#196, IN PRACTICE, March/April 2021

A $2 Million Cow?

BY ANN ADAMS

On the Reasons to Be Cheerful website, there was an article written by Mitch Anderson titled “The Planet Saving Potential of Whale Poop.” The gist of the article is that whales have a great deal of value because they help sequester atmospheric carbon through their symbiotic relationship with the phytoplankton that are actually doing the sequestering. Does this natural process sound familiar?

This scientifically acknowledged symbiotic relationship between the whales and the phytoplankton has long been acknowledged, but the average person doesn’t seem to grasp the importance of whales and their connection with carbon sequestration and oxygen production. In fact, the article’s author suggests the connection is counter intuitive. But, an IMF (International

In Practice

Monetary Fund) economist, Ralph Chami, and his team were able to calculate the value of a whale at $2 million—because of the ecosystem services they produce. Compare this number to the paltry value of $80,000 which is evidently what whales are going for these days. That lifetime value is over 20 times the value of the whale’s selling price.

These calculations have resulted in increased interest in whale conservation and the potential funding of projects that increase whale numbers and keep them in circulation doing their work that supports them, the phytoplankton, and the rest of the planet. Because whales accumulate carbon in their bodies, as all living things do, when they die and sink to the bottom of the ocean (if they aren’t harvested), they sequester 1,500 trees worth of carbon.

But, of course, their greater value is the mineral cycling work they perform during the course of their 60 years. Imagine the amount of minerals these 180 ton mammals bring to the surface of the ocean after they “graze” on krill further down in the ocean and then bring all those minerals to the surface in the form of their dung (“fecal plumes”), which feeds the phytoplankton (or microscopic algae). This is what is known in whale conservation circles as the “whale pump” and what we know as the mineral cycle. Moreover, those nutrients feed fish which is why whales also increase fish populations.

The phytoplankton are estimated to capture 40% of the world’s carbon emissions and produce 50% of our atmospheric oxygen, which is the equivalent of four Amazon rainforests. As the author notes, it is rather humbling to think that every second breath you draw is thanks to those algae. Of course, the other half is thanks to all the micro-organisms in the soil that are feeding the trees, grasses, and shrubs that provide the first breath you draw. So our survival depends on these photosynthetic miracles.

Based on Chami’s calculations with the value of carbon sequestration, increased fish populations, and eco-tourism interest,

the total value of all the whales we currently have that makes whales provide $1 trillion of economic benefit.

The question then becomes what is the cost to increasing whale numbers to get more whales cycling minerals in the ocean and sequestering more carbon and increasing fish populations? Some whales, like the blue whale has only 3% of its historic numbers. While there is an international whaling moratorium, there are still over 1,000 whales killed by commercial hunting each year, taking these mineral cyclers out of the system. But even more troubling is the number of whales that are killed because of being struck by ships or getting tangled in fishing nets or plastic pollution. Certainly efforts to change shipping lanes or reducing single use plastic containers are as challenging a task as rebuilding our food systems so we can work to feed our regions rather than “feeding the world” through a commodity-focused food system that focuses predominantly on profit and less on the health and welfare of the animals and people involved.

Ultimately the value of saving whales so they can breed and produce more young would be increased phytoplankton populations. Estimates for a 1% increase in phytoplankton translates to adding two billion mature trees to the planet. Pre-whaling numbers of whales were around four to five million whales. We have a little over one million today.

Chami notes that to help make these shifts requires a “new mindset—an approach that recognizes and implements a holistic approach to our own survival.” Sound familiar? Chami also goes on to write: “Whales are not a human solution—these great creatures having inherent value of their own and the right to live—but this new mindset recognizes and values their integral place in a sustainable ocean and planet.”

So maybe we need to start talking about the “cow pump” or the “sheep pump” (or even the chicken pump) to attract interest in the work that livestock properly managed can achieve

CONTINUED ON PAGE 14

INSIDE

The Many Faces of Holistic Management

HMI’s mission is to envision and realize healthy, resilient lands and thriving communities by serving people in the practice of Holistic Decision Making & Management.

STAFF

Wayne Knight Interim Executive Director

Ann Adams Education Director

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

Jim Shelton, Vice-Chair

Breanna Owens, Secretary

Delane Atcitty

Gerardo Bezanilla

Jonathan Cobb

Ariel Greenwood

Colin Nott

Daniel Nuckols

Brad Schmidt

Kelly Sidoryk

Brian Wehlburg

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 © 2021

Holistic Management® is a registered trademark of Holistic Management International

The Power of Humility

BY SCOTT HAUCK

Last year, I had the opportunity to have a conversation with Will Harris of White Oak Pastures. A conversation between a first generation farmer and a 4th generation farmer like Will, is much like someone familiar with a planted irrigated pasture, walking into a native tallgrass prairie. You have some idea of what is going on, but mostly, you just listen. The former can bring observations to the latter, but mostly, the prairie simply informs the farmer working on irrigated planted ground. Mr. Harris has not only the experience of his lifetime, but that of three generations of family before him. I have the bumps and bruises of trial and error, and not much else. Therefore, an opportunity like this, like the rarity of experiencing a healthy native range, must not be taken lightly. I knew that I must only bring my questions and listening skills.

I thought for days leading up to my conversation with Will Harris. My thoughts kept racing around, “Do not waste his time, respect his offer of a phone call, and get to the source of what I am looking to talk about.” As those days passed, I zeroed in on a couple of patterns I thought he could crystallize for me. Scaling up, assessing financial risk, what mindset does it take to run an operation like White Oak Pastures, and thoughts around bringing on outside investment looked like a good direction to head in to find some clarity for where we are as an operation. I was not prepared for the level of alertness and directness that Will Harris brings to a conversation. From

“Hello”, it became clear this man has gravity, unshakable purpose, and a deep thoughtfulness and humility.

Will had been thinking about what we would talk about as well, as he said “We could not be coming from more opposite ends of the spectrum.” We talked for 20 minutes and there was no Earth shattering information or perspectives shared. The most profound take away for me as a young first generation farmer and rancher, was the type of person it takes to build an operation like White Oak Pastures. There should be no wasted effort, with purpose in every word, thought in every phrase, and passion driving what you do. If you do not have these ingredients, scale cannot be attained. Our time on Earth is limited, we are mortal, we die, and, God willing, we become soil. Therefore, each moment, each choice, offers the opportunity to continue on a given trajectory of growth or death. There is no static states in Nature.

Mr. Harris and his family, have committed themselves to an idea, an energetic field, so profound, that life flocks to it by the 100,000. If we are to do what we dream of doing, it is not going to come in some final moment of judgment, left or right, choose or don’t. It will come in each moment of observation and interaction, of planning, analyzing and re-planning. Of having the right tools, when we go out to do the job, because we stopped for a moment and thought, “What do I need.” That’s all Mr. Harris has done; he has had the presence to stop and think, “What do I need right now to do this job the best I can?” In this practice, which is never done perfectly but rather with commitment, we create the conditions for Nature, God, to show us what to do next. It is both unwavering commitment, and being able to

Scott with daughter River.

take the time to “turn off the racing of cash flow and figures” though our head, that allows us to both bring forth and let emerge that which will be in the future as a result of our actions in this moment. This process, of taking time to become still, honors the holistic nature of our being and brain. It allows the subconscious processing of conscious decisions to take place.

The key ingredient is humility, or an open heart, to let in what Nature makes clear and accept the feedback. For here is where the question of scale only ever exists. Yes, we can have a vision for what we want both individually and as a family and farm. But, the only place to make the dream of regenerative agriculture replicated at the scale achieved by White Oak Pastures, is in each moment. Unwavering care, attention, focus and discipline around the question “What is needed now?”, within the context of our greater purpose crystallized through the process of Holistic Management, is the place where visions become reality. Big goals are made up of little moments, little victories. Moving cattle. Serving customers. Cleaning up. Cooking the family breakfast. Doing these seemingly little things right, is the only way to get the big things right. The journey from here to there is done with a step and a context.

I have a confession to make. I’m insecure. Sometimes I’m feeling so insecure, that I am not sure if I’m farming regeneratively because

farmed this way, at a scale no one else has been able to achieve, quietly in the deep southern coastal plains of Georgia. For those years there wasn’t that many people banging down their door to make videos or conduct interviews, they were just farming: raising animals, hiring and training people in these practices, processing on farm, and cultivating relationships with customers.

If there is a single foundation which has been set in me from this conversation with a mentor from afar, it is this: go to work, love what you do, clear your mind, do it again. This simple discipline provides me with the freedom, the space, to not care what people think or if they see me as such. We farm because we want to, because we need to, because we know it’s what we are supposed to do. So we keep farming regeneratively, in an attempt, each day, to regenerate the soil of our souls towards the more diverse, resilient and life giving medium through which we communicate with the Divine. As farmers and ranchers thinking holistically, we understand on a deep level, the power and beauty and awe Nature inspires. She is so vast and immense in her Power to give life, to provide opportunity.

Permaculture, observe and interact. Each action, elicits a response from Nature and we can respond accordingly. This is the sacred conversation. This is the sacred communion between humanity and the divine. We exist as unique beings in Nature. We can choose to separate ourselves from Her, from the process which created us, and institute, initiate, a very new but not so improved way of being in the world. This new way of being, fundamentally mechanical and synthetic, expresses our deep

of myself, my family and my community; or am I farming this way because I just want people to see me doing it and say, “Wow, look at that guy, he’s the next Joel Salatin or Gabe Brown!” I know in the recess of my soul it is the former which drives me, and provides the discipline to rise early each morning, and stay up late some evenings working to make this farm a reality for myself and my family. And here it is, very, very real.

What I appreciate about Mr. Harris and his family most is that for 20 or so years, they

The great Masanobu Fukuoka in his One Straw Revolution says it clearly and concisely; “The ultimate goal of Farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.” Agriculture exists as the discipline and practice, which when approached with humility, places us in direct communication with Nature and Her patterns. This sacredness we find in a holistically managed grassland or forest or riparian ecosystem, creates a space where all beings interact with full expression of their “instinctive behaviors.”

Holistic Management provides us a context, both within agriculture and our lives outside it, to communicate by Nature’s patterns and language. We relearn the language of action within an ecological context and can, with time, recreate the garden from which we once fell. We simply need to take that first step humbly into the process of, to steal a principle from

lie, which we have brought to bear on our relationship, our conversation, with Nature.

