has already been made to give up part of one’s autonomy and to have other lives intertwined and interdependent with yours. To avoid dealing with the details and reality of other’s inner emotional life out of laziness, selfishness, power or fear can be interpreted as a lack of caring and, at worst, a form of desertion.

Listening isn’t easy. Others struggle because they don’t know how to listen. Listening is hard. Good listening requires the ability to

CONTINUED ON PAGE 6

“The eye can threaten like a loaded pistol, or can insult like a hissing or kicking; or in an altered mood, can, by beams of kindness, make the heart dance with joy.”

—Emerson

“What we serve is what we learn to love, and what we love takes our time, and what takes our time is what we love.”

—Marvin J. Ashton

Communication Skills for Resolving Conflict

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5

detach from one’s own strong emotions, desires, and goals in order to emotionally enter another’s world—to understand and care about it. Here are some reasons why good-hearted people struggle with listening.

• Emotional flooding. People become poor listeners when they are flooded with their own thoughts and emotions while their partners/spouse/employees are speaking. They can’t put themselves in someone else’s shoes because they are too worried about making their own shoes fit better. Feelings of, “What about me?” sometimes surge to the surface, despite intentions to listen. This may be connected with their own emotional history and lack of trust that his or her own needs will not be met. Sometimes the inability to concentrate can be dealt with by being listened to first. Once he or she has expressed his or her issues and felt listened to, the emotional intrusion will hopefully subside.

• Overload. Another problem with poor listening is being overloaded with too much information. This can be as simple as the speaker going on and on, well beyond the limits of one’s attention span. Sometimes it could be the significance or emotional intensity of what is being said that can produce an overload. This problem can be corrected by interrupting the speaker and letting him or her know that you need to summarize your understanding before he or she proceeds further. This will help the speaker know the limits of your attention span. You can also help the speaker know when you are starting to lose emotional control and that it is beginning to interfere with your ability to listen.

• Interruptions. Another problem is the unwillingness of the listener to allow the speaker to finish his or her line of thinking before intruding with one’s own ideas or reactions. In ordinary conversations, most of us speak at a rate of between 130 -160 words-a-minute and we can comprehend about twice that much.

What do you think our 300 word a minute mind is doing when the speaker is verbalizing at a “paltry” 130 or 140 words a minute rate? We think our own thoughts, jump ahead, assume we know where the speaker is heading, prepare our rebuttal or helpful advice, and become anxious. Finally, we cut to the chase. We

interrupt with our golden nuggets of wisdom—or worse—our side of the issue before the speaker feels understood.

A speaker is often confronted with a listener jumping in and interrupting with his or her thoughts, opinions, advice, counter-arguments or pearls of wisdom. The speaker doesn’t know whether to listen respectfully and respond to what he or she just heard or to redouble their efforts to be heard. The speaker doesn’t feel listened to and feels frustrated. What do you think the speaker will do?

To become a good listener, learn to control and hold your thoughts by following these simple rules:

1). Listen with a caring heart. Use appropriate body language, tone of voice, and timely and empathic touch to show you care about the message you are hearing. Don’t use body language or tone of voice to show disbelief, contempt, or disinterest in what is being said. Non-verbal communication such as body language, facial expressions, a soft and warm tone of voice and inflection communicate emotion, caring and interest.

What do you believe—a person’s words, their tone of voice or their body language?

Research findings show that if there is a discrepancy between the various modes of communication, 7 percent rely on the words, 38 percent rely on the tone of voice, and 55 percent rely on body language. If the three modes of communication match up and are congruent, belief in words rises to about 33 percent while belief in tone of voice and body language drop to about 33 percent each.

2) When you are listening, your only job is to show understanding. Your purpose in listening isn’t to gather information so you can attack or win an argument with your rebuttal argument.

Being a good listener also doesn’t mean you

are showing agreement with the speaker, only that you understand his or her thoughts and feelings. The time to state your side will come when you gain the floor in the discussion. By really listening, you soften your own heart, learn new ideas, give empathy, communicate interest, show respect, and demonstrate you are open to influence.

This is done by paraphrasing the key points being made. Verify your understanding by checking it out with the speaker on what he or she meant. If in doubt, ask for a clarification or have the point repeated.

Interrupt only if you are feeling overloaded. Let the speaker know when you are being emotionally flooded or overloaded with too much information. Summarize your understanding thus far and then suggest that the speaker continue sharing. Interruptions, except for issues around attention span, are not constructive.

3) Stay in the listener role. You can’t give your own opinion, counter-argument or ask leading questions to slip in your own opinion. The listener needs to avoid interruptions or questions that take the speaker off topic and prematurely disrupt the speaker’s flow of thought.

With no permission to respond, the listener’s power of concentration is totally focused on the understanding the message of the speaker. Without competition from their own thoughts or personal agenda, a listener can process what is being said. It is easier to listen when there is no intention to respond with intelligent, witty or critical remarks.

Ignore or soften up inflammatory comments. If confronted with exaggerations, inaccuracies or provocative statements, choose milder language to summarize the intent of the message and avoid reacting to the way it was given. Use emotional control to detach from your side of the issue until you have gained the floor.

4) Learn to ask open ended questions and draw the speaker out by helping him or her express even deeper meanings that might have been originally intended. Be curious. Be intuitive. “Read” feelings and ask questions that will help draw the speaker out even more. The speaker is the authority on what he or she meant. Accept his or her explanations at face value.

The listener needs to adopt a curious attitude about what the speaker is saying and to gently probe for further details and explanations. By being a sounding board and asking good questions, the speaker can use the listener’s feedback as a springboard to deeper background

“Look into the face of the person to whom you are speaking if you wish to know his real sentiments, for he can command his words more than his countenance.”

—Chesterfield

and share emotional experiences connected to their opinions.

5). Stay in the listener role until the speaker is fully satisfied that he or she has been understood. Make sure to inquire if there is anything else the speaker wants to say on the topic before requesting the floor.

By following these simple rules, you can now turn loose your 300 word-a-minute mind on what your 140-word speaker is saying and do a wonderful job of listening.

An attitude of caring and empathy is just as important as the skill you show in the actual listening process.

Getting to an Agreement

At least 50 percent of the effort in conflict resolution should be in listening and understanding one another. Listening is the first and biggest step. Solving your side only is no solution.

Once that has been accomplished, the question becomes, “Now that we agree on what is wrong, what can we do about it?” This 50 percent is easier because it doesn’t require rules and guidelines. It is time to brainstorm for alternatives. Pros and cons are weighed. You

can interrupt each other, build on each other’s ideas and watch them grow into something bigger and better than either of you considered.

Try hypothetical statements as trial balloons. Be open and receptive to ideas. Look for middle ground or a solution that satisfies both of your needs. Details need to be fleshed out. Thinking time is important. However, the final decisions need to be precise, clear and with specific commitments about how agreements will be implemented.

There are many ways of resolving conflict and each can be successfu—compromise, accommodation, declaring a moratorium, agreeing to disagree, and collaboration. Give a clear commitment and expect the same from the other party.

The plan can be implemented on a trial basis. A time frame is set aside to review how the plan is going and to make any necessary adjustments. Following through and honoring your commitments will lead to further problemsolving and develop a relationship of trust.

Remember: the goal in conflict resolution is to solve the other person’s problem as you solve your own.

Dr. Val Farmer is a published author, public speaker, and consultant and spoke at the 2019 REGENERATE Conference. You can learn more about his work at: http://www. valfarmer.com/home.ec. To purchase one of his books go to: http://www.valfarmer.com/ books.ec.

Communicating with HEART

Hear and understand me

Even if I am wrong, don’t make me wrong

Appreciate the greatness within me

Recognize my positive intent

Tell me the truth with compassion

Smart Debt

BY DAVE PRATT

Alot of people tell me that they want to be “debt free.” They are tired of making big interest payments on land, livestock, machinery and their operating note. They have had too many sleepless nights worrying about making the next payment. They believe that if they didn’t have to borrow money they would be more profitable and financially secure.

But the proper use of debt makes us more profitable, not less. And being debt free doesn’t make us financially secure. In fact, for most of us, short of winning the lottery, the appropriate use of debt is our only realistic path to financial security.

The problem isn’t debt, it’s our misuse of debt. The two most common ways we misuse debt are:

1. We put finance first and economics a distant second.

2. We use debt on the wrong things.

Using debt effectively begins with

understanding the difference between economics and finance. It boils down to this: In economics we ask, “Is this profitable?” In finance we ask, “Can I afford to do it?” If we are going to be smart about our use of debt, economics must come first. If it isn’t profitable you don’t have to worry about how you’ll pay for it, because you shouldn’t do it in the first place.

When Ranching For Profit grads evaluate the profitability of a livestock enterprise they include opportunity interest on the herd as a direct cost in the calculation. If the enterprise has a healthy gross margin it tells us that borrowing money to expand the herd will increase profit. If we haven’t included opportunity interest in our calculation, we can’t be sure if expanding the herd is a good idea.

The other problem is that people use debt on the wrong things. There are two primary places where we put money in our businesses: fixed assets and working capital. Simply put, fixed assets are things we intend to keep (e.g. land, cows, infrastructure, vehicles, equipment). Working capital is the money tied up in things we intend to sell (e.g. calves). Most of us have

most of our money invested in fixed assets. This is the biggest financial problem in agriculture. It’s a problem because when most of our money is tied up in things we intend to keep, we have relatively little to sell and generate very little income relative to the value of our assets. Making matters worse, a lot of the income that we do create gets spent maintaining the fixed assets. That’s why most ranchers are wealthy on their balance sheet and broke in their bank account.

Borrowing to buy fixed assets may be a smart long-term investment strategy, but it might cause you to go belly-up in the short term. We’d be better off to use debt to buy assets that directly produce income.

