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