Will and his family brought White Oak Pastures to where it is today, by listening to the feedback of Nature. They humbly and honestly returned to Nature and asked “How should we farm here?” The answer became a system generating life everywhere you look: in the soil, on the land, in the animals, and in the people.

How do we speak to Nature and one another? What do we say with our actions? This is the impression left on me from a 20-minute conversation with a man I do not know, from a place I do not understand how to manage. But none of that matters. All that matters is that in order to be successful, to achieve something greater than ourselves, something as coherent as the conversation between White Oak Pastures and Nature, we must be disciplined in our humble approach to the process, and simply go to work. What emerges as far as scale, will emerge.

Scott raises and sells pasture-based meats, along with wife Margaret and daughter River, at Sacred Song Farm near Mancos, CO. To learn more go to : https://www. sacredsongfarm.com. Will Harris serves on HMI’s Advisory Council and is the owner of White Oak Pastures. To learn more go to: https://www.whiteoakpastures.com.

Scott moves the cattle usually at least once a day. He also works to leave a good stockpile for forage for winter grazing.

Scott raises Mangalitsa and Kune Kune hogs in the forest and on pasture.

Cienega Musings— Root Cause

BY ESTHER PARK

I’m not exactly sure how I got connected to this guy, but one day I found myself at a club in Menlo Park across the table from a very traditional tech bro/VC type who said he was interested in food and agriculture. We had nearly nothing in common. This was back in 2015, not long after a good swath of Ohio found itself with unpotable tap water due to algal blooms in Lake Erie, which were caused by agricultural runoff.

Toward the end of our conversation, my lunch date casually name-drops a famous band member (whom I was not hip enough to recognize) and says that he’s interested in investing in water technologies. Citing the water issues in Ohio, he asked if I knew of any interesting and investable companies that could address getting clean water to households. I told him that if his famous friend was really interested in clean water, the better thing to do is invest in strategies that help farmers stop practices that allow huge amounts of water to run off their lands along with the chemical amendments applied there. Stunned, he just looked at me like I had an alien head. He didn’t say it, but I could see it in his expression: “how does that kind of strategy make any money?”

I was recently reminded of this strange interaction while in conversation with someone about investability, which is usually code for generating goo-gobs of financial return. Many non-profits and for-profit social enterprises lead with their impact statements of the social ills or problems they are addressing with their programmatic or consumer models. The tech sector is particularly notorious for thinking they can engineer or reverse-engineer any problem society offers up. And investors get excited at the prospect of profiting from models that generate revenue off of social problems.

Take the Ohio water problem, for example. Some tech/engineering company comes along and offers a great solution for getting water from an over-phosphorated state to a potable state. It will take huge water treatment plants, or technology add-ons to existing treatment plants, or some distributed model of water treatment

that every municipality or household will have to buy. That will generate TONS of money, right? Right. This is happening all the time. That’s why things like cleaning, detection, and synthetic technologies, along with externalities marketplaces get so much air time. Those are GREAT opportunities to make some money. In fact, sometimes they are so great that they reinforce the patterns that caused the problems to begin with.

Let’s take a couple of other examples. One of the most striking models to me is a traditionallystructured venture capital fund whose mission is to address poverty by investing in businesses that will create jobs and economic opportunity in low-income communities while also achieving venture returns. Seems like a great investment thesis. However, if we believe that economic deprivation is a direct result of income inequality, I’m not sure how an investment vehicle that extracts value from these communities and creates more wealth for already existing wealth holders does anything to actually address the root cause of that inequality. (Let me also say, as a champion of nuance, that there do exist similarsounding funds that downplay returns in favor of utilizing strategies to retain more of the wealth in the community.)

And let’s not let philanthropy off the hook here. If the root cause of poverty is unfettered wealth accumulation and the resulting division of power and resources, how many foundations concerned with poverty are working to curb wealth accumulation?

Getting closer to home, in the food and ag space, another favorite set of examples are companies that are addressing food deserts. We all know that a lack of access to fresh fruits and vegetables in minority and lowincome neighborhoods are a huge problem for a number of reasons tracing back to government-sanctioned land theft, ridiculous farming subsidies, and large-scale food system industrialization, just to name a few and for

which there isn’t enough space to elaborate on here (but suffice it to say all these things also point back to unfettered wealth accumulation).

Nevertheless, every year I see a new business plan that proposes to address the issue by opening small scale grocery stores or fresh food pop ups, or financing corner-store modifications or what have you. Sounds great. However, these strategies do not begin to address the reason this community became a food desert in the first place. And they likely further hamper a community’s reach for food sovereignty – the ability to make its own decisions about land use and food choices, to actively take part in the production and distribution of food, along with its economic benefits. Just look at where the profits are going.

But changing root cause behaviors? Those are great opportunities to make very little to no money, so they attract very little investment.

As investors and philanthropists, we like to believe that we are critical thinkers, but how many of us are truly looking at root causes? Mostly we don’t because it’s inconvenient, it’s hard to find someone working on solutions that address them, and the financial returns are paltry to non-existent. Yes, sometimes we absolutely need to band-aid certain problems and there is no shame in that. But if we are truly committed to creating real systemic change, we also need to dedicate a good chunk of our portfolio investing in lower-return solutions to root causes.

Esther Park is CEO of Cienega Capital, an investment company utilizing an integrated capital approach to systemic change in the areas of soil health, regenerative agriculture, and local food systems. She has 20 years of experience in mission-based financial services ranging from microfinance to risk capital investments. This article first appeared on the No Regrets Initiative at: https://www.noregretsinitiative.com/2020/11/ cienega-musings-root-cause/

Esther Parks

Sheep at Paicines Ranch, California.

What Next?— Uplifting Communities of Color

BY MARIANNA ZAVALA

Iwas born and raised in Napa Valley, California. I was so grateful for the childhood I had. I got to run through the vineyards with my dad who worked for two large wineries—Opus One and Robert Mondavi. I spent a lot of time with him as a little girl as well as these other Spanish faces like my dad’s, like the workers who would grill their tortillas on a comal out in the field. I also spent a lot of time with my mom and her parents who own a ranch near Wooden Valley just over the hill from Napa with 230 acres of oak woodland. So I spent a lot of my childhood running through this beautiful riparian area.

I was raised in a mixed race household with my dad being Mexican-American and my mom being White. As I grew up older in Napa Valley I could see the dichotomy that existed in that community, which was you either owned the vineyards and sold the wine and made a lot of money or you worked in the field like my dad.

I knew that agriculture and growing up in that environment was important to me so I went to Cal Poly to major in Agriculture. I had no idea of what I was doing. But, I went to my first animal husbandry class to the dairy barn and learned about calves and the milking system and came back to the dorms smelling awful and I was so happy.

Fast forward a couple of years and I had the chance to intern at Swanton Pacific Ranch which is a ranch owned by Cal Poly as an educational laboratory with a 1,000 acres of rangeland, 1,000 acres of holistically managed forest, and 1,000 acres of cropland. I was the livestock intern. I was under the tutelage of Gordon Claussen who was a huge Holistic Management buff. Really that was my first introduction of what it meant to be out on the

land and working with livestock, and what stockmanship and stewardship really meant.

Then I bounced around in the Bay area for a year working for farmer’s markets and community outreach, writing, and farmer’s market’s education. Then that big pull came and I couldn’t stop thinking about that time out in Swanton. So I took a big leap in March of 2017 and I went to work for a small ranching family in southern Colorado in Antonito in the beautiful San Luis Valley. It was a big catalyst for this journey. It was in that place and in that space that I got to meet so many wonderful people. I learned what it meant to be in a landscape with a community of people and really feel altered by it.

Then I became a NAP (New Agrarian Program) apprentice with Round River Resource Management on the Brett Gray Ranch which is a 56,000-acre ranch owned by the Nature Conservancy and

Then I moved back to California to take care of my family and I was hired as an intern and then as an apprentice at TomKat Ranch in Pescadero. I currently manage their grassfed beef business. I get to work the cows a few times a month with the cows. I am also working with a local non-profit on food security issues.

For those of us that have not come from an agricultural background and who have chosen to look at agricultural opportunities, one the scariest things to think about is what will be there for me if I go, when I go, and how will I manage if it isn’t there. I think one of the most beautiful things about this lifestyle and being in love with this kind of work, is that wherever you go, there are people there who are pursuing the same thing. So whether it’s fate or whatever crazy design, you are put in contact with people who will intimately change your life. That has definitely been my experience for the past couple of years, whether it was working for a family in southern Colorado whom I had never met before but who had roots in that community going hundreds of year back which I really couldn’t understand. In the San Luis Valley things can be really, really hard and to see the strength of those connections really opened my eyes to what can be built and how it can change your life for the better so that you can, in turn, strengthen those relationships.

managed by Louis Martin, one hour east of Colorado Springs. I spent another eight months there honing in on stockmanship skills. For someone who came from a densely populated area and then coming to a place where all you can see is sky was really terrifying to start with.

For me an even greater test was the NAP apprenticeship which was an hour down a dirt road. When you are there living and working with four other people day in and day out you really learn what it means to depend on people. For me, that idea of community really began to flesh itself out. On the day to day that looked like someone roping a calf so I could tag it or watching my coworker, Laura, face off with a very, very angry mother cow who was definitely not bluffing and feeling like we were going to die, and then finishing a day of work and saying, “Hey, do you want to have a cup of tea and watch ‘Game of Thrones’ with me?” That was intimate community for me.

So taking those experiences and coming

Tagging calves with a little guest, TomKat Ranch.

TomKat Ranch 2020 apprentices on a preg check/vaccination day.

Uplifting Communities of Color

back to California was quite different. Pescadero is an hour south of the Bay Area and close to Half Moon Bay and Palo Alto, so we are surrounded by this very populated and vibrant area so I had to relearn how to fit into that kind of space. So in the past year one of the things that I have learned is to tap into the community led by the non-profit, Puente de la Costa Sur, that does healthcare, childcare, tutoring for students, and food distribution.