We shouldn’t be afraid to borrow money, provided the economics of our enterprise is rock-solid and we use the borrowed money to buy income producing assets.

This article was first published on the Ranching for Profit website at: https:// ranchmanagement.com/smart-debt/ and is published by permission.

& LIVESTOCK

Dry Creek Farm and Ranch— Regenerating Soil in South Dakota

BY HEATHER SMITH THOMAS

Shawn Freeland did not grow up on a ranch, but he always liked cattle. “I knew, from the time I was about four or five years old, that I wanted to ranch, but I didn’t have an opportunity for quite a while,” he says. He rode bulls in high school rodeos and worked on a ranch owned by the father of a good friend.

“I went to the sale barn with my buddy one day when I was 19 years old, and saw 10 cows that I liked, and bought them--and didn’t even have a place to keep them. That was the start of it all. I bought the cows on faith; I didn’t have any money. I wrote a bad check and ran to town and started looking for a banker! I was lucky to find a good banker right away, and I took those cows to my friend’s dad’s place. His dad didn’t even know about it either.”

Freeland found a place to keep his cows, kept riding bulls in rodeos through high school and at amateur rodeos. He had a pro-rodeo card but didn’t rodeo professionally; he quit when he was still at his best, partly because he realized he had to choose between the cows or the rodeo, and he wanted to keep the cows. His main work at that time was as a land surveyor.

Surveying Blizzards and Droughts

The ranch he is on now is near Caputa, South Dakota. Shawn and his wife, Kristy, bought the 2,500-acre ranch with Forest Service permit for summer grazing in 2005. Even though it was a dream come true to have a ranch, some of the land had been overgrazed and abused for many years by a series of absentee owners. “It was a struggle when we first got here. It was a diverse place with some irrigated ground, a couple of creeks, and a lot of grassland,” he says.

“At that point, we started ranching the way our neighbors were— calving in January and February and putting up hay all summer. We fed hay all winter to cows that were confined, and then hauled all the manure out. We kept trying to accumulate more land and get bigger and bigger, thinking that would help; my goal was to have 600 cows.”

Calving that time of year when weather was bad and the cows were confined made it very challenging. “I got really good at doctoring calves and diagnosing sick ones—and treating them for scours, pneumonia, diphtheria, etc. Whatever disease they got, I had a bottle in my cabinet for treating it!”

Shawn also never seemed to have enough time to spend with Kristy and their daughters, Riley and Ryan, and the financial picture was also very frustrating—with high equipment costs and veterinary costs.

After a few years of winter calving, they changed their calving date to later in the spring, which enabled them to calve anywhere on the ranch instead of right down on the creek bottom near their house, on contaminated ground. “Our problems with sick calves went away, and we started working with Nature instead of trying to put a square peg in a round hole,” he says.

“We went through several bad winters, including the Atlas blizzard (a rapidly developing blizzard with 70 mile per hour winds and three feet of snow that left ranchers unprepared in October 2013), and this was also a game-changer for us. Atlas was the driving force to enter the SDARL (South Dakota Ag and Rural Leadership). After hearing what the newspapers and community were saying about the cattle losses after the storm, I knew I needed a better voice. SDARL was a tool to get that,” he says.

After the Atlas blizzard, there was criticism about ranchers in the newspapers; the townspeople in nearby Rapid City didn’t understand the challenges of agriculture and taking care of livestock. “Even in our own community, people didn’t understand what happened and thought we should have had our cattle in barns,” he says.

It was a heartbreaking tragedy with the cattle losses, but the saving grace was better cattle prices the next year. Then their area went through an extreme drought in 2016 and 2017. “We were just about up to the 600 cows we wanted. I had gone through a SD Grasslands Coalition grazing

Kristy, Shawn, Riley, and Ryan Freeland

school and figured out some things holistically—and had started down that road. Then when everything was so dry we decided to graze one of our pivots instead of putting up hay. So we had some triticale to graze, but ended up selling some of the cows and leasing some out because we were still short of pasture,” says Shawn.

Agricultural Leadership & Education

These challenges gave them an opportunity to step back and look at what they might do differently. “It also gave me time to travel and go to seminars and workshops. It was like going back to school,” Shawn says. This gave him more confidence to ask questions and learn as much as he could.

“I’d been recruited earlier, to go into the SDARL leadership program, and turned it down the first time, but was then recruited again in 2013 for the 2014–2015 class and decided to do it. This is an 18-month course and you go to meetings around the state once a month and work with different agricultural and legislative issues. You also go to Washington D.C. the first year and then a two-week international trip the second year,” he says.

“This taught me that I could set my place up and leave—and didn’t have to be there all the time. I had to hire a kid to do chores while I was gone, and have him calve for me; it was a 58-day commitment to be gone. The cattle had to be able to take care of themselves a little better.

“All of these things—the blizzard, the drought, the grazing schools, etc. helped drive us down this different path, and it’s amazing to me how many doors have opened to help us go different directions than how we started. It’s a whole different world that I didn’t know existed!”

The school introduced him to Holistic Management and regenerative agriculture practices. With help from SD Grazing Coalition mentors and others, he and Kristy began experimenting on their ranch with different ways of managing the land and cattle.

“I am now on the SD Soil Health Coalition board and recently gave a talk about it. I used to think that Holistic Management meant that I had to save owls and tie myself to a tree!”

Making the Most of Irrigated Pasture

With Holistic Management Shawn learned to look beyond the basics of production to investing in the soil to improve production and profit. “I look at everything differently now and try to ask myself what the consequences will be if I do this, or this,” says Shawn. “It’s easier to look at the whole picture. Even if we now have to roll out a bale of hay, we try to figure out what the hay is and where it’s going to go and whether it will help us in other ways besides just trying to feed a cow.

“We sold our haying equipment and currently we plant cover crops on our irrigated land, on the pivots. We graze those through the winter as our winter feed source, but we also try to plant Ta biannual so we have some triticale or rye

coming on. We also plant something like oats and peas that will grow early, but it also has multiple species of plants in it. This gives us an option; if we have to put it up as hay we can do that, or just leave it and drill another crop into it. We usually plant a cool season or winter biannual in with the warm season forages to stockpile for grazing,” he says.

One pivot he planted back to a diverse, primarily native grass mix containing grasses, legumes and forbs. “It’s nice to see all the wildflowers in that mix. The goal is to sell grass-finished beef off these pivots. It’s taken awhile to get it set up, but we have the grass on that pivot and the next one is set up to plant grass in June. We will get those going and keep moving forward.

“In my mind there is no quicker way to build soil than with a perennial grass mix, even if we have to rotate it sometimes—which I don’t plan to do. If we wanted to plant something else in the future, however, at least we are building soil right now. I love the idea of it; there are so many options. I can calve on these pastures, or stockpile them for later grazing, or put up hay on them, or grow a seed crop on them, depending on which plants decide to go to seed that year,” he says.

Stacking Enterprises

Shawn and Kristy are also starting to stack multiple enterprises. Besides selling weaned calves, they have begun selling grass-finished beef to consumers. “We have our second batch of cattle that will be yearlings this spring. Our goal is to eventually not have to sell anything at a sale barn; we want to be able to direct market everything we raise,” says Shawn.

They have been selecting genetics that will do the job. They started with Angus, but now have one bull that is half Angus and half Aberdeen Angus (the older style smaller, traditional Angus). “He is a true character and thinks he is pretty big!”

“We are still in the process of getting the cows downsized; some of the cattle are too big. The past four years we’ve been slowly trying to frame them down, using smaller-framed bulls. We had a decent direct marketing program for corn-finished beef before we decided to quit that and go to grass-finished. So now we need to get a completely different customer base, and make sure that whoever buys from us has a good eating experience. We don’t want to just say we have grass-finished beef; it has to be good. We are very particular in what we sell. So far we haven’t sold a lot of grass-finished beef, but we make sure that we get a taste of them before we send them out.”

Shawn and Kristy no longer feel they need to have 600 cows; a smaller number can make them as much money without as much cost. The ideal number fluctuates, depending on what the land will support. “It was wet last year and we had a lot of pasture so we kept all the heifer calves. I tell people that we will probably stick to having between 300 and 400 cows, but it just depends on what the land will let us do. We are not afraid to

The Freelands graze their cattle on their irrigated pivots in the winter that are planted to cover crops.

The Freelands are working to downsize their Angus cattle and improve the grassfed genetics as they expand their direct marketing grassfed beef enterprise.

Dry Creek Farm and Ranch

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 9

destock and get rid of some of them if we need to, and in the past that

cover crop also. We had a guy come out last spring and cut a maze for us (on 10 acres of a 150-acre field) while the cover crop was only a couple inches tall, and we kept it mowed all summer,” he says.

“It was so wet last year, with a cold spring, however, that we weren’t sure the crop was even going to make it. It just sat there and didn’t grow until August and then shot up and was over six-feet tall.”

“We put it on Facebook and the word spread quickly. We had about 800 people go through our maze and pumpkin patch and we only opened it for five days. There were only a few days of nice weather that people could come; it was either rain or a blizzard or windy. But they came on the good days and it was a great project,” he says.

The goal is to make this an ongoing educational project, so people will learn more about where their food comes from. “We are still discussing ideas about this. We put up posters, and also have school buses bringing kids out here. They can come out for a few hours and have lunch here, and we can do some little demonstrations,” Shawn says.

“We had our bee guy come and give a two-hour presentation on bees and hives. We’d like to have a day each week that will be an educational experience for people to show them where their food comes from and why it is important to know that.

“Now we’ve scaled down the pumpkin patch and only planted about five acres of pumpkins and have a 10-acre maze in the cover crop. We also have some other things like a corn pit the kids could jump in, and a hay pile. I think we will do that again this year. It took a lot of money to get it going and we are definitely going to need to do it again to hopefully recoup some of that.”