For any rural space I’ve been in before it’s been really segregated, there is no other way to put it. Puente de la Costa Sur has put in the work to connect so many facets of the community here. Through their leadership I’ve really been able to connect with people who live and work here. That’s been something that’s been a big blessing in my life.

And for me personally, a big concern I have always felt living in rural spaces, I have a deep attachment to the Latinx community. I have a fear when I go into a rural community for work or to do outreach, I fear that loss of that culture and my lived experience, like somehow that’s not going to be seen. In this place, I’ve had the realization that there are these connections that I can’t see and I had to have a little bit of faith. I feel really blessed. I feel like my concept of community has shifted each place I have gone and it is still forming. I carry it all with me.

It was a scary thought to just plop myself into whatever situation and say I’m just going to go from here. I think that’s what happens and depending on where you are spiritually and emotionally, that’s a big piece of it. I know for me, I was really scared, but I was able to make those connections that I did because I recognized that I was scared and I was able to say, “What next?” That’s a really big piece and it’s not an easy thing to do. I don’t want to speak about that lightly. I don’t want to make it seem like it was chump change, because it does take some personal work to put yourself in that space mentally.

This topic for me has remained a really

difficult one to work through. I don’t foresee it becoming any easier to grapple with. I think I’ve come to the point that I have to accept that. For me it’s complicated and a lot of nuance with my life experiences and my experiences in ag. When I spoke earlier about being raised in Napa, and having one half of my family be brown, and the other half be white, I look back at some of those family exchanges and I think “Oh, God.” I mean, Thanksgiving was really interesting.

On a deeper level for someone like me who is both Latina and White, understanding what it means to be mixed race, and how it has fed this feeling I hold, I don’t feel like I fit in one space or the other, and I’m constantly bouncing back and forth. And within the context of ag, it plays itself out. 96% of our workforce in ag is Latino, and the whole slew of abuses and exploitation that comes with

that you carry. Coming from backgrounds of being exploited and being the conquered and the conqueror.” These [experiences] are very complex things.

On a personal level, my dad passed away last year of cancer, and he spent the majority of his life working in the vineyard. It doesn’t take a scientist to know what is used and what gets sprayed in production ag, and what the people who work in it are exposed to. And so that is a piece that really hurts me. I don’t know what made my dad sick, but ultimately, I could make a very good educated guess as to what did. And so, with all of that context and nuance in mind, moving forward in these spaces I consider what are the pieces I can heal within myself from these experiences? What is the trauma that I carry that is mine? What is the trauma that I carry that isn’t mine that is passed down from generation to generation? What space can I fill that doesn’t overtake space that is meant for others?

I’ve come to recognize that I feel my role in ag is to uplift others, particularly communities of color, who have been the mothers of agriculture since the beginning of time. I know that those communities are looking for self-agency and there is no need for “saviorism” of any kind. There is a need for advocacy and for understanding and for empathy. There has to be room for nuance and things that are complex.

that dynamic at the hands of white landowners, white farmers and white ranchers. That is hard for me to understand. I have a roommate who is an apprentice on this ranch here who put it into words very beautifully for me last year. “This is a part of your journey. The blood memory

One of the big things I’ve taken away from Holistic Management, in particular, is the difference between complex and complicated systems. We are complex. We are not complicated. There is not a “plug this in and everything will work fine.” Absolutely not.

And so for me, presently, particularly in the context of this movement for Black lives, the massive upheaval we’ve seen from communities who have been clamoring for justice, I’ve really

Calf pickup on an especially stormy day —Brett Gray Ranch.

TomKat Ranch interns and apprentices crew 2019.

shifted my lens of where does my energy need to go. I think agriculture represents a beautiful opportunity for that healing. If those energies are not focused on that kind of healing, connecting those pieces and those communities, and righting those wrongs, it will just continue to do harm, whether we intend to or not.

I have a really hard time of this whole concept of when you see something you don’t agree with what can you say and how can you say it? Or if you don’t, why you don’t. Power systems are very hard to change. So one of the things for me as an apprentice as I’ve gone through multiple internships and apprenticeships over the past few years, there is not really very good awareness of the power dynamics that exist within those environments. It’s been really difficult for me as someone who is at the bottom rung of the ladder in a certain environment, to be asked, “What is your opinion on this?” And then A. share it, B. not really be heard, and C. (in some situations) have retribution happen for that sharing. I’m not in a situation where I feel like I can put my livelihood at risk. Like so many others in this space and in this environment I have student loans and I take care of my family.

Given all these things that people have to deal with, I think there needs to be a mindfulness of the power dynamics that exist. And when we look at gatekeepers and the status quo, I think that people fear losing power, whether or not they really have an understanding of what that means. So when people fear losing their power, they put fences up. I’ve seen that in small interactions of my own and also played out at a national level.

I’ve been in a situation in the past as an apprentice, as someone with a Latino last name and someone with perhaps a different lived experience, where I’m tokenized and criticized and put on a pedestal and told “We want to do these things.” But, there is no safe space for

me to land when I do that (tell the truth) and it makes me very, very hesitant to engage in those

the spaces that exist for me outside of work has been really, really hard. The reminders for me are more like little glimpses.

For example, the past couple of months I haven’t really had a chance to work with the cows because I’ve been so wrapped up in how Google sheets works and how to manage inventory for a bunch of meat (which are good skills to have even if they aren’t my deepest passions to have). But the other day I got to go out to one of our leased properties and work cows with a couple of the other apprentices and the ranching coordinator. To share that space with the other women and to be helpful, I found myself at the end of the day feeling so good about what I had done and the space I had been in. It’s those pieces that remind me “This is where you feel good. Pay attention to this. It means something. “ So for me, it’s collecting those pieces and taking those pieces and figuring out how do I puzzle piece them to the life I want to have?

To be able to recognize this is my skill set, this is what I do well. This is what I can bring to the table and having

with the political climate and the environmental climate and COVID and more recently the fires on the coast here. It has felt like wave after wave after wave. For me, coupled with deeply personal healing that still needs to happen, and

With a desire to learn more about her own heritage, and the intersection of agriculture and food justice, Marianna has since earned a degree in Agriculture, dabbled as a writer and educator for farmer’s markets throughout the Bay Area, and has worked on several ranches in California and Colorado (and is a former New Agrarian Program Apprentice). Marianna is currently an apprentice at TomKat Ranch in Pescadero, California, where her time is spent managing the ranch’s grass-fed beef business, and working with local community members to better understand and address food security needs in the area. This article is an excerpt of Marianna’s presentation during the 2020 REGENERATE Conference.

Plant delivery on the Brett Gray Ranch in Karval Colorado.

Trying out the EasyWean nose rings on calves at TomKat Ranch.

An Encompassing Community— Moving Past Disparity in Regenerative Agriculture

BY SHALINI KARRA

Igrew up in a suburb north of Los Angeles. I had no connection to the agricultural world except the food that I ate, farmer’s markets, or a pumpkin patch that my parents took us to. Then in college, I was exploring different courses and the person across the hall in my dorm was studying animal science at Cal Poly.

I found that I was spending more time going through her notes and helping her study, so I thought I might go into pre-vet coming from a south Asian family where the goal is to be a doctor, engineer, or lawyer, and follow my passion for animals through that venue. This led me, in the most wonderful circumstance, to take Rob

me towards grad school, and I was headed down the veterinary school route, but then I made a snap decision to WWOOF (Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farmers) and I went to Ireland because I wanted to focus on sheep.

I was there and I had this aha moment. I was knee deep in our sow pen cleaning it out and it came to me: “I am so happy right now.” I am knee deep in pig feces and I’m happy and I’m

that I wanted to be on an operation that had a diversity of livestock. Here were these North Dakotans, and I had no idea who they were or how much of a big deal they were in the regenerative ag world in terms of the leaps and bounds they had made with their soil health. I met them at the career connection and I said, “You guys have all the things I want to learn about.”

Rutherford’s Sheep Management course. And Rob Rutherford is a huge proponent of Holistic Management. So my very first introduction to agriculture was through the lens of Holistic Management which I am so grateful for because it’s given me a wonderful perspective and a passion for agriculture.

So after graduating, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do and my parents were pushing

producing food. And that was the moment where my life shift toward agriculture happened.

When I came back that year I wasn’t even sure how someone like me would even start to get into ag. I remember Rob telling me about the Quivira Coalition. I had seen this picture of a beautiful ranch on their website and I decided to apply for their NAP (New Agrarian Program) apprenticeship.

Thank you George and Julie for accepting me because it was a life changing experience. They took someone in who was crazy green and didn’t know anything. I didn’t really have any practical experience and they took me under their wing and showed me the beauty of raising quality proteins for our community.

My apprenticeship was not the full year and it ended at the same time that the Quivira Conference was going on that year so I sat in on a half-day workshop led by Gabe and Paul Brown. I knew from my experience in Ireland

So I joined them as a six-month intern and I fell in love with the prairie and I fell in love with Paul. Now I’m a permanent fixture on the Brown’s ranch where we’ve been working to learn how to direct market all of our meat to a community who might not be as open as the coasts. People are very set in their ways up here, but we are working on education, knowing that a nutrient dense diet is going to be a boost to your immune system. We are also working with our local farmer’s markets and restaurants as well.

I feel like my sense of community has been shifting and evolving over the years. I grew up in a tight knit family whether it was on my mom’s side with her Filipino family or my dad’s side where any family dinner turned into 75 people all coming together and supporting each other, being very loud and rambunctious. Then having my life take to me to very quiet places in the very literal sense. There is no one around you, there is no one that looks like you.

It’s really forced me to broaden my idea of what community means to me. I now have encompassed the plant communities as part of my community and how they give

Shalini with lamb and ewe at the Brown Ranch.

Shalini moving electric fence on the Brown Ranch.

something to me and I give something to them. Or the animal community, whether it’s the livestock we are raising or the wildlife we are facilitating better habitats for them, and the microbiological community under our feet. Having that encompassing feeling has given me a lot of comfort over the years in times of what I perceived as isolation.

The culture of agriculture gave me a relationship with the land and the food that I never expected would happen and I’m super grateful for it. But it is a very challenging setting. I have so many people telling me “Your story is so inspiring. You’re a woman of color who is trying to get into farming and ranching in rural communities and you don’t have the background. You’re changing things. But, I never felt like I could own up to that. I struggle with that identity in a sense because before farming was kind of trendy and really cool thing to do, people of color all over the world were already doing this and have been doing this since the beginning of our species because we have to eat.