Expanding Opportunities

“We used to AI all of our cows and heifers every year and I was sure that we had the best cattle around. The cows were bred in a short time and grouped up so they could calve in a hurry and the calves would be uniform and all the same size when we took them to the sale barn. They did look really good; I always got a pat on the back when we took them to the sale barn and people would say they were really nice cattle, but it took too much effort and cost to get there; the costs ate up any profit.

“When we first sold some cattle to reduce numbers, the first batch were some heifers we’d grazed on the triticale. Kristy commented later that she could see I was really depressed for about three weeks after selling those yearlings. They were the first thing that had to go, in the drought. We got rid of most of those, and it was hard to part with them because they looked so beautiful and were all the same.

“Once we got through that, I realized that I needed to look at them as just cows. Now when I walk through the herd and look at cows, I can see the sire number on their ear tags and know that they had a great sire, but I can view them as just cows. A good cow for me now is just any cow that doesn’t take a lot of feed and brings me a calf every year,” he explains.

Agritourism Options

Now with the focus on just raising cattle that will finish well on grass, Shawn and Kristy are also starting an agritourism enterprise with a pumpkin patch, maze and a sunflower field. “We planted some rye to outcompete some of the weeds and get away from having to use herbicides, and then decided to roll the rye down and no-till some pumpkins into the rye. It was only about 13 acres, to start with,” says Shawn. They decided to take it in steps, in a five-year plan on their place, and a pumpkin patch was the beginning of that.

“Then we ended up putting a maze into our warm-season, full-season

Shawn notes that his wife and daughters are a lot of help on the ranch, though the two girls, Riley 17 and Ryan 15, are very busy with many of their own projects. Kristy homeschools the girls and they help on the ranch when they can. Shawn knows he and Kristy can leave the ranch and that the girls can handle the chores and he doesn’t need any hired help. “We don’t have a feed wagon or a feedlot like we used to have, so the chores are easier and I don’t worry about the girls crashing anything,” says Shawn. “They simply need to roll up some fence. It is priceless to be able to be with and work with your family.”

Shawn notes that when he and Kristy first started their ranching venture it would take Shawn six hours to get through his chores if nothing went wrong. The ranch was the driving force, yet there was no relationship with the land or livestock or family. It was just a rat race.

“We thought we were making money, but then when we went to the Ranching for Profit school and figured out our margins, we realized we could have done the same thing with 200 cows instead of 600,” says

Agritourism, in the form of a cover crop maze and family friendly activities, provides an opportunity to tap into a local consumer base and diversify income.

Freeland maze

Shawn. “This is definitely a better road, and it takes quite a transition. It’s not always easy and I have a tendency to do everything all the way once I decide to do it.

“Our five-year-plan on the agritourism is to expand on it. We don’t use our calving barn anymore so we hope to turn that into an event barn. We may host weddings, but mainly hope to have a farm-to-table program where we can hire some chefs to come out and prepare some food,” he says. We are only about 12 minutes away from Rapid City, which is the second-largest city in South Dakota.” This will give an opportunity to educate a lot of people about agriculture and where their food comes from.

“We had a small feedlot below our house a few years ago. We tore all

Menoken Farm— Government Funded Farm Demonstrating Healthy Farming Methods

BY HEATHER SMITH THOMAS

The Menoken Farm, located just east of Bismarck, North Dakota was established in 2009 with the purpose of combining natural resource education and systems approach conservation. Many workshops and tours are held here, drawing people from all over the United States and around the world. It is owned and operated by Burleigh County Soil Conservation District (SCD) with additional financial and technical support provided by the Nonpoint Source Pollution Control Program through the North Dakota Department of Health/Water Quality Division, and the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).

After identifying a number of resource concerns on the farm, the past 10 years of work has focused on providing a number of basic building blocks to improve soil health. These include the goals of providing soil armor, minimal soil disturbance, plant diversity, continual live plant/root and livestock integration. The systems approach management enhances erosion protection, sunlight harvest, plant diversity, carbon, pollinators, beneficial insects, wildlife, salinity control, livestock forage and other key factors.

The staff at Menoken Farm includes Jay Fuhrer (lead educator), a soil health specialist employed by the Natural Resources Conservation Service; Cindy Makedonski (event planner), district clerk for Burleigh County SCD; Darrell Oswald, a district technician with Burleigh County SCD, and the Menoken Farm manager; Chad Thorson (educator/trainer), a district technician with the Burleigh County SCD; Nolan Swenson (educator/trainer) a district technician with the Burleigh County SCD and who is also the urban conservationist and Tim Salter (groundskeeper).

“The Menoken Farm was created by the board of supervisors of the Burleigh SCD in 2009,” says Darrell. “The farm is named after the town of Menoken which is just west of the farm location. Jay Fuhrer was the District Conservationist at the time and is currently the Soil Health Specialist for the state of North Dakota and lead educator at the Menoken Farm. We are very fortunate to have him on our staff.”

Holistic Approach

A holistic approach was part of this concept from the very beginning. “The systems approach management that we use entails holistic thought processes and enhances all the things we are looking for to improve the current agricultural production model,” says Darrell. “At the time the farm

the feed bunks out and sold them, and now that area is a garden. We hope to expand it this year and can pick some produce from the garden and use some of the beef from our place to fix some nice meals for people; we can help educate them about food, using the barn as a place to serve the food. We’ve done some no-till potatoes, and we hope to have some kids come out next year and learn about potatoes. We can roll the hay back and pick up the potatoes. Our goal is to be able to sell everything off the place through direct marketing and try to educate people about their food. I know that if I hadn’t switched to holistic thinking and management I would never have had the time nor the ideas to do the agritourism, and I think that over time this will be a wonderful thing.”

was created in 2009, our supervisors had taken courses in Holistic Resource Management, and we also had an employee at that time, Josh Dukart, who had been sponsored by the SCD to become a holistic educator.”

The goal has been to help move agriculture away from the typical monoculture cropping and high inputs that are so much a part of current systems that are not economically or ecologically sustainable. “Putting more carbon back into the system than what you are taking out is the answer,” says Darrell. “It doesn’t matter what kind of system a person is running, as long as more is being put back than what is taken out. That is how you farm forever. The holistic approach, looking at how one thing can affect all things, and the decision-making processes that go along with it, all plays into this.”

Multiple Projects

The Menoken Farm advances soil health through innovation and education, so they use different cropping sequences, with 10 different fields. “We don’t do research; this is a demonstration farm, with long term soil monitoring,” Darrell explains. “The cropping systems are based on no-till seeding, high crop diversity and rotations with cover crop combinations—seeded whenever the time window allows. We also use some season-long cover crops as well.

“We use rotational perennials for five years, as part of the crop rotation, and then those fields go back to annual cropping. The grazing system is managed with short livestock exposure periods followed by long recovery periods. The livestock are also rotated through the season-long cover crops, the spring and fall season cover crops, and the crop residues the same way.

“If you look at the soil health principles, livestock integration is one

The Menoken Farm crew includes Jay Fuhrer as lead educator, and numerous other employees who are event planners, technicians, educators, and groundskeepers to serve the conservation and educational goals of the farm.

of the five basic principles because grazing animals have played a synergistic role in ecosystems since the beginning of time. People tend to have forgotten that fundamental fact in production agriculture.

“We usually try to multi-species graze, but this year we are not—just because it didn’t work out with the timeline to do it. We usually graze sheep and cattle together, and also have chickens—broilers and laying hens. We’ve had both hair sheep and wool sheep as well.

October. Interested individuals and groups come from all over the world. “We recently had a group of ranchers from Chihuahua, Mexico and some farmers from Yorkshire, England,” says Darrell. “We also hosted a group of 60 producers from the northwest part of North Dakota. We had a garden workshop in mid-July that had 175 individuals attending one evening. The farm is always open to farmers, ranchers, gardeners—anyone who is interested in educating themselves about soil health; we have an open door policy.”

The farm is also used by district employees, supervisors, NRCS employees and extension people, no-till associations, and the general public. “What people learn here is soil health principles, carbon cycle, etc.,” says Darrell. “We have many soil function demonstrations with crop rotations, cover crops, grazing systems, gardening, etc.”

Darrell notes that SCD employees often help with the many tours. “Nolan Swenson, who is our urban conservationist, has really created more interest in the ‘urban’ side of Menoken Farm. He got into Holistic Management awhile back; we had him take a course taught by Josh Dukart, and Nolan become interested in the concepts. He was originally a mechanical engineer and we are successfully reprogramming and repurposing him to become an urban conservationist who understands the soil health principles.” Likewise, the Morton County Soil District just across the river has become a partner in many of the events and workshops.

“We started out with a limited number of livestock because we thought it was going to be dry. At that time it was very cool and dry. Then by early summer it was extremely wet, so we have lots of grass.

“The perennial forages we graze includes about 20 species. There are many grasses, legumes and flowering forbs in the mix. Not all of them express themselves very well because the cool season grasses tend to be dominant, but with the very short grazing periods followed by long recovery periods, all of the species occasionally have a chance to express themselves.”

“Each paddock is about a quarter of an acre so we are moving the cattle through fairly quickly, preferably once a day. They eat about half the forage and trample the rest and leave it for the soil biology to utilize.

“We buy these cattle in the spring, usually from a sale barn; we simply buy what we think might work for us. They are generally grazing on the farm from about mid-May until mid-October.

“We also make compost at the farm. We have static compost and compost that we turn, and now we are working at propagating a worm microbiome or worm juice to use, as one of the biologic agents we put onto our fields. We don’t use any synthetic fertilizers, so any cropland enhancement utilized is all biologic. We do have one field that serves as the ‘control’ and it is fertilized, but it’s mainly just for comparison.