I don’t feel like a change maker, rather it’s just something we need to acknowledge that it’s not an equal setting anymore as it once was. And maybe it wasn’t at some point. But in our own agricultural community, it is sad to see when I walk into conferences and I’m the only person of color. Or in the industry, we go to ag schools or marketing schools, like with direct marketing with your farm to table products or restaurants, and the disparity I’ve seen [racially]. I don’t have solutions. But it is something that I think we should all be cognizant about.

I grew up with [being the only person of color in the room.] I came home from kindergarten saying “Hey, I’m the black person in my classroom.” So it’s a weirdly comfortable situation as it’s something I’ve grown up with. But then I have to look back and people saying, “You are a change maker, because you make it more comfortable for other people of color.” But how do we make it even safer for someone unlike myself, who isn’t comfortable with being the only minority in the room. Where do we change things from here?

I also like that I can challenge other people. Last year I had the opportunity for the month of nutrition to go on our local news channel to speak about our farmer’s market and what nutrient dense food might be. And I was there representing our farm. And the anchor looked at me and said, “What do you do on the ranch. You’re just the marketing.” I said, “No, I grow the food too.” It was interesting knowing he was

us face is being able to recognize these issues and feeling pretty helpless about it. Because if I speak up about this, will I lose this position? Will I undermine what my bosses might be saying? Will I undermine the vision of the family ranch that I am joining? Am I going to step on toes that I don’t want to step on because their toes are bigger than my toes are—very literally and metaphorically? Knowing that there are a lot of other people that struggle with this, I can find strength.

There is more of a focus on mental health in agriculture in our community today but we are still surrounded by the older generation where if you take a break you aren’t working hard enough, in that sort of destructive mindset where you have to basically kill yourself to be successful in the industry. Being able to work with others on the ranch and being able to take those breaks and say “Hey, let’s go crack open a can in the middle of the field and just enjoy the sunset and enjoy where we are at.” I focus on the plant communities, livestock, and the microbes, the biological communities around me. They bolster me and also keep me motivated and bring me joy.

taken aback, but that he was also on live TV and not knowing what to do with those responses. It was really fun in the moment to take those pre-conceived notions down. It is a preconceived notion in our society right now of what a farmer and rancher might look like. It is something that a lot of us might struggle with.

[Challenging gatekeeping] is a huge challenge. As a young agrarian, we’re not the land owners, we are not the bosses, we are not primary decision makers yet, so you don’t feel like you are in a position of authority when you witness gatekeeping happening to what you are doing or what your bosses are doing. It is a really difficult place to come from to say “I’m sorry, that’s not an okay thing to say.” It’s an isolating feeling at the same time.

This is a challenge that we are facing. Maybe there are more courageous people out there than myself that I can learn from. But it is one of the biggest challenges that some of

Moving forward in the grand scheme of our agricultural society, means opening up these harder conversations and personally finding the courage to have these harder conversations with closer community members and with people who come out to the ranch and visit and who aren’t expecting to see everything we are doing or someone like me farming. We need to approach these things and have dialogue beyond those who are similar to us. But how do we open up these conversations in a setting that will not be as welcomed? It’s hard, there are eggshells all over. But knowing there is so much support and so many like thinkers in this world gives me hope, strength, and courage.

Shalini Karra is a California native who has apprenticed on the San Juan Ranch and the Brown Ranch. Five years later, with a love of the prairie (and Paul) cemented, Shalini continues to work with Gabe and Paul Brown providing healthy, nutrient-dense proteins to their customers. This article is an excerpt from Shalini’s presentation at the 2020 REGENERATE Conference.

Shalini during her apprenticeship at the San Juan Ranch.

Shalini learning to weld with mentor George Whitten.

& LIVESTOCK

Wayne Berry— Five Decades of Holistic Management and Teaching

BY HEATHER SMITH THOMAS

Wayne Berry and his wife Sharon have a ranch in North Dakota near Williston, and a ranch in eastern Montana at Fairview, near the North Dakota border. At age 78, after a long career as a teacher and mentor, Wayne says he is now retired—though he still enjoys helping people with questions about soil and forage.

Despite his retirement status, Wayne was asked by The North Dakota Grassland Coalition to participate in a two-day conference a few years ago with other mentors. “They got me to come out of my self-imposed retirement to attend this, and asked me to tell about things I’d learned since 1955,” he says. They wanted him to share insights into his Holistic Management approach to ranching as part of the USDA-ARS Northern Plains Agricultural Research Laboratory’s (NPARL) seminar series and describe the many tools and strategies he’d experimented with over five decades to accomplish his and his family’s goals of enjoying life, while ensuring that their ranch stays profitable and the land remains healthy and sustainable. As an innovative “grass farmer” Wayne had experimented with a wide variety of tools and strategies to convert a traditional farming and ranching operation to a holistic, selfsustaining “grass farm” livestock operation.

A Holistic Transition

Wayne was born in 1942 on the ranch in eastern Montana that his grandfather homesteaded in 1907. “My grandfather was from Scotland, and was a stockman, raised horses, and only farmed because he had to. I think his interest in livestock came through in me. I am not as energetic as a border collie, but I am really interested in cattle!” Wayne says.

“My interest in grass started in 1955 with a Montana 4-H range management project in Richland County. The county agent, Dean Davidson, took five of us boys—the number that would fit in his car— around to various places looking at range pastures. We spent three years going through that Montana 4-H Range Management Project. It was very much like a college Range 101 course,” Wayne says.

Wayne then went to Montana State College/University at Bozeman for undergraduate work, and a master’s degree in resource economics. “That got me thinking a little broader. By 1980 I was bouncing around the edges

of Holistic Management. I had heard a few things that really interested me,” Wayne says.

By that time, he was taking care of his mother’s farm due to his brother’s death. The first few years were so wet that it was difficult to till the fields, and then came the drought of the early 1980s. “I started to think about drought management and doing some things with the conservation district and their soil conservationist who was a range management guy. He had attended what they called the Savory School—the Holistic Resource Management in Practice. When he came out to our place we talked about the little bit of range pasture. We had about 100 cows and were farming the rest of it. He started telling me about Holistic Resource Management.”

In the early 1980s Wayne was invited to go to Circle, Montana to a meeting where Certified Educator Roland Kroos did an overview on the Holistic Resource Management (HRM) model now known as Holistic Management. The group invited him to have a potluck with them. “My mind was going so fast, trying to take it all in, that I could hardly drive home!”

By that time, Wayne had started teaching an introductory range management class to his students at Williston State College. “I ended up teaching crops and soils and had to be educated by the professionals at the research station, and they were all very gracious. Then in 1989, I went to the HRM in Practice course after reading Allan Savory’s book,” he says.

“Shortly after I went to the HRM school in Bozeman I attended ‘Building the Effective Organization’ with Don Green. Those two things got the fire going in me, thinking in terms of resources and people. The lessons I learned from mentors were taking hold. More than once I mentioned to Allan Savory that in his original book the most important chapter was the one on becoming teachable. If a person does not have an open mind or is not interested in what someone else has to say, true learning is limited.”

Wayne went to another HRM course where he immersed himself in the materials while continuing to learn from Roland Kroos. When Wayne got back to Williston State College he gave what he thought was going to be a 30-minute faculty seminar. It turned into about 1½ hours of intense questioning. Finally, the director asked Wayne if he could teach this material to his students.

“I wasn’t sure about doing that. Allan Savory was teaching it in workshops and I would have to get permission. The chairman of the curriculum committee said it should be approved as a three-credit course. So they told me to write up the request and they would approve it. Montana State was considering a four-year ag program and this could be an introductory course in HRM for their natural resource students in range and soils. I called Allan Savory and he gave me his blessing.”

Wayne was one of the first three people to teach HRM (Holistic Management) in a local setting. Later he became a Certified Educator and

Wayne Berry

traveled to several different states and did a lot of work in South Dakota. His mentoring continues to this day as he continues to find opportunities to learn.

“Recently a long-time practitioner like myself was doing a workshop for school teachers and was concerned about being good enough to teach teachers,” says Wayne. “We were talking about it and we both mentioned that often a person will feel a need to change something in the organization, call us up or visit with us face-to-face and proceed to tell us all the great things they are doing, and then thank us for our time. We usually just listen, have a pleasant conversation and don’t have to offer any knowledge or response. Becoming teachable is important, along with recognizing mentors. They are all around us. I tell people that I must be very impressionable, because when I hear things I just take them in, and don’t try to filter them. I just mull them around to see how I could use this information.”

Putting It into Practice

Wayne has constantly taken in new information to be a better teacher and to be a better producer and land steward of his family’s 2,800-acre ranch. Wayne said that when he first took over the farm anything that could be farmed was farmed but there was still some native pasture in the mix. “We had three pastures and they were all pretty beat up,” says Wayne. “I’d been teaching best management practices and had been an assistant county agent, so we were one of the early adapters of continuous cropping. All the neighbors drove by and hoped I wouldn’t cause my mother to go broke. Eventually we started seeding everything back to grass.”

Wayne said his learning journal was one of the tools that helped him make the switch from farming to ranching. “Allan Savory talked about keeping a learning journal and I did that for a long time. On New Year’s Eve (about 1991) it was stormy and my wife and I had decided to stay home. So I was writing in my learning journal. I’d been going to the sale barn every Monday afternoon for entertainment and heard some people saying a person can’t afford to keep heifers as replacements when they are worth this much money. I thought that was interesting; if you can’t afford to keep a heifer when her brother is worth x amount of dollars, what is the problem? My subconscious took over and I wrote in my journal that it’s the farming habit. Farming takes all your money, so the cattle have to pay for it!”

But Wayne wasn’t very handy with machinery, so the shift toward livestock came even more quickly. “As a kid when I was driving a tractor or working with machinery, when something broke they just put me on a tractor that would run and the men would fix whatever broke, so I never learned how to fix anything. I probably spent every penny we made farming into upgrading machinery, and the John Deere dealer was advising me that this was the right thing to do.

“When I met Allan I started to look at things differently. I sat down and had a farm auction on paper, just to see what I might get by selling my machinery. I had recently gotten acquainted with a neighbor who was a great farmer. Financially he was struggling and had to put the maximum amount of his land that he could into the CRP to make the farm cash flow. He had a degree in agronomy and did not want to get an off-farm job. I asked him if he would custom farm for us if I sold my machinery, and he was happy to do it. So we sold our farm equipment.”

Shortly before that, the farm next door became available—about 1,000 acres. “We’d been renting their pasture, and when it was to be sold, we were given first chance to buy it because their father and my grandfather were best friends. The money from selling our machinery wasn’t enough to purchase that place, but it went a long ways toward getting us out of farming and into more land for cattle. I had been to the Savory school and knew what I wanted to do with the land. So that first summer we built a quarter mile of fence and I realized I needed to learn more about grass.

“As we’ve worked on our place, buying a little more land here and there, we went from about 2,800 acres to about 4,400 acres, and as we went to planned-recovery grazing, we started seeing a lot more diversity including forbs and warm season grasses. There is now some big bluestem.

“In 1989 we built some fence, giving us five pastures instead of four and now we have over 100 pastures that are each about 40 acres. At first, our farm was primarily crops with livestock, and we were pretty busy farming and didn’t have a lot of time to build fences. If the cattle got out we just put them back in, and if we couldn’t keep them in we’d just move them to one of

the other pastures. We grazed all our fields and slowly started converting the field land to grass. Now, 31 years later, we have 110 grazing paddocks and 14 water points. People look at this and say, ‘Boy, that’s a lot of work!’ but it just takes time. We only built a quarter of a mile of fence the first year and gradually more. I was touring around the farm recently and noticed a couple more things we need to change; it’s always a work in progress. Starting out, we just did what we could do.”

A few years ago a piece of land across the fence came back to the farm after a survey put the fences back on line. The piece across the fence had been in spring wheat and summer fallow for a very long time. “We built some new border fences and a fair chunk was onto our neighbor’s place a little ways,” says Wayne. “I checked the soil on both sides (what had traditionally been the neighbor’s place, and what was ours) and did the standard simple soil test. I buried two pairs of shorts, one in each area, then dug them up to look at them 60 days later. The one in the old wheat ground had a couple little pin holes eaten through them; you could have dusted them off and worn them again. By contrast, the ones where we’d seeded farm ground back to grass, with planned recovery grazing, had been eaten up pretty well by microbes in the soil. So then I

A field day on the USDA ARS research plot to establish warm-season grasses.

Five Decades of Holistic Management and Teaching

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 11

took soil samples. The wheat ground had 1.4% carbon, and the carbon was 4.6% on our side.

“On the ranch we planted a lot of forage and did a lot of monitoring. The fast-growth and slow-growth factor intrigued me. When we put cattle into a new pasture, I would watch to see some of the first plants they selected, and flag those for height to see how they regrew. Sometimes within two to four days it was re-growing,” he says.

Mentoring and Educating

Wayne spent 35 years teaching at Williston State College, a two-year agricultural college. Much of his focus was on a sustainable approach, plus teaching economics. He also spent quite a bit of time traveling and consulting as well. His focus was to help his clients create their own plans, sharing the Holistic Management process.

“My thought when I was doing workshops was to empower people to set goals and make decisions to reach those goals, rather than have them ask what they should do,” says Wayne. “Many people would ask me what to do in their situation but I’d have to tell them I don’t know, because I’d never been to their place and that they know more about it than I do. If they would take the time, however, we would talk through it. I would ask the questions and they could work through it. It was their place, their goal, their decision, and then it would work.”

Wayne also served on two conservation districts, one as a supervisor and the current one as part of the range committee helping with research

and also with the SD Grasslands Coalition after it started. In turn, some of those he taught have now become Wayne’s mentors.

“I finally have acquired a network of people,” says Wayne. “We are all doing the same thing. We see different situations but as we talk to people we discover they’ve seen it, and we can group solve it. Some are young people that I’ve met through discussion groups and not in person. It gives me a good feeling to see how the holistic movement has come along, though it’s still sometimes frustrating that more people aren’t doing it. People have to become teachable, when the moment is right, and each person is doing the best they know how.”

Wayne feels like learning how to be goal-centered has reduced his stress and increased his ability to respond to challenges. “There are always unexpected events in life,” Wayne says. “Don’t make a crisis out of it when something unexpected happens. As a pilot told me once, there are old pilots and bold pilots but no old bold pilots. People asked that pilot what he would do if he crashed and he said you never plan on crashing; you plan on always flying it out of it. It’s a mindset.”

trials through the USDA Agriculture Research Service (ARS). He has also done many traditional tours for public groups, individuals, and college and high school students. “Montana State University Extension had their agent there for training with ARS plus looking at what we were doing. The North Dakota NRCS brought their biological staff a number of times, and the Montana NRCS field offices have brought people by to look at the warmseason plantings and some of the grazing,” says Wayne. He had initiated a successful study with the NRCS to test the adaptation and performance of warm-season grasses in Montana to extend the green period in his dryland pasture as part of his continued education efforts.

Many of Wayne’s former college students say that he has been an influence on what they are doing—that they often use his holistic approach to management and to life. He continued in his mentor roles as he taught workshops in South Dakota with the Bootstraps organization,

At this point in his life, Wayne has decided that the extra thing he can do to help people is be a resource, sharing his land and knowledge through tours. But he also wants to have time for family and has been sharing pasture and cattle with his neighbors to allow for a flexible schedule. “A few years ago we sold the cow herd, because we like to go to Arizona in the winter to visit our daughter, so we just take in cattle during the summer,” says Wayne. “We did a lot of things here on our ranch using the holistic model, focusing on quality of life and how you make it work. We didn’t live on the farm; we lived 44 miles away and I was teaching. The Holistic Management decision-making model helped solve that, and the whole process made me a much better educator.”

Through his educational efforts, Wayne’s neighbors are also learning more about grass and cattle and the neighbors’ children are getting emotionally attached to the ranch with the potential for continued regenerative management for years to come. “It’s a wonderful thing for us, to have someone take ahold with an interest, because our two children have other careers,” says Wayne. “Our daughter is an architect in Arizona and our son is a physical therapist in North Dakota. None of them will be moving back to the farm, though they still feel an attachment to the land. We’ve structured things so that the farm is an LLC that we all own shares in, so they have some ownership but won’t be actively involved. So for me to find someone who is interested in what we are doing (and won’t set the grass back to what it used to be) is a blessing. We all hope that our life’s work will continue on, if possible.”

Wayne uses portable water trailers in some of his 110 paddocks.

Using the 100 paddocks the Berrys have developed on their ranch, allows Wayne to make sure that plants get adequate recovery. These plants have been grazed earlier and are now ready for the cattle to come back through.

Grasses in Dormancy—

Holistic Q & A

Q:We went to visit a farm in Virginia. During the winter (average high is 45F and low is 24F, with average snow of 21 inches (but which apparently doesn’t stay around very long), they bring the cows in from the pastures, and house them in a barn, feeding hay and ‘collecting the manure/urine’ to then spread onto the pastures in the spring.

Their rationale is that when the grasses go into dormancy, they don’t absorb the nutrients that cows are depositing as they graze, so instead of ‘wasting’ it as runoff (rains/snow taking what doesn’t get absorbed), they collect it to use it later.

To those of you that are grass/soil experts, what are your thoughts about grasses/soil not absorbing the nutrients during dormancy?

—Curious in TX

A: Good question, however, look at what they are doing:

• Bring cows in from pasture

• House them in a barn

• Feed hay

• Collect manure

• Spread manure on pasture

That is a lot of work! How is that working with nature?

Their rationale? When grasses go into dormancy, they don’t absorb the nutrients. How do they know that to be true? Certainly frozen ground isn’t going to be as receptive as unfrozen, but if the manure is already there, as the ground warms up, the manure can naturally be incorporated into the soil by the (hungry) microbes. But if they wait until the ground is thawed to spread the manure and then it rains, now they have to wait until the ground firms up enough before they can drive their equipment over it.

A study was done a few years ago in Nebraska involving cereal rye. The cereal rye was planted Labor Day and then was examined on the following April 15th. Remember, this is the time of year that plants are “dormant”, so nothing is happening, right? Well, they found the roots to the cereal rye had grown almost 7 feet down into the ground. I don’t think we have a good understanding of “dormancy.”

—Ralph Tate, Certified Educator, Nebraska

Years ago we did an experiment on farms that outwintered their dairy cattle on pasture. We looked at how cow pies released their nutrients over the course of the winter. We found that the crust that forms on the manure pat sheds quite a lot of water and there was not significant runoff until the manure pats broke down during spring thaw.

—Laura Paine, Certified Educator, Wisconsin

A: Dormancy is a descriptive term we give to the visible activity of the plant, typically above ground. Dormancy is also used when a plant is in decreased photosynthetic activity – BUT the plant will be photosynthesizing if it has living tissue. If you want to test this out, gather some small branches on a living (but dormant) tree, grind them in a blender in a solution of alcohol and you will be so surprised to see the solution turn chlorophyll green. Yep a brown twig will turn the alcohol green. I share that only to drive the point that dormant does not mean dead and plants do a lot more than we are able to visualize.

Dormancy & Plant Nutrition

a. Dormant plants still need nutrients

b. Plants get majority of nutrition from sun and use soil for micronutrients

c. Manure takes time to breakdown

d. Manure collected and put back on pasture is different than manure dropped behind a cow

If we think of our own biomass nutrition primarily of carbs, proteins and fats we leave out the micronutrients that drive significant aspects of whole heath. We measure Kcal by calculating carb, protein and fat so it is easy to overlook the micronutrients since they don’t enter the caloric energy equation which is a measure of body mass gain or loss. Photosynthesis is the big producer of plant energy. Sort of like the calories for humans. Production oriented agriculture has this one down very well: sunlight, living plant, give it just what it needs to produce just what we want and sell the biomass produced – not much concern about what is going on in the soil. Transfer that to human nutrition and eat carb, fat, protein without any concern of micronutrients—not much concern of overall body health.