“We also have a high-tunnel greenhouse and an outside garden, and we use all of the same principles in managing these gardens. The adage ‘healthy soil, healthy food, healthy people’ comes into play here, and the produce we raise is all donated to the Bismarck-Mandan food pantries.

“At the Menoken Farm we also have lots of windbreaks and an arboretum that serves as an information and education place—with examples for energy, wildlife, and forestry topics. The arboretum contains many species, and is all about information and education.”

Educational Goals

The farm hosts many groups, for soil health education. In 2019 there was more than 40 groups on the farm altogether mostly during May to

Menoken has recently revised their mission statement as they have reflected on the progress and evolution of the farm. “Obviously we want to reach as many people as possible and be as effective as possible,” says Darrell. “We talk about farming for future generations or farming forever.”

Darrell notes that a profitable livestock operation is part of that sustainable vision. “If we buy the cattle right and get good gains on them through the summer, they do make some money—in contrast to many livestock operations today that are not very profitable because they input themselves to death, just as they do on the annual cropping side. We struggle to quantify profit using the holistic model, however, because we focus on the soil health aspect and not so much the economics.

“We get a lot of questions about that at the Menoken Farm. We continue to try and improve our outreach and accuracy on the economics of a regenerative agricultural production model. The standard production model is based on yield, and pounds, whereas holistically we think in terms of profit per acre. People don’t connect with that or realize the difference, and that’s what makes it difficult. We need to put more emphasis on the economic side, and this will be part of the strategic plan going forward.

“I have had some tremendous mentors and we have been applying the practices learned from the Gabe Browns and Kenny Millers of the world on my own ranch for the past dozen years. It has made a great difference in our lives in many ways, including profitability. I have benefitted tremendously from my experiences on the Menoken Farm and I’ve picked up many helpful things and ideas and met a lot of great people. I haven’t managed the Menoken Farm for a long time but I have been associated with and worked for the SCD for 20 years. I just feel fortunate to be able to do what I am doing.”

Education is a large component of the Menoken Farm with over 40 groups a year visiting the farm.

Menoken Farm cover crop and 60-inch corn.

Optimizing Soil Fertility and Plant Health— The Key Role of Soil Aeration in Soil and Plant Health

BY NEAL KINSEY

When considering healthy plants and the soils that can best grow them, the greatest need in terms of achieving vibrant plant health and lasting vigor is to consider “the trunk of the tree” instead of getting hung up out on a limb somewhere and never tackling the core problem. To determine this problem, certain basic questions and answers should first be considered, then other concepts that sometimes tend to be overlooked can more easily be brought into view.

Well-known and respected microbiological researchers from many parts of the world agree that the healthiest soils are found to be those with the most active living organisms. Soil life then should be at least considered as a major factor in determining soil health.

The living organisms in a soil and the health of that soil are intertwined. Those who study soil life point out that the population of beneficial living organisms which grow and thrive in each soil determines to what extent that soil will grow and produce abundant, healthy crops. On the basis of such research a logical question should then be what promotes the greatest amount of life in the soil? That answer should be a major factor related to providing the greatest support for soil health.

Soil Life is Key

What are the most critical needs for sustaining life itself? Could that answer also be crucial toward proper sustainment of life in the soil? And could it be that the correct amount of life’s most critical requirements would then be the real “trunk of the tree” in regard to building better soil health? The truth of the matter is both reasonable and can be shown to be scientifically achievable.

provide what is truly needed for optimum soil and plant health! Anything less and that much less is what you should expect in return!

Various short term for profit programs have allowed so many destructive actions and so much degradation to the land that there are now a host of programs that “make it better” and are touted as basic solutions to the problems the previous thinking of past and present generations have caused.

As a whole, in this entire world someone has ‘responsibility’ over all the land. Someone is put in charge of it and generally has a say about what can or cannot be done to that land, and too often not with a mind toward what would be best for the land or what is produced on it. The real bottom line is, when you give the soil what it actually requires, only then can it

What works best? Is it when plants improve soil health or when soil improves plant health? In other words, can you best use plants to improve the soil and its fertility level, or the soil to improve the plants and their health and nutritive providing abilities? This question cannot be correctly answered and solved without livestock. But in the process of answering such a question, what is best for soil biology - the true life of the soilwould need to be included.

So then what is the trunk of the tree for deriving the most benefit from agriculture? Is it making the most money, or making the greatest yields? Is it growing the best plants or the most nutritious foods? It should be the key to all of those packed into one logical program with the most economical approach being what can best be done to most help the soil and the crops that grow there.

The best answers to soil fertility, plant growth and feed or food quality are not geared to the philosophy of how much can growers get for the least amount they can give, whether that is money, fertility or the amount of effort being put forth.

However, most of the time the solutions that get adopted are because it can be shown that to do so means there is substantial profit to be made by the sale of something to the farmer. This is not meant to even imply that anything is wrong with increasing income from the added value of work being done.

But if the bulk of the profit accrues to those who are devising the program at the expense of the soil and what grows there, is it really true profit? And, are those programs being proposed the actual solutions needed or just another “band aid” as a stop-gap measure that helps only temporarily improve the situation in some way?

Dr. William Albrecht once described an experiment his team tried for CONTINUED ON

Nutrients from green manure crops are easily utilized by whatever crop grows there next.

“In order to bring the physical structure of a soil into alignment with the textbook definition of an ideal soil; first measure and adjust the base saturation percentages of calcium, magnesium, potassium and sodium to match the correct percentages needed for the total exchange capacity (TEC) of that particular soil.”

extracting more nitrogen from the colloidal humus once they learned to isolate that humus from the soil. He said they tried every conceivable acid and many “reasonable” combinations, but could never find a formula that would do the job.

the most productive approach.

For long-term solutions to soil fertility and to best supply actual plant needs, sufficient time is needed to plan and take a meaningful and careful approach. When growers have a program that is the best they can plan out or afford, even though believing and choosing to follow that program, they should still choose at least one small field of average or better production and split it in half for a test. Follow the normally proposed fertility program on half of it. On the other half, use a true soil building program such as the one developed by Dr. William A. Albrecht for use in building nutrients by natural production methods.

On the rest of the land, if the cost is just too much for the full fertility program test the soil to see what is needed to make the most difference. If the budget still will not cover it all, find someone who can help spend the money based on prioritizing the needed nutrients and put it where it makes the most difference.

That will usually be quite different in approach as compared to a normal program that just strives to “feed the crop what it needs” and let the soil fend for itself. Just about all of agriculture is purposely geared to think that way today under the guise that farmers and growers cannot afford the cost in terms of time and money required to do anything more. But how do you know if you have never tried it?

But conversely, by extracting exudates from plant roots and using an inordinately large amount as compared to the normal release from plants and crops, it was the secret key to unlock that N. Yet they were unable to duplicate that in the lab. So far as is now known, no one ever has. When science can’t even do that, it is hard to believe that even the best team of scientists would be wise enough to figure out all that a plant really needs.

Build the Soil to Feed the Plant

No matter how intelligent humans may be considered, taking care of the soil to feed the total biological needs of the entire “team” - then striving to provide needs for the specific crop - works time after time. But too many want to skip building up soil fertility and just feed the crop. When that happens, could growers be robbing themselves of the greatest benefits in terms of both soil health and the highest yields and quality for whatever they are producing?

Most likely there is no one who really knows how to provide all of the exact nutrients each plant will thrive on to do its best. When anyone proposes to improve upon what life in the soil can do in that regard, even the best “guesstimate” will likely fall far short of properly feeding the soiland thus will also rob the plant of its full potential - to grow the best yields and highest nutrition from the proper inputs.

So the question then becomes what is the purpose of constant plant feeding? If it is just to sell a product to feed the crop without regard to the measurement of the real needs and condition of the soil in that field, it is not necessarily going to be of the greatest benefit to the grower or provide the best outcome for what he wants to grow based on the cost of return.

Dr. William A. Albrecht was a strong proponent of providing the soil what it needs and let the soil provide whatever plants are to be grown there what they need. For many who claim to use the Albrecht system or some other specific approach it is just an excuse to sell a “feed the plant” type “fertility” program. As a rule, a grower is told he cannot afford to do anything more than feed the crop. Is that actually the truth, or just a sales pitch? Sometimes this may be necessary, but generally speaking, it is not

Due to agriculture being permeated with a feed the plant approach, most growers still tend to try and cut corners with a program that requires minimal inputs in regard to time or money. Generally, it becomes a question of how can I maximize production and still provide enough to do that with as little inputs as possible. When that is accomplished, too many are satisfied with conditions that can just help them remain where they are. However, when the process keeps taking without giving enough back it is a losing battle. Production and especially quality keep on sliding downhill. This type of thinking should not be considered and will never correctly apply to those who want a program that provides true soil health.

Will the use of cover crops, crop rotations, compost applications, striving for the correct soil pH, and applying the fertilizer that has provided top yields in the past solve the real issues that are needed to provide excellent soil health? When used as needed any one or a combination of these measures may help improve soil health, but this is still not getting back to the trunk of the tree—the true foundation to best provide real soil health. That is because under normal conditions even following all of these as accurately as possible still will not completely provide the real basic needs that are required for excellent soil health.

Think about this for a moment. Consider someone growing livestock and trying to maximize profits, with a stocking rate of one cow per acre. How many will place their stock in a confined area and expect the animals to fend for themselves on whatever feed is left there and thrive to the point of providing top quality while doing so? Ridiculous, right? But how many expect that very thing from the life in the soil which by weight is equivalent

Match nutrients in Compost with soil nutrient requirements.

“ Based on the study of soil microbiology, the nutrients we apply to grow a crop are not in the form the plant needs to produce the best quality and yields possible. What we apply must first be converted by microbes to the form that can best be supplied to the plants.”

to feeding at least one average sized cow per acre?