The biomass of plants is like our body mass. Plants get their mass from photosynthesis (not from the soil) just like we get our body mass from carb, fat, protein (not from micronutrients). You want to test this one? Mass (weigh) some soil, mass (weigh) some seeds, grow plants, mass (weigh) the growing plants, mass (weigh) the soil and the plants will mass (weigh) more than the seeds and soil will be practically the same mass. So we if we are only concerned about soil when we visibly see a growing plant we have missed this basic biology lesson.

A: I agree with a lot of what Ralph said. That sounds like a lot of work for little gain. I admire their interest in doing the right thing, but Holistic Management is all about balancing environment, economics and quality of life. I’d be surprised if that penciled out economically. And besides, the basis of the Soil Health principle: ‘living roots year round’, is that there is some biological activity even in winter--especially where it only gets down into the 20s (I live in Wisconsin where it often gets a lot colder than that!).

Plants do not “eat” soil. They absorb molecules (nutrients) from within the soil and also release molecules into the soil. Manure releases molecules into the soil. This is a time-released process. Even if you had a mega load of soil surface organisms like dung beetles cycling the manure it takes time for the nutrients to be released into a molecular structure that plants can utilize. So, collecting manure and putting it back out in a pasture alters the time of breakdown into useful molecules. Additionally, manure in storage (even if under cows in a barn) will be altered in

A study showed that cereal rye planted on Labor Day had grown 7 feet of roots by April 15th the following year.

molecular structure. The manure may gain undesirable pathogens or lose valuable soil nutrients. The cow is a magnificent manure spreader and deposits the manure in a timely and useful fashion. Consider the difference between CAFO manure and grazing animal manure. All to say:

a. Dormant plants still need nutrients

b. Plants get majority of nutrition from sun and use soil for micronutrients

c. Manure takes time to breakdown

d. Manure collected and put back on pasture is different than manure dropped behind a cow

I personally do not know enough about the Virginia farm to know what their goals are but from the information shared, I would agree with others that they are using a lot of man hours, fossil fuel, rust buckets and other resources that nature could help them in saving paper dollars and clock hours. The story revealed what seems to be an inordinate amount of human time and energy while restricting nature time and energy.

—Lisa Bellows, Certified Educator, Texas

A: I do believe one critical element that has not been mentioned is the grazing management. If the paddock/pasture has been grazed very short going into the winter or the cattle are “parked” in paddocks too long, there will be run off of the manure with rain or thaws on sloping landscapes. The problem is not the “non-dormant” dormant plants, it is the amount of soil cover/plant residual to protect the soil, keep the soil warmer (bare ground will freeze before covered soil), and keep plants photosynthesizing on those warmer days. I have seen grass growing even under the snow as that also provides an insulating blanket for the soil/landscape. (Soil is an understatement as it’s mineral, biological components, and the action of life itself).

I think Laura brings up a critical point is the need to start with the Holistic Goal of the operation. There may be reasons for winter feeding because “healthy soil” needs to be balanced with quality of life and profitability and the rest of the farm’s/persons Holistic Goal. What if they had this awesome market for cattle compost and it was the main source of farm income? Etc. As a Holistic Goal or Covey would say - Begin with the end in mind.

—Ben Bartlett, Certified Educator, Michigan

A: I am a huge fan of winter grazing (as long as it is consistent with the farm’s Holistic Goal). One of my favorite “trick” questions to ask students is, “Where on earth is the temperature and moisture levels consistent 365 days a year?” Students usually say “the equator” or “in a volcano.” Answer: “The gut of an animal.” Animals can cycle nutrients even in winter. In a barnyard, those nutrients aren’t getting returned to the pasture. Maybe it will eventually (what doesn’t volatize), if it is spread. But, I’ve been to more farms than not where last year’s manure pile from the barn is still sitting there waiting to be spread.

Q: Where on earth is the temperature and moisture levels consistent 365 days a year?

A: The gut of an animal.

Animals are doing more in the pasture in winter than just pooping and peeing. They are eating last season’s forage and cycling it, they are opening up bare ground to make pastures thick, and they are pressing dead vegetation and seeds into the soil.

A few years back, here in upstate New York, we did some simple monitoring of pastures where the farmer went from housing animals in a barnyard in winter to winter grazing. He laid round bales out in a checkerboard pattern in his pastures and set up polywire paddocks. He moved his beefers through them throughout the winter much like he did in the summer but had slower rotations. In 3 years he doubled the organic matter in his fields from 2.5% to 5% and raised the pH from 5.6 to 6.2 without doing anything else but winter rotational grazing (he added no lime or other soil amendments). It was amazing to see his fields that were full of forbs turn to productive grasses without any inputs but cows. He saved on fuel too not having to spread manure and then the pastures where he baled, he left the bales in them.

When I was in West Virginia two years ago I saw a lot of winter grazing. I would encourage the farmer you are working with to talk to those that are doing it and have them share their observations and “how tos.”

—Elizabeth Marks, Certified Educator, New York

$2 Million Cow?

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

in their carbon sequestration efforts. Instead of talking about dung, talk about “fecal fertilizing.” Remember, you are “geoengineering” when you use livestock to improve the mineral cycle and sequester CO2 in your soil. How much carbon sequestering does that cow do over her life span? Does she provide $2 million worth of value from not only the carbon she sequesters, but the offspring she produces, and the increased forage production and improved wildlife habitat?

So, save the whales, cows, bison, goats, and ducks! Let them do their multi-faceted, multi-beneficial work. Ultimately, our work is to feed the algae and microbes that bring us breath, food, and fiber. Understanding that value is the first step. Recognizing our connection to this work, whether producer or consumer, is the next step. Engaging in that work through our decision making is the third step. Which step will you take today?

El Sueño Ranch— Developing Infrastructure for Improving Land Health and Quality of Life

BY ANN ADAMS

El Sueño Ranch is a 10,000-acre ranch located north of Clines Corner, New Mexico. It is owned by Albert Lowry and managed by Chuck Kuchta. Albert purchased the ranch in 2014 and Chuck began managing it in 2016. When they took over the land they noted it had been used heavily, particularly near the roads and water points, and production was lower because the land was still recovering. They have invested extensively in improving the fencing and water to move from three paddocks to 16. The water development has enabled them to push the water five to six miles from the well so they can better utilize the forage across the landscape and provide adequate recovery for plants that had once been overgrazed because of the continuous graze that occurs with larger paddocks. That infrastructure has also helped El Sueño to be a low-labor ranch contributing to the quality of life desired by both Albert and Chuck.

Ranching in Balance

Albert was born and has lived in Laredo, Texas for most of his life. He studied at Texas A&M University, receiving a degree in Animal Science and continuing studies for a Masters in Ag Economics. He has primarily been a banker for over 35 years in Laredo. However, Albert’s true passion is ranching. He began his own ranching in earnest by leasing land at the age of 25. He was an early believer in solar and has continued the use of electric fencing and water pumping.

Chuck Kuchta is a native New Mexico rancher who has a strong passion for the land. In 2004

when he’s a full-time fly fishing guide).

Because of their outside interests, it was important to Albert and Chuck to develop infrastructure and engage in enterprises that keep the operation of the ranch simple so they are able to engage in other professional pursuits part-time. The ranch is currently stocked with 150 pairs that are a contract grazing lease only during the growing season (mid-April to midSeptember). They are aiming for 50 acres to the pair for their stocking rate, leaving half the forage for wildlife and drought reserve.

In order to create a low-labor production system and improve wildlife habitat, Albert invested in 18 miles of solar powered electric cross fencing –creating 16 pastures along topo and vegetative variances, and laid 12 miles of buried water lines, incorporating the seven central water lots and additional troughs, all supplied by solar powered pumps and wells, with the consulting assistance of HMI Certified Educator Kirk Gadzia. This water distribution means that cattle do not need to travel more than ½ a mile to water regardless of where they are on the ranch.

While they had some tough, dry years in 2017 and 2018 (approximately 13 inches of rain), they adjusted their stocking rate to the forage that was available. But with new infrastructure in and a better means to control the animals Albert noticed a big drop in grasshoppers from hoof action and range conditions appeared to respond well to having been grazed. In 2019 the cool-season grasses did well due to good winter moisture.

Infrastructure Investment Pays Dividends

This is an example of one of the two wells that serve the seven water lots. The water is pumped to the holding tank with solar power which then gravity feeds to a buried pressure tank which is pressurized at 85 psi to move the water the five to six miles (in two-inch pipe) it may need to go to distribute the water across the ranch. The well can pump 2,500 gallons/day and they have 10,000 gallons in storage in case they need the reserve.

Chuck officially became involved and completed the HMI Ranch and Range Manager Training Program. He has managed several ranches in southeastern and northern New Mexico and is a successful fly fishing guide in Santa Fe which he does part-time when he is not managing El Sueño (having only two hours a day in the summer to check on cattle

Albert and Chuck developed seven water lots to improve distribution of water. These water lots also include the power for the three-strand electric fences that were built with the bottom wire at 22 inches to accommodate pronghorn antelope to go under as well as a top height of 44 inches to accommodate elk going over. In addition, Albert has determined that the next investment will be to have wildlife drinkers outside the water lots for the antelope as they do not like coming into the cattle panel area that surrounds the water lots.

Having good water distribution helps Chuck if he needs to doctor cattle as he can wait for them at the nearest watering point rather than having to drive the cattle to pens or rope individual cattle. They also make sure that

CONTINUED ON PAGE 16

Albert Lowry (center) explaining El Sueño water lot development as a tool to move cattle easily through new paddocks as well as provide sufficient water to more evenly utilize the ranch. These centers also allow for doctoring animals with a trap gate as well as housing the charger for the fencing.

Developing Infrastructure for Improving Land Health and Quality of Life

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 15

they have gates every half mile on any long stretches of fencing to make it even easier to move cattle as needed. Each water lots serves three to four pastures and has a trap gate that can be used to contain the herd if necessary.

In general, the cattle are easy to move and can move themselves from one paddock to the next when given access to the water lot and leaving open certain gates. Even within each pasture there are three to five water troughs which can be used to control grazing distribution by filling or closing off water to them. The goal is to flash graze sections of the pasture by moving the water into different troughs even though paddock sizes range from 320 to 1,800 acres. They usually stay two to three days in a paddock with the longest time being 10 days. In order to train the cattle to the electric fence at the beginning of each season, they put salt and mineral cubes by the fence which brings the animals to the fence where they can get acquainted with the fence and learn to respect it.