Based on the study of soil microbiology, the nutrients we apply to grow a crop are not in the form the plant needs to produce the best quality and yields possible. What we apply must first be converted by microbes to the form that can best be supplied to the plants. In fact, microbiologists who study the productivity of the soil maintain that the more life there is in the soil, the more fertile that soil becomes. They measure soil productivity by measuring the amount of soil life that is present there.

as one of the most significant problems. This is usually caused by too much water (in relation to providing sufficient air space) being held in the soil, which prevents the air from reaching to the proper depth causing interference in microbial activity.

Just how important is air for soil health? It is a major key for humus formation. Humus is formed within the soil’s aerobic zone. The aerobic zone is the depth to which air remains sufficiently available for the most beneficial microbial activity for good plant health in each different soil. Due to the abundance of air, microbiologists say that on average 70% of all humus is formed in the top two inches of soil. 95% is formed in the top 5 inches. And 100% is formed within the depth of each soils’ aerobic zone.

One good measurement to determine each soils’ aerobic zone (how deep the microbes that depend on air can get enough to live and function) is to remember that it as deep as a fencepost will rot in each particular soil. This is generally between 6.5 to 7 inches deep.

Air is needed to keep a healthy set of microbes to supply plant nutrients and build humus in our soils. But what can be used to determine if the correct amount of air—not too little and not too much—is present?

Plant roots move throughout the soil in search of moisture and nutrients, and yet farmers and growers are told to place the needed nutrients right up close to the plants. How does soil life and consequently the health of a soil thrive when so much of that soil life is “confined” to a very small feeding area?

Broadcasting needed soil nutrients helps feed the entire population of living organisms in the soil. To achieve the utmost in terms of soil health benefits, the total area must have sufficient nutrition. Too little causes nutrient shortages and too much causes nutrient toxicities that result in other needed nutrients becoming unavailable for crop use.

Soil Life Needs Air

The second law of thermodynamics states that life only comes from life. In the study of soil biology this should be a prime consideration since the more life found to be present in the soil, from earthworms to microbes, the healthier and productive that soil proves to be. Once that can be measured, then perhaps the question to be asked and considered should be what are the basic needs for all life?

There are four basic needs for life—shelter, food, water and air. Which one of these on average can more likely be missing and life would go on the longest? Shelter would be the answer most of the time. Then between the three that are left, food would be the answer. Then water, with air being the most critical of all since we can only live a very short time without it.

The most critical need for sustaining our life is also the most critical to the soil for life. But how many consider that providing an adequate amount of air to the soil as the most critical step to building excellent soil health? And even so, if the soil lacks aeration, is there anything that can be universally done to change or correct that lack?

Most of those working in agriculture fail to recognize the significance of the need for just the right amount of air in each different soil, let alone the keys that must be involved for correctly solving this problem. Perhaps that is one of the big reasons it is not pointed out as the greatest problem affecting soil life and soil health.

When proper soil aeration is lacking, how can farmers and growers know that truly is the case? What provides the proper amount of aeration to the soil to best promote soil life and soil health?

When considering clay soils the lack of sufficient air is considered

This is an important question that too few can answer. When soil aeration is lacking, how can farmers and growers detect that actually is the case? What provides the proper amount of aeration to the soil to best promote soil life and soil health? There is a way to determine this answer that too many in agriculture reject because it does not translate into immediate sales and profits, though it is very profitable for landowners and the land in terms of soil health.

How to Achieve Ideal Soil Structure

That answer has to do with measuring and correcting the physical structure of each different soil. The physical structure of a soil (how well it works up, takes in water and provides the needs for plant roots) determines the amount of air and water that is present in relation to the soils’ mineral content. The ideal soil for microbial activity has a specific physical structure. That is 25% air, 25% water, and 50% mineral content— of which 5% or more of that mineral content would ideally be humus.

Textbooks on soil science illustrate the physical structure of an ideal soil as 50% solids and 50% pore space. However, to this point none of those books go on to provide what changes are needed in order to enable soils that are lacking such qualities to achieve that correct physical structure.

Achieving the ideal physical structure for each soil—the proper amount of air in relation to water in each soil—can only be correctly determined by measuring the percentage of saturation of the elements that have a major influence on pore space in that soil. To correctly understand and feed the soil those elements are calcium, magnesium, potassium and sodium.

In order to bring the physical structure of a soil into alignment with the textbook definition of an ideal soil; first measure and adjust the base saturation percentages of calcium, magnesium, potassium and sodium to match the correct percentages needed for the total exchange capacity (TEC) of that particular soil. The pie chart included below shows those needed relationships.

Once base saturation is achieved by making any needed corrections, this will help promote the proper nutrient uptake, the proper physical structure and the ideal biological environment for the soil and the crop.

In other words, to optimize needed soil aeration requires the correct relationship between specific elements, namely calcium, magnesium, potassium and sodium. When there is too much of any one of these, there will usually be too little of one or more of the others. Until any

CONTINUED ON PAGE 16

“The second law of thermodynamics states that life only comes from life. In the study of soil biology this should be a prime consideration since the more life found to be present in the soil, from earthworms to microbes, the healthier and productive that soil proves to be.”

Optimizing Soil Fertility and Plant Health

excesses or deficiencies of any of these four elements are corrected, the soil will not have the ideal amount of air in relation to water.

Since calcium and magnesium are by far the most needed and thus provide the most influence of the four elements involved for building the proper soil structure, always consider correcting them first. This is the place to begin if soils do not already have the ideal physical structure and thus the ideal amount of air to provide for optimum biological activity.

principle of nutrient balance which involves correcting the obvious deficiencies in order to help control any excesses.

Conclusion

Here is the basic foundational key to excellent soil health. Work to supply each soil with the proper amount of needed air and once accomplished, that soil will be most equipped to perform at its best.

Cover crops, compost, adding carbon and nutrients can all help contribute to soil health, but until there is enough air in the soil, the most critical component will still be slowing the way to excellent soil health.

Once the required percentages of calcium, magnesium, potassium and sodium are met, then the soil chemistry is working at its best and providing the proper physical structure for air and water to function as they should due to well aerated soil. Will it always be perfect? No. Too much rain can reduce aeration, not enough water can cause problems as well. But once the soil nutrients are there in the correct proportions, only then does the soil have the best means of re-adjusting to the most ideal conditions in the shortest period of time. Until the conditions are met for proper aeration in each soil, there is no chance of achieving what is needed for an ideal in terms of soil fertility and plant health.

Here is the basic foundational key to excellent soil health. Work to supply each soil with the proper amount of needed air and once accomplished, that soil will be most equipped to perform at its best. But how can that be determined? And even if there is not enough air, what can a farmer or rancher do about it anyway?

This is the place to start, however, before correcting calcium and magnesium levels, there are three basic points that need to be understood.

First, when using the actual program developed to understand and correct the base saturation percentage of calcium plus magnesium these two numbers should always equal as close to 80% as possible in order to achieve the correct physical relationship between air and water in each soil.

In other words, the proper relationship between calcium and magnesium ultimately determines the friability of each soil—whether it is too tight or too loose or works up as it properly should. This relationship applies to every soil with a TEC of 4.16 or higher. (Lower TEC soils must be treated differently and requires a separate program of training to explain all the differences to consider.)

The second point is concerned with the reaction of calcium and magnesium to one another in terms of changes in the soil’s base saturation. The change is generally expected to be 1:1. This means that for every 1% increase in calcium the magnesium will decrease by 1%. And also, for every 1% magnesium goes up without adding more calcium to counteract it, the calcium will decrease by 1%. (But watch higher TEC soils. Some have magnesium trapped between the layers of clay, while others may have an abnormally high pH, or percentage of potassium or sodium that affects magnesium availability.)

This brings up the third point which is, the

The solution is well documented and has recently been verified with over five years of randomized, replicated university research. The study was conducted independently using government funds allocated for agricultural research without funding from any individuals, special interest groups, agricultural groups or organizations. Once published these results should be given serious consideration and regarded as essential research for defining and confirming the role of nutrients and aeration for soil and plant health.

Neal Kinsey is owner and President of Kinsey Agricultural Services, a consulting firm that specializes in restoring and maintaining balanced soil fertility for attaining excellent yields while growing highly nutritious food and feed crops on the land. Please call

“There are four basic needs for life – shelter, food, water and air. Which one of these on average can more likely be missing and life would go on the longest? Shelter would be the answer most of the time. Then between the three that are left, food would be the answer. Then water, with air being the most critical of all since we can only live a very short time without it.”

Negatively charged (anionic) nutrients such as phosphate, nitrate, sulfate, molybdate, borate, and others are supplied to reach at least minimum levels.

Book Review by ANN ADAMS

For the Love of Soil: Strategies to Regenerate Our Food Production Systems

By Nicole Masters; Printable Reality, 2019, 249 pp

Ifirst heard Nicole Masters speak at the 2018 REGENERATE Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I was amazed at the amount of information she shared during her presentation and the way she made that information both accessible and entertaining. So when I found out she was going to be writing a book, I was excited to read it.

For the Love of Soil: Strategies to Regenerate Our Food Production Systems is much more than a book about soil nutrients and soil health practices. Nicole also takes the opportunity to make the connection between soil health and human health, as well as how our attitudes about agriculture affect producers’ mental health and the viability of rural communities.

In other words, she lives up to her biography which notes that not only is Nicole the owner/lead consultant of Integrity Soils, but she is a systems thinker and organizational development specialist. It is with those skills that Nicole crafted For the Love of Soil and why Gabe Brown notes “For years many of us involved in regenerative agriculture have been touting the soil health—plant health—animal health— human health connection, but no one has tied them all together like Nicole does!”