Grazing planning is a critical component to effective grazing implementation. Chuck notes that it’s an ongoing process of learning about the ranch and how it responds to various management practices and the different weather patterns that each year brings. That’s why they use the HMI Grazing Plan Chart to record outcomes of grazing decisions such as noting where locoweed shows up in the spring so they can avoid it in their grazing

Kirk noted that ranching is a complex business with multiple goals. At El Sueño the key values are enjoying the peace and quiet of the ranch and not having stress by pushing numbers rather than focusing on ways of improving land health and productivity while also paying attention to animal performance as that is what pays the bills, including all infrastructure development.

To that end, recovery is more important than complete forage utilization. They know that overgrazing leads to lower production and less soil cover, less root mass, less drought resistance, less seed production and more soil compaction so they work toward their “take half” rule and giving adequate recovery to desired species. Chuck says, “I think that our efforts have resulted in more grass, more diversity, more wildlife (including pronghorn and elk), and more birds.”

All water points have mulch around the drinkers to protect the soil. The water pipe is buried three feet deep so there are no concerns about freezing. The fence chargers are also located at the water lots and they have three eight-feet ground rods set 10 feet apart for a good ground on all fences. They also have a fence meter that can turn the fence on and off from any place on the line so they don’t have to go back to the charger

to turn it off when they find a fence down. They keep the fences live year round to keep the wildlife used to it.

The two wells that serve the seven water lots can pump 2,500 gallons of water/day and they have 10,000 gallons in a storage in case they need the reserve. The water is pumped to the holding tank then to a buried pressure tank which is pressurized at 85 psi to move the water (through two-inch pipe) the five to six miles it may need to go to distribute the water across the ranch.

Grazing for Diversity & Productivity

Ongoing education is a critical piece in any profession and both Albert and Chuck say they’ve learned a lot from attending various education events as well as working with Kirk Gadzia as their consultant. Chuck also went through HMI’s Ranch &Range Manager Training Program. “I found it a really helpful program,” says Chuck. “I learned so much and have been able to use it all the operations I’ve worked at.”

He has also learned a lot from participating in the annual monitoring they do on the eight monitoring points spread throughout the ranch. Kirk leads them through a technique called “The Bullseye Method” which helps them assess ecosystem health. In the monitoring they have seen more plant cover on all monitoring sites

Chuck Kuchta Chuck Kuchta (with black cowboy hat) sharing his perspective of how increase in grasses and plant species has occurred because of improved ability to control cattle’s utilization of forage and increase recovery times for desired species.

This area is an example of how more of the ranch used to look when it was overgrazed and dominated by overgrazed blue grama. Note the difference of forage potential comparing this area to the New Mexico feathergrass area below.

This paddock shows fully recovered New Mexico feathergrass with high production potential.

.after the first four years of grazing, except the 2017–2018 drought where they were actually able not to lose cover because of improved resilience of the land as well as their ability to determine appropriate stocking rate for reduced forage.

When Albert bought the ranch it was a monoculture of blue grama. Their grazing practices have resulted in increased diversity. They have seen snakeweed increase but their bare ground has decreased. They are also excited to see four-wing salt bush return to the land as it contains 12% protein. They also have galleta, sideoats grama, ring muhly, squirreltail, sand dropseed, New Mexico feathergrass, winterfat, and needle and thread grass.

Chuck and Albert continue to create healthier grasslands on the ranch that provide habitat for a diversity of flora and fauna. While they initially were concerned about the ant hills they found across the ranch, they read research that showed that the increased production around the ant hill circle more than makes up for the loss of production within the ant hill

circle. Likewise, while snakeweed is not a desired species, if it covers what was once bare ground then there is greater opportunity for holding soil in place and decreasing erosion.

What is peace of mind worth to a rancher? What is a rancher’s time worth and are there other things they’d rather be doing than working 10–12 hours a day? What is the increase of ground cover and plants sequestering more carbon and water into the soil for more land resilience and production worth? What is the increase of plant and animal diversity worth to a conservationist and land steward? Albert and Chuck have done the calculations and have been able to make the cattle lease pay for operations and infrastructure investment that helps them meet those goals and set them in a position to reap greater rewards down the road as land productivity and resilience continues to improve at El Sueño Ranch.

In Memoriam

It is with great sadness that HMI learned of the passing of Tommie Cline Martin in December 2020. Tommie had just been re-elected to a fifth term as a Gila County Supervisor in Arizona and had had worked for HMI in our early days.

Tommie was born and raised in the Payson area and grew up on a ranch and graduated from Arizona State University with a degree in agribusiness. She developed two companies: EcoRestore, LLC and Common Ground, and her clients included private landowners, businesses, government agencies, trade associations and Indian nations. The firm specialized in facilitation of conflict resolution, leadership training, family dynamics, long-range planning, Holistic Management and

collaborative group process.

During her years as a county supervisor, Tommier served on the County Supervisors Association Legislative Policy Committee; Tonto Natural Resource Conservation District; U.S. Forest Service Collaboration Cadre; Steering Committee and Collaborative Stakeholder Group for the Four Forest Restoration Initiative; and Coalition of Arizona/New Mexico Counties. Martin also served recently as president of the Arizona County Supervisor’s Association and Eastern Arizona Counties Organization. In May 2018, she was elected President of NACo’s WIR (Western Interstate Region).

Our condolences to the Martin and Cline families.

Chuck Kuchta and Kirk Gadzia explain grazing planning and infrastructure map as tools to improve management annually.

These low-cost drinkers made from old tires are tough and the float can be protected with these wood barriers to keep the cattle from getting in the water. Note the mulch around the drinker to protect the soil.

Tommie Cline Martin

From the Board Chair

BY WALTER LYNN

This month I would like to discuss a hunting business operating primarily in west central Illinois and share how Steve Phelps, Illinois Trophy Bow Hunters, Inc. owner, integrates and practices Holistic Management in the operation of his business. Steve does an amazing job balancing environmental, economic and social benefits in the seven counties of his business to attain his personal holistic goal. His goal centers on working his passion in life, giving back to his community, thinking win-win-win, being observant of the land resource, and operating a profitable part-time business.

When Steve was 12 years old, he was on a family canoeing trip on the Current River in Missouri, where he saw first-hand another family working their passion. This southeast Missouri family had several family members in different support roles for the canoers on the river. Steve’s dad was very key and instrumental in coaching Steve to find his passion, and Steve retired 18 years ago from state government service to grow this part-time business to its present land base.

Steve had a local clothing store manager spark his interest in bow hunting. While on a southern Colorado mule deer hunting trip in 1990, the creative juices started flowing for his new business. In 1991 Steve started this business with 1,200 acres under lease for seven hunters and incorporated later that fall. Some creative financing occurred to start his new business. He traded a hunt for advertising in a national bow hunting

magazine to find those initial seven hunters, plus they returned the next year! The magazine editor had been on the mule deer hunt.

Acres leased have grown over 7% annually, since inception in 1991 to over 10,000 acres today. Steve states early in life he struggled with numbers, but a lifelong friend tutored him while in college to overcome that life challenge. Today, he says his understanding of numbers is enhanced when there is a dollar sign in front of the number.

His interactions with the landowners, tenant operators, and hunters is stellar. He still has his second lease acquired in 1993—a true test of time. Steve fosters cooperation and synergy with the tenants and landlords to develop the habitat for the trophy white tail deer his hunters harvest. Steve has found cover crops can provide benefits for the deer, plus better soil health for the landowner and farm tenant. He is becoming adept in working with the tenants on their cover crop mixtures; thus, this helps to provide more feed for the deer.

Special land improvements are agreed upon to help promote the deer population. He recently was able to add another premier property to his portfolio owned by another outfitter; the property has a state-of-the-art deer processing facility and is the only processing available in one of the counties he operates, plus has a high-end hunting lodge. This is a joint venture with another outfitter.

HMI has the course offerings and support for you to develop your holistic goal and pursue your life’s passion like Steve. Do not hesitate to connect with us for support to make your life more meaningful and explore the possibilities.

grazing management necessary for the lease.

CASE STUDY

Morris Grassfed and Hollister Hills State Park

Joe Morris is the owner of Morris Grassfed and TO Cattle Company headquartered in San Juan Bautista, California. One of the properties he has a long-term, oak-savannah rangeland lease is at Hollister Hills State Park (HHSP). A key concern for HHSP is management of the forage which in the past has meant mowing or burning—the latter greatly opposed by neighbors and the former is very expensive. HHSP recognizes the value that planned grazing brings in mitigating fire risk more economically and with less risk.

In 1994, HHSP approached Joe Morris to see if he would be interested in putting a bid in for a five-year lease contract which would be low-cost due to the special management tasks required for this lease. In addition, he would need to work on the infrastructure necessary to deliver the

This arrangement has worked well for both parties over the years. Monitoring of HHSP has shown a decrease in dry matter as well as increased health for the salamander population, 80 bird species, and blue oak tree regeneration. What began as a pilot has now expanded to 1,600 acres under Joe’s management with possibly more acres in the future. Joe currently runs 350-400 head of cattle on HHSP from December through the middle of April or beginning of May (the growing season in this Mediterranean climate with 13–16 inches of rain). Grazing periods for the pastures average two to five days and recovery periods average 66–139 days.

As a Holistic Management practitioner, Joe takes seriously the goals and values of HHSP in his grazing management. He believes “the goal is to use grazing to convert photosynthesizing plants into soil carbon, biodiversity, beauty, high-quality visitor experiences, and additional resiliency of the landscape.”

His management is leading to that outcome as he has seen an increase in the number of perennial plants and monitoring has shown 120 different plant species in the grazed areas of HHSP. Additionally, grazing management

has resulted in more plant litter on the soil surface which helps to improve ecosystem processes function.

Moreover, grazing practices have helped to improve bird habitat for species of special concern, such as the loggerhead shrike and the grasshopper sparrow. In addition, there are 80 other bird species that use these California rangelands as habitat that benefit from Joe’s grazing management. Bird monitoring is provided by Point Blue Conservation.