And, indeed, the topics are far ranging in this book, which is one of the pleasures of learning from Nicole. For example, in her chapter on unintended consequences Nicole writes about the difference between behavior changes (where one can return to old behaviors) and transformation, and how we must use all our senses to really listen to and learn from the land. In doing so, we have to let go of our ego.

“Transformation on the other hand is irreversible, a door that once opened, can never be closed again. The butterfly cannot return to the chrysalis… Anything unfamiliar and new can create a sense of anxiety, fear, apprehension, suspicion and avoidance. Your little voice was mistaken, thinking that the unfamiliar and new was risky; when in fact, the most risk lies from not looking outside the known.” Her analysis of this distinction between change and transformation is perhaps one of the best explanations for why people have a hard time adopting new practices despite so much evidence that such a move would be good. People are actually confused about what risky behavior is, believing that status quo is less risky because it is known despite the economic evidence to the contrary.

And to be sure, there are lots of new things to learn when focusing on soil health as the way to productive and resilient land. Nicole writes about the “Five M’s” as a way forward to a soil transformation which include:

• Mindset

• Management

• Microbes

• Minerals

• OM (Organic Matter)

She notes that the biggest drag or driver of the Five M’s is Mindset. This is not news to those of who understand when Gabe Brown notes: “The majority of our compaction issues are between our ears.” As noted above, the need for transformative change is critical if producers are going to move past changing a practice because there is a subsidy or grant rather than because they understand how this practice fits within the relational soil food web and how that provides resilience and profitability to their business and the resources they are stewarding.

Of particular interest to me was Nicole’s comment that just because you’ve been doing planned grazing doesn’t mean that you will be able to address all soil health issues with that tool. As she notes, you might be able to do it, but how much resource and time do you have? She has been getting a lot of consulting work from holistic graziers who have hit a wall. She says that is when you have to look at other enabling factors as well as revisit management practices if you aren’t getting the results you want. In particular, she references her work with long-time Holistic Management practitioner, Steve Charter, of the 2 Lazy 2 Ranch in Montana, who began holistic planned grazing in the ‘80s.

When Steve switched his grazing, the land response was amazing, with increased productivity, reduced bare ground and increased biodiversity. But he felt like the land had not moved forward after the initial flush. In 2014 he began to look at soil health and sprayed biological stimulants on 400 acres with some good results including improved growth of his crested wheat and emergence of Western wheat that is now beginning to outcompete the crested wheat. He also has less bare ground. In 2017 he sprayed an additional 4,000 acres with a custom sprayer he made from an army truck and feels like he’s finally getting the results he wanted by adding the microbial life to the soil that he couldn’t add just with cattle. Steve’s story reminded me that looking at the whole toolbox is critical in this work.

Soil geeks will love this book which has all kinds of information about the chemical, physical, and biological interactions going on in the soil and how it impacts plant growth and animal and human health. For example, she notes that every time we disturb soil, microbes wake up hungry, and if you don’t feed them the bacteria will dominate. That’s a pretty clear message to me about the reasons why soil disturbance can really set land health back if you don’t understand the full picture. She notes there may be time for mechanical disturbance (such as when addressing compaction issues), but her answer is the “rip and drip” solution with using molasses and humic acid to feed the microbes after ripping soil.

I can’t go in to all the various solutions that Nicole suggests or tells stories about and from which she shares the results. However, I can tell you I finished reading the book feeling not only better educated, but inspired about how many tools there are to help us take our land to the next level of health without breaking the bank if we are willing to open our minds and use the resources available to us. Ultimately, the title of the book says it all: For the Love of Soil—tying together all the relationships—our plants, animals, families, and communities—that the soil feeds.

You can purchase For the Love of Soil at: https://www. integritysoils.co.nz/product/for-the-love-of-soil/.

Reader’s Forum What’s Happening on our Farm

BY LYDIA CARPENTER

Editor’s Note: This article was written by Lydia from Luna Field Farm in Belmont, Manitoba in mid-April to share her COVID-19 story. Lydia is an HMI Holistic Management® Certified Educator in Training

Wian moved some of the young cows up to the yard to sort them for spring calving. Calving will start mid-April and go until end of May or so. We are really looking forward to it. Calving, a time when the meadowlarks and robins return, is one of my favourite times of year.

The highlight of our days and weeks has been delivering food to people in Brandon and Winnipeg. We can’t visit with people they way we use to and have had to develop a new strategy for physical distancing, but we feel close to everyone.

There is a growing comfort in the resiliency

A Holistic Response to COVID-19

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

Holistic Crisis Response & Adaptation Steps

1. Keep the Big Picture in Mind (Think Globally, Act Locally)

2. Inventory Your Resources (social, economic, natural)

3. Manage for What You Want (holistic goal/ context, whole farm/ranch goal)

4. Consider All Options and Tools

5. Determine How Your Actions Impact the Situation now and long-term (testing questions)

6. Develop Early Warning Monitoring Criteria

7. Adapt

8. Repeat Cycle

There’s a great example of this kind of thinking written by Gabe Brown and Shane New titled “Salvaging a Profit in the Current Cattle Market.” In this article, the authors discuss the resources available to a livestock producer who has to consider the current cattle market.

of the work that we do and some discomfort in the reality that our days have changed very little while others lives (for now) have changed so much.

We are still able to work and grow and provide food. Our supply chain is quite local. The grass for our cattle grows here. We purchase grain from the neighbours for the pigs and chickens. The mineral we use for our chickens comes from a local colony (although they do have to source some of the ingredients beyond borders). We have a local butcher shop 30 minutes from home that does all of our processing for us. Of course, we do rely on things from afar (egg cartons, paper bags, butcher paper, fencing supplies, some manufactured equipment, parts to fix equipment etc) but they are still all available. Fortunately, we are in the business of producing food that often travels 100s of kms not 1000s.

Resiliency for our farm comes in the form of diversification, production principles that are healing for the land and take advantage of solar capture, and producing food to feed our (local) community.

Our customers have expressed concern

for us, however, it is diversified direct to eater farming system like ours that produce food for people that I suspect will be ok. We are used to some risk (weather, predation, price fluctuation in feed grains etc) and have already built some risk mitigation strategies into our farm. The biggest risk for us is that one of us becomes ill, unwell or injured or that relationship on the farm suffer making it difficult or impossible for us to do our work. This is always a concern, even before the pandemic.

We know that overtime we have to work to build our farm team and build in resiliency on the human resources front. So much of what we do is about the land, the animals, food and community and we know that we also have to take care of our people here at home.

We were concerned with the prospect of not having full time seasonal farm labour this year. We had anticipated having someone from Germany but understand that that is not possible now. We do have some part time local help but without full time help will be taking on some extra work. In future, we may try to run a farm employment co-op program for local students interested in agriculture.

They note that you need to look at all your current economic realities including debt and the timing of payments. Are either of those parameters negotiable? They also discuss taking an inventory of current feed so you have a clear sense of the parameters you are facing there. Then they begin to explore options by thinking about the big picture and managing for what they want. In this case, they explore the possibility of using livestock to graze a cover crop as a means to address soil fertility issues and increase the value of the livestock and the crop coming off the land in a depressed market.

In this case they look at eastern Kansas land rent rates and assume $100/acre for cropland rent. Using what seems to me very conservative pound per acre production and potential weight gain, they calculate that running some calves on the cover crop would result in $59.80/acre in income during a first graze. If you can run those animals again through the cover crop that would be an additional $101.25/acre in revenue for a total of $161.05/acre. They then subtract the

$120.24 in direct costs for the cover crop and rent, which results in a net of $40.81/acre by the time mid-June rolls around. They then list a host of any number of other crops that could be grown at that point which would add profitability to the farming enterprise while increasing the resilience of the land through these soil health practices.

This is just one example of many where regenerative agriculture producers are adapting and responding to the challenges they are facing, by using Holistic Management to respond to the current reality rather than just reacting out of fear and panic. We all are very concerned about how this virus is and could potentially affect our loved ones and communities, and we need to keep the big picture in mind as we determine the appropriate course of action. I hope you take the time to step back and remind yourself about what the big picture means to you and how you can adapt within this current situation to survive and thrive.

From the Board Chair

BY WALTER LYNN

In this issue of IN PRACTICE, I would like to discuss system issues in our communities and what we need to do to address our need for healthy land, healthy food, and healthy lives.

On May 3, CBS aired on “60 Minutes” a story about the USDA’S Trade War Relief to Farmers. From my perspective there was some journalism shallowness as the story failed to address the “root cause” or the deeper “why” of how agricultural subsidies affect agricultural practices and the industry as a whole.

In contrast, I recently finished reading Food Fix by Dr. Mark Hyman, a practicing family physician who is the head of Strategy and Innovation of the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine. As the picture on the book cover portrays, our fork is a very powerful tool we have in our hands, and it can be used for four big items in our lives—our health, our economy, our communities, and our planet. The ideas outlined in this book are very congruent with our Holistic Management® principles.

As Wendell Berry notes, people are fed by the food industry, which pays no attention to health, and are healed by the health industry which pays no attention to food. Hyman discusses the true cost of food. He estimates that over the next 35 years that cost could be $95 trillion in both direct healthcare costs and lost productivity, plus disability. This direct healthcare cost and loss of productivity is due to heart disease, diabetes, cancer, mental illness, and other chronic conditions. Conservatively, what

would the impact of a $15 trillion partial fix be on the broken parts of our food system?

Dr. Hyman also notes that 59% of the US farmland is used to grow commodity crops (corn, wheat, soybeans) which are then turned into ultraprocessed foods making up 60% of the US diet. Why would this matter? For every 10% of the diet coming from processed foods, the risk of death goes up 14%. Two studies he quotes indicate one in five dollars of the current US economy goes for the direct healthcare costs and indirect costs of chronic health conditions.

In 2013, Dr. Hyman spoke at a gathering of world healthcare leaders. The focus of the panel was better health information technology, improved care coordination, reduction of medical errors, improved efficiencies and payment models. This was akin to moving the chairs on the Titanic! Wouldn’t it make more sense to address the root causes of chronic disease rather than trying to clean up after-the-fact?

What is the real price of corn? Dr. Hyman notes we pay for corn four times—various subsidies, environmental consequences, our food stamp program with junk food and sugar sweetened beverages, and the healthcare costs of obesity in chronic disease. The eight ounce can of soda at $.22 should cost $100 per can!!

We are in a time reset with COVID-19 impacting the farms and ranches in our communities. Holistic Management principles are an exceptional value to help you probe into your life’s purpose in the times we are facing and determine how you want to improve the health of your land and your community.

PROGRAM ROUNDUP

Online Grazing Planning Course

HMI’s Online Holistic Grazing Planning course began in March 2020 with 27 participants from the United States, Canada, Senegal, Germany and Spain. This course focused on the key grazing planning principles and practices. Participants practiced the tools to hone in on such as critical grazing considerations, determining forage inventory, animal needs, and grazing and recovery periods before putting all these calculations into a grazing plan.

Featured Participant: Amy Skezas – Pentaluma, California

“I am a smallholder who read Savory’s wonderful book and was inspired to consider how grazing could help us reach our land management goals. But it is all about the details, and despite many attempts, from napkin scribbles to notebooks to calculators, I just could not figure out a grazing plan for our place. This course helped me get there step by step. The tech support and instruction were very helpful all along the way. I still have a lot to learn, but feel more confident moving forward. I am in the zone and can fine tune and adjust from here. Many, many thanks.”

Getting Started Holistic Grazing Planning Survey Results: What other participants had to say:

“There was loads of information in the Youtube videos and readings, which were extremely valuable for me! Big shout out to Ralph for sharing this knowledge base. For me it was handy to follow the step by

step approach to do all the calculations, measurements and estimates. But more importantly it was valuable to understand the background, the how and why! Now I know how to plan and adapt.”

“It was valuable to learn how to plan other than a set number of days, the tools for estimating paddock quality and then schedule that based on recovery and grazing days is something I’ve always wanted to know but by looking at a grazing chart from On Pasture for example I had no clue on where to start and this has explained that.”

“I definitely found the assessments to be super helpful as it took all that I had learned in theory and forced me to put it into practice. Without the assessments the experience would have been helpful still, but probably would have remained as head knowledge rather than a tool I now feel I can use.”

“I think the grazing calculation worksheet that went step by step with calculating how much forage we have, how many animals can graze, and how many paddocks to set up was worth the entire class in itself.”

primary decision making when my parents move off of the ranch. They will retain ownership and together we will continue to explore the best mechanisms for conveyance and whether that is upon death or before. Iowa State’s Farm Transfer Plan worksheet provides a helpful format to work through in thinking about real decisions that need to be made and how and when that transfer of decision making will occur.

Succession Planning is a Marathon, Not a Sprint

Succession planning is a marathon, not a sprint. We are far from done and know things will change along the way, but we have developed a solid foundation that gives us all confidence in continuing down the path. By embracing this messy thing called succession planning—seeing it as more than a set of checklists but as the opportunity for exchanging institutional knowledge and lessons hard learned, for new ideas and perspective, for seeking out expertise, partnership, and mentorship—we believe our operation will be stronger for it.

Below are websites which contain a compilation of resources on different aspects of succession planning. They range from “softer” topics, such as how to have a constructive family dialogue around challenging and loaded topics to more technical tools, such as legal structure options for transfer of assets. This is not an exhaustive list of all websites, articles, or

GRAPEVINE

In Memoriam

resources, of which there are an overwhelming number. Rather these are four places I would recommend going which all contain thorough and helpful resources, rather than just individual pieces of the puzzle.

Iowa State AgDecisionMaker

Contains good overview of the transition components to consider (transfer of labor, management, assets and identification and management of possible risks/barriers) as well as pdf worksheets that senior and junior generations can work through together.

University of Wyoming “Passing it On” Resource Guide

Comprehensive guide authored by two

University of Wyoming extension agents which includes family dynamics, business planning, and lots of information on estates and federal tax implications. Also includes Excel spreadsheet versions of worksheets in the guide, such as a personal financial statement.

Land for Good Farm Transfer Toolbox

Several articles and documents, some with more of applicability for Northeastern US and small-scale farms, but one of the only sources with a guide exclusively for the junior generation. You must provide an email for Land for Good which will send you a link to download (but will not continue to bombard you).

Land for Good Attorney Compendium for Farm Transfer

Drafted for attorneys who serve farm families, these chapters can be downloaded by topic (business planning, estate planning, and tax planning) and may serve as a helpful resource for someone who is trying to gain as much information as they can independently before meeting with an attorney.

Sarah Parmar lives and works in Denver, Colorado, serving as director of conservation with Colorado Open Lands, where she leads private land conservation work. This article first appeared in the Western Landowners Alliance News Digest and is reprinted with permission. To learn more about WLA go to: https://westernlandowners.org/

It is with great sadness that HMI learned of the passing of long-time Holistic Management practitioner and educator, Terry Wheeler. Terry died on March 25, 2020. He was born in Tucson, Arizona on October 28, 1935. Terry earned a Bachelor’s of Science in Agricultural Science from the University of Arizona. He then began work as a range consultant on the San Carlos Apache reservation. He was trained in Holistic Management by HMI Certified Educator, Kirk Gadzia, and said: “I’ve worked all my life and all over the world to improve land. I didn’t think it was possible, until I took [Kirk’s] Holistic Management in Practice course. It provided new insights I had completely missed. Since then, we’ve achieved dramatic results. It’s gratifying to see such progress.”

Since the 1980s Terry was a leading advocate for Holistic Management and was involved in this work in Lesotho and Niger with the U.S. State Department’s Agency for International Development and Jordan with the U.N. Food & Agriculture Organization.

Terry continued to provide consulting services into his seventies. He focused on using livestock to improve soil health calling them “Four Legged Organic Soil Builders.” He was able to convince the then Cypress Miami Mining Company to hire him to clean up the mine tailings in Claypool by feeding cattle on the side of the tailings pile to reclaim the land.

Terry was a past president of the Gila County Cattle Growers Association and was a member of the Arizona Cattle Growers Association, the National Indian Cattle Growers Association, and the Society for Range Management, He will be missed.

Bill McDonald, the author’s father, holds his grandson Alex Parmar. This image “perfectly sums up,” in her words, why the author is making time for succession planning.

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.

UNITED STATES

Kirk Gadzia

Bernalillo

505/263-8677 (c) • kirk@rmsgadzia.com

Jeff Goebel Belen

541/610-7084 • goebel@aboutlistening.com

* Katherine Napper-Ottmers

Las Vegas 505/225-6481 • katherineottmers@icloud.com NEW YORK

* Erica Frenay

Brooktondale 607/342-3771 (c) info@shelterbeltfarm.com

Guy Glosson Snyder 806/237-2554

glosson@caprock-spur.com

Kathy Harris

Holistic Management International Dallas/Fort Worth 214/417-6583

kathyh@holisticmanagement.org

Theresa J Litle

Orange Grove 361/537-3417 (c) tjlitle@hotmail.com

Peggy Maddox

CALIFORNIA

* Lee Altier College of Agriculture, CSU Chico 530/636-2525 • laltier@csuchico.edu

Owen Hablutzel Los Angeles 310/567-6862 go2owen@gmail.com

Richard King Petaluma 707/217-2308 (c) rking1675@gmail.com

Doniga Markegard

Half Moon Bay 650/670-7984 Doniga@markegardfamily.com

* Kelly Mulville Paicines 707/431-8060 • kmulville@gmail.com

Don Nelson Red Bluff 208/301-5066 • nelson-don1@hotmail.com

Rob Rutherford San Luis Obispo 805/550-4858 (c) robtrutherford@gmail.com

COLORADO

* Joel Benson Buena Vista 719/221-1547 joel@paratuinstitute.com

Cindy Dvergsten

Dolores 970/882-4222 • wnc@gobrainstorm.net

Tim McGaffic Dolores 808/936-5749 • tim@timmcgaffic.com

* Katie Belle Miller Calhan 970/310-0852 heritagebellefarms@gmail.com

KANSAS

William Casey

Erie 620/ 423-2842 bill.caseyag@gmail.com

MICHIGAN

Larry Dyer Petoskey 231/881-2784 (c) ldyer3913@gmail.com

MISSISSIPPI

* Preston Sullivan Meadville 601/384-5310 (h) 601/835-6124 (c) prestons@telepak.net

MONTANA

Roland Kroos Bozeman 406/581-3038 (c) • kroosing@msn.com

* Cliff Montagne

Montana State University Bozeman 406/599-7755 (c) • montagne@montana.edu

NEBRASKA

* Paul Swanson Hastings 402/463-8507 • 402/705-1241 (c) pswanson3@unl.edu

Ralph Tate Papillion 402/250-8981 (c) • tater2d2@cox.net

NEW HAMPSHIRE

Seth Wilner Newport 603/863-9200 (w) seth.wilner@unh.edu

NEW MEXICO

Ann Adams Holistic Management International Albuquerque 505/842-5252 ext 5 anna@holisticmanagement.org