With over 26 years of grazing management at HHSP, Joe’s passion for land stewardship has produced the results that HHSP wants as an agency responsible for the overall management of a multi-use facility. The longevity of this win-win lease suggests that more multi-use agencies should consider such low-cost leases to create public benefit through private enterprises willing to work toward multiple goals.

This case study is excerpted from the TomKat Ranch Educational Foundation’s Profiles in Land and Management Series. The lead author is Greg Horner. To read the full case study go to: https://tomkatranch.org/wpcontent/uploads/2019/11/Profiles-in-Land-andManagement-California-Parks-Recreation.pdf.

Development Corner

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 24

ground stuff seemed attainable. My dad and I are both numbers guys and so being able to double our livestock numbers was appealing.

“At the time, we were running 650 breeding bison cows, and we’ve had as many 1,900. We are at 1,000 now. We have had some serious drought conditions recently, so we are not pushing the envelope now. Bison are not so easy to move in terms of selling, so we have to be more conservative as it isn’t easy to destock. In the beginning there was very little marketing infrastructure to sell the animals. Marketing is definitely more of a juggling act with bison.

“Holistic Management helped us increase our stocking rate 30% over the standard stocking rate and we are still seeing improvement on the land. But, you can’t just squeeze the bison in like cattle so our soil surface changes have been slower. There are places where we do concentrate them and where we have seen dramatic changes. We’ve been monitoring our land with Roland Kroos going back 30 years and have seen some interesting shifts.”

HMI Certified Educator Roland Kroos notes that there are 29 transects set up on the ranch. He notes that Transect 23, in particular, has shown some dramatic change as can be seen in the photos in this article. However other transects are also showing changes like naturally reoccurring Switchgrass and Big Bluestem emerging that had not been there before. Roland uses a monitoring frame that he lays down along the transect six to eight times to quantify changes in soil surface conditions and ecosystem process health indicators.

The increased forage production has certainly contributed to increased profit for the ranch, but the profit has also been a result of changing a variety of management practices to reduce input costs. “We went from being a breakeven operation to very profitable,” says John. “We reduced the amount of people and labor because we shifted from farming small grain winter wheat as a cash crop and barley for cake for the animals for winter. We were winding down out of those enterprises by the late 1980s and we shifted all our cropland

to grazing land. That was an early decision. Allan encouraged us to not plant any grasses and see what happened. But we decided to plant every other strip with grasses in some of those pastures instead. We also used feed to increase stock density and herd effect. We have found that we have higher plant diversity in the strips that we didn’t plant grasses in.

“We also wanted to start building fences right away, but Allan suggested that we slow down. So we went into serious planning mode. We created our mission statement and holistic goal, which was a two-year process to get buy in from everyone. Three generations

This transect has seen steadily increasing forage and ground cover as shown in the photos between 2002 and 2020. Note the erosion to the left of the photo in 2002 and how it has been covered by forage almost completely in 2018.

were involved in the planning processes and going to workshops for training. With all our staff and their spouse and some outside people we had 23 people involved. We had a 2.5-day training on the people component with Don Green and then a 2.5-day training with HMI Certified Educator Kirk Gadzia on the Grazing and Financial Planning modules

“We started to look at how to work on increasing recovery periods and really started to focus on the time element. Reducing our four herds to one herd helped. Then we had to develop our water systems and pipelines to handle those numbers. Our standard recovery time in spring is 21 days and 90 days in the summer. We’re exposing our pastures to two weeks of grazing out of the entire year and

Development Corner

our purposefully resting 10% of the ranch for two grazing seasons. We’ve been able to create reserves for our drought plan for the last 15 years. Our average rainfall is supposed to be 10-12 inches, but last year (2020) we only had six inches. That’s why we have reduced stocking numbers and we have been having to feed some hay.

“We also did a lot of experimenting with fencing. We thought we had to have a tall, big, physical barrier and decided to see what would work with electric fence. Wayne Burleson out of MT helped us make that transition. Most of our division fences are three-wire permanent electric fence. But, we’ve played around with one- and two-wire fences as well as temporary electric fencing. All our external fences are six-foot woven wire.”

producers. Because of the drought, they are breeding 35% less cows this year. While they do some direct marketing through their on-ranch store, they mostly sell wholesale. “It’s nice to have a ready market with the meat company, but we still have to negotiate the price,” says John. “Not every producer has that option. All the culls hit the market at the same time in the fall which suppresses the price especially with

2002

the slaughter capacity issues right now.”

John has been a longtime donor to HMI and he attributes Holistic Management to changing his life and his family’s life. “It’s been a huge game changer,” says John. “Holistic Management and the people in the network are very positive and results oriented. We speak Holistic Management and we breath it. It was just such a positive change. I’m happy to support HMI’s work and hope that more people will experience what we have. It’s the right thing to do for the environment and how we should be managing our land-based businesses.

“When we hold Holistic Management workshops on the ranch, I see other people making changes too. There’s a lot to absorb. I have had people share experiences with me. It’s kind of a personal thing what happens in these courses. One guy said the course saved his life. You hear things like that and it’s pretty powerful. It’s just so cool to be a connector of dots.”

2020

Note the healing of the erosion in this gully and increased forage production.

John says there has been no question that they have received a good return on investment for all the infrastructure and capacity building they have invested in. “We had a serious investment in education for our people, especially early on when we were transitioning,” says John. “Roland teaches a course every winter on the ranch. We have had no debt and we paid the ranch off. We don’t take any debt on and have been self-financed for 40 years.”

John says they sell their meat animals wholesale through Sierra Meat and Seafood and have sold breeding stock to many other bison

Key Management Changes & Results on the Durham Ranch (1985-2020)

• 49% increase in weaned #s/Acre

• 15 pastures to 85

• 9 pickups to 7

• 14 tractors to 5

• 7 fulltime staff to 4

• 4 herds to 1 herd

• Increased profit by 300% while keeping expenses at or below budget

“I’m happy to support HMI’s work and hope that more people will experience what we have.”

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

Kathy Frisch

Holistic Management International

Dallas

214/417-6583

kathyh@holisticmanagement.org

Wayne Knight

Holistic Management International Van Alstyne

940/626-9820

waynek@holisticmanagement.org

Tracy 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 • cadwnc@gmail.com

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) preston.sullivan@hughes.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

INTERNATIONAL

AUSTRALIA

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

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

Helen Lewis Warwick, QLD 61-4-1878-5285 hello@decisiondesignhub.com.au

Dick Richardson Mt. Pleasant, SA 61-4-2906-9001 dick@grazingnaturally.com.au

* Jason Virtue

Cooran QLD 61-4-27 199 766 jason@spiderweb.com.au

Brian Wehlburg Wauchope NSW 61-0408-704-431 brian@insideoutsidemgt.com.au

* 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@zhvalley.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

CANADA

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

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

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

Tony McQuail Lucknow, ON 519/440-2511 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

Hermleigh

325/226-3042 (c) • peggy@kidsontheland.org

* 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.

NAMIBIA

Usiel Seuakouje Kandjii

Windhoek

264-812840426 • kandjiiu@gmail.com

* 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

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.

Power On Demand, However You Need It!

Order online and receive a FREE 5VM fence tester! ($28.50 value)

Use Code HM2021 at checkout!

www.twinmountainfence.com sales@twinmountainfence.com

Resource Management Services, LLC

Kirk L. Gadzia, Certified Educator PO Box 1100 Bernalillo, NM 87004 505-263-8677

Pasture Scene Investigation

CORRAL DESIGNS

kirk@rmsgadzia.com www.rmsgadzia.com

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.

By World Famous Dr. Grandin Originator of Curved Ranch Corrals

By World Famous Dr. Grandin Originator of Curved Ranch Corrals

The wide curved Lane makes lling the crowding tub easy

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. 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

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

is a 150-mile, 15 joule, dual powered energizer with TWO digital displays. It can be used as AC (120V), DC (12V), or solar powered options. *Available in 15, 50, & 80 mile options as well T H E M A R K E T P L A C E 22 IN PRACTICE May / June 2016

“Bud Williams” Livestock Marketing & Proper Stockmanship

Getting

Online Learning

with Richard McConnell & Tina Williams

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

Holistic Financial Planning 4/13 - 5/18

Introduction to Holistic Management® 10/4 - 11/8

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

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

$350 per course scholarships available www.holisticmanagement.org/ training-programs/

Coming also to Alberta, Wyoming, and Iowa!

www.handnhandlivestocksolutions.com info@handnhandlivestocksolutions.com 417-327-6500

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

DEVELOPMENT CORNER

The Durham Ranch

36 Years of Holistic Management

The Durham Ranch, just south of Gillette, Wyoming, is well-known as being one of the oldest and largest bison operations in the country. The ranch was purchased by Armando Flocchini, Sr. in 1965 and now John Flocchini, his grandson, manages the 55,000-acre ranch which carries approximately 2,000 bison.

John grew up in California where his father, Armando Flocchini, Jr, was running the beef plant (now Sierra Meat and Seafood in Reno, NV). John grew up in the Bay Area working in what was then Durham Meat Company in San Jose. Once his grandfather purchased the Durham Ranch, the family would take summer vacations there. When John was 12 years old, he would go stay with his grandparents for the summer and work on the ranch. In 1980 he earned a degree in Agriculture from Cal Poly at San Luis Obispo and took over the management of the ranch in 1985.

“I fell in love with the ranch as a young boy,” says John. “Being able to work summers out here and be in the great outdoors, this big country, made a big impression on me. I was silent about what I felt, but then I went to the Yukon on a hunting trip with my dad as a high school graduation present. We were sitting around the campfire and my dad asked me

what I was thinking about doing next. I told him I was interested in working at the ranch. At that time there was no family living full time on the ranch.

“I heard about Holistic Management from a classmate from Cal Poly and I was intrigued. Then in early 1985 I went to a Holistic Management workshop in Casper and Allan Savory was the keynote and Kirk Gadzia taught the workshop. What I heard flipped a switch for me. I got a hold of my dad and said ‘We need to check this out.’

“When I heard Allan, I was floored. The way he presented it, it made so much sense, and the before and after pictures were convincing. It was a common sense approach. I felt like I learned something more important in that three-day workshop than I had in my whole formal education at Cal Poly. It was so practical and all the on-the-

CONTINUED ON PAGE 19

John Flocchini

Durham Ranch bison.