Christina Allday-Bondy

Edgewood 512/658-2051 christina.alldaybondy@gmail.com

AUSTRALIA

Judi Earl Coolatai, NSW 61-409-151-969 judi_earl@bigpond.com

Graeme Hand Franklin, Tasmania 61-4-1853-2130 • graemehand9@gmail.com

Dick Richardson Balhannah, SA 61-4-2906-9001 dick@dickrichardson.com.au

* Jason Virtue Cooran QLD 61-4-27 199 766 Jason@landlifeeducation.com.au

Brian Wehlburg

Kindee NSW 61-0408-704-431 brian@insideoutsidemgt.com.au

CANADA

Don Campbell Meadow Lake, SK 306-236-6088 doncampbell@sasktel.net

* Craig Leggett Chestertown 518/491-1979 • craigrleggett@gmail.com

Elizabeth Marks

Chatham 518/567-9476 (c) elizabeth_marks@hotmail.com

Phillip Metzger Norwich 607/316-4182 • pmetzger17@gmail.com

NORTH DAKOTA

* Joshua Dukart

Hazen 701/870-1184 • joshua_dukart@yahoo.com

OREGON

Angela Boudro

Central Point 541/ 890-4014 • angelaboudro@gmail.com

SOUTH DAKOTA

* Randal Holmquist

Mitchell 605/730-0550 • randy@heartlandtanks.com

TEXAS

* Lisa Bellows

North Central Texas College

Gainesville 940/736-3996 (c) • lbellows@nctc.edu

Deborah Clark

Henrietta 940/328-5542 deborah@birdwellandclarkranch.com

Blain Hjertaas Redvers, SK 306/452-7723 • bhjer@sasktel.net

Brian Luce Ponoka, AB 403/783-6518 lucends@cciwireless.ca

Tony McQuail Lucknow, ON 519/528-2493 tonymcquail@gmail.com

Kelly Sidoryk Blackroot, AB 780/872-2585 (c) kelly.sidoryk@gmail.com

FINLAND

Tuomas Mattila Pusula 358-407432412 tuomas.j.mattila@gmail.com

NAMIBIA

Usiel Seuakouje Kandjii

Windhoek 264-812840426 kandjiiu@gmail.com

Hermleigh 325/226-3042 (c) westgift@hughes.net

* CD Pounds Fruitvale 214/568-3377 • cdpounds@live.com

Peggy Sechrist Fredericksburg 830/456-5587 (c) peggysechrist@gmail.com

WASHINGTON DC Christine C. Jost Washington DC 773/706-2705 • christinejost42@gmail.com

WISCONSIN

* Larry Johnson Madison 608/665-3835 • larrystillpointfarm@gmail.com

* Laura Paine Columbus 608/338-9039 (c) • lkpaine@gmail.com

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.

* Colin Nott

Windhoek

264-81-2418778 (c) canott@iafrica.com.na

Wiebke Volkmann

Windhoek 264-81-127-0081 wiebke@afol.com.na

NEW ZEALAND

* John King

Christchurch 64-276-737-885 john@succession.co.nz

SOUTH AFRICA

Wayne Knight

Mokopane +27-82-805-3274 (c) wayne@theknights.za.net

Jozua Lambrechts

Somerset West, Western Cape +27-83-310-1940 • jozua@websurf.co.za

* Ian Mitchell-Innes

Ladysmith, Kwa-Zulu Natal +27-83-262-9030 ian@mitchell-innes.co.za

These associate educators provide educational services to their communities and peer groups.

Resource Management Services, LLC

Kirk L. Gadzia, Certified Educator PO Box 1100

Bernalillo, NM 87004 505-263-8677

kirk@rmsgadzia.com www.rmsgadzia.com

Pasture Scene Investigation

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.

CORRAL DESIGNS

CORRAL DESIGNS

“Bud Williams”

By World Famous Dr. Grandin Originator

of

The wide curved Lane makes filling the crowding tub easy. Includes detailed drawings for loading ramp, V chute, round crowd pen, dip vat, gates and hinges. Plus cell center layouts and layouts compatible with electronic sorting systems. Articles on cattle behavior. 27 corral layouts. $55.

The wide curved Lane makes lling the crowding tub easy

Includes detailed drawings for loading ramp, V chute, round crowd pen, dip vat, gates and hinges. Plus cell center layouts and layouts compatible with electronic sorting systems. Articles on cattle behavior. 27 corral layouts. $55.

Low Stress Cattle Handling Video $59. Send checks/money order to:

Low Stress Cattle Handling Video $59. Send checks/money order to:

GRANDIN LIVESTOCK SYSTEMS

GRANDIN LIVESTOCK SYSTEMS

2918 Silver Plume Dr., Unit C-3 Fort Collins, CO 80526 970/229-0703 • www.grandin.com

2918 Silver Plume Dr., Unit C-3 Fort Collins, CO 80526 970/229-0703 www.grandin.com

HMI Grazing Planning Software

Livestock Marketing & Proper Stockmanship

with Richard McConnell & Tina Williams

• User-friendly excel-based interface

• Let the computer do the math while you plan

• Easy SAU and ADA calculations

• Account for multiple herds

• Grazing Manual hyperlinks

Learn how good stockmanship can make your livestock handling experiences how livestock marketing based on today’s price (no crystal ball) can help you realize

• Livestock and Land Performance Worksheet

• And many more features

May 25-26 — 2 Day Stockmanship only, Dickinson, ND

May 30-June 1 — 3 Day Marketing/ Stockmanship, Wawota, SK

“This tool has already given us a many fold return beyond our initial investment and we have just begun to use it.”

Coming also to Alberta, Wyoming, and Iowa!

— Arnold Mattson, Agri-Environment Services Branch, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

www.handnhandlivestocksolutions.com

TO LEARN MORE or TO ORDER:

info@handnhandlivestocksolutions.com 417-327-6500

Curved Ranch Corrals

By World Famous Dr. Grandin Originator of Curved Ranch Corrals

“Bud Williams”

Livestock Marketing & Proper Stockmanship

with Richard McConnell & Tina Williams

Learn how good stockmanship can make your livestock handling experiences enjoyable, easier, and more profitable and how livestock marketing based on today’s price (no crystal ball) can help you realize your profit goals.

Springfield, MO — February 10-12

Bluffton, GA — March ????

Middlebury VT — August 20-23

"My son and I sorted, loaded and delivered 33 feeder calves Saturday. Brian said we should send you guys a Thank You Note each time we handle cattle. This was the smoothest and easiest it’s ever gone. Price was good too. The only people who don’t like this method are the folks who have never taken the time to learn and try." — Ben

www.handnhandlivestocksolutions.com

info@handnhandlivestocksolutions.com

417-327-6500

KIDS ON THE LAND

Kids On the Land is a unique STEM environmental program designed to teach children about the region where they live, connecting them to the land and a more sustainable future.

Kids On the Land is ready for an appearance in your school district. Peggy Maddox can come help your host landowner and school get started.

How many animals truly receive feed that has been grown with correct nutrients added to the soil? 95+% of all pasture and hay soils we test do not have the fertility required to provide the animals that eat it with even close to good nutrition. What about yours?

You can only manage what you correctly measure. Soil test as soon as conditions permit to add lime or other needed nutrients for pasture and hay crops.

Soil test as soon as conditions permit to add lime or other needed nutrients for pasture and hay crops.

please send address corrections before moving so that we do not incur unnecessary postal fees

DEVELOPMENT CORNER

Our Love for the Land

BY JONATHAN AND KAYLYN COBB

called to be a part of something bigger than us, this essential shift to regenerative agriculture. At that time, we thought that meant row cropping differently. At first, we began to change what we did.

But then we discovered a common thread among our new mentors and many of the leaders in this important movement. Many of them practiced some form of Holistic Management. We dug in. We read everything we could get our hands on related to Holistic Management. Kaylyn was privileged to receive a scholarship for HMI’s Beginning Women Farmers and Ranchers training program. As we delved into this new way of thinking and decision-making, we found ourselves beginning to see differently.

“If you want to make small changes, change the way you DO things. If you want to make big changes, change the way you SEE things.”

—Don Campbell

We heard this quote by Don Campbell very early on in our regenerative agriculture journey from one of our mentors. Perspective. Seeing things differently has changed how we make decisions. To us, this is a fundamental difference that Holistic Management has made in our lives. Our journey has been quite different than we ever imagined when we first embarked on this road-less-traveled way of land stewardship. When we first moved back to the family farm that had been in Jonathan’s family for over 100 years, the land was managed under the industrialized cropping model. After a handful of years being back and working under that system, we realized it was not sustainable… ecologically, socially, or financially. We were on our way out of farming altogether when we were exposed for the first time to soil health and the idea that there was a completely different way to manage the land—to work with creation instead of against it. We knew we were

Along this journey we’ve “done” many different things. We’ve raised everything from grass-fed cattle & sheep, to pastured pigs & chickens (all of them at the same time during various seasons). We’ve marketed direct to consumers, restaurants, branded buyers, and other ranchers. However, the foundation of holistic thinking in our decision making has enabled us to determine what we need to do based on our vision and the impact our decisions have on everything around us, including our own quality of life which is often forgotten under many business frameworks.

Very few, if any, journeys go the way they are expected. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a map and plan your route. Having that plan enables you to know when you are taking a detour, whether it is a temporary detour or needs to transition to a permanent one, and whether your direction or trajectory is still leading you toward your ultimate destination. This is one of the things Holistic Management can help any business or organization achieve. The ability to plan, observe with your new capability to see things differently, and adjust as needed. We’ve experienced these in major ways each year of our regenerative journey thus far, and we anticipate there will be more to come! Ultimately for us, learning to see that we are partners with the rest of creation informs our decisions.

In closing, one of the most impactful quotes in our regenerative journey is from Wendell Berry: “We have the world to live in on the condition that we will take good care of it. And to take good care of it, we have to know it. And to know it, and to be willing to take care of it, we have to love it.” Our love for the land is what enables us to properly know it and care for it. And that has made all the difference.

Jonathan & Kaylyn Cobb