In Practice a publication of Holistic Management International
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W W W. H O L I S T I C M A N A G E M E N T. O R G
Cultivating Community: Land. Food. Health. BY ANN ADAMS
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ecently as I was doing some reading about keystone species, it became clear to me why humans are a keystone species. I had been operating under the definition that keystone species are a species on which other species in an ecosystem largely depend, such that if it were removed the ecosystem would change drastically. But another definition of keystone species is a species that significantly alter the habitat around them and thus affect large numbers of other organisms. I would definitely put humans into that camp. And as holistic managers we know that the idea is to create symbiotic relationships such that we influence large numbers of organisms regeneratively, to improve the health and productivity of the land and create thriving communities of humans, plants, and animals. That call to action can feel like a tall order some days when we are trying to just get by and get the kids out the door on time or the goats milked or address the hundreds of other items on our busy to do lists. But if we focus on the word
Registration Open! HMI’s 2016 Gathering October 14–16, 2016 Paicines, CA hmi@holisticmanagement.org/cc/
“community” we are, in turn, encouraged to look at those relationships that are woven through our lives and make decisions taking the whole under consideration, our myriad communities that we influence or by whom we are influenced. At HMI we have an international community of almost 20,000 people. The Holistic Management community around the globe has trained and influenced over 50,000 people over the last 10 years, influencing over 40 million acres. While that might seem a drop in the bucket to some, we see a great deal of increased interest and momentum building around the topics of Holistic Management, regenerative agriculture, soil health, local food, nutrient dense food, and conscious living. HMI is at the center of this conversation because Holistic Management is a decision-making process that more and more people are finding helpful in making better decisions in a complex world. The intersection of land, food, and health is becoming ever more apparent as scientists and doctors are making discoveries every day about the little known world of “micro-livestock”
in the soil, in foods, and in our guts. We are beginning to understand that these microbes are as much a keystone species as we are. But, of course, that’s the point of holism— nature functions in wholes. The better able we are to understand the interplay of all life and make decisions that come from a place of cooperation and collaboration rather than competition, the more likely we are to thrive and not be surprised by some unintended consequences. If you are interested in learning more about how to cultivate community, I encourage you to join the Holistic Management community at HMI’s 2016 International Gathering at Paicines Ranch on October 14–16, 2016 at Paicines, California. We have a great line up planned and there will be lots of opportunity to network and catch up with friends or make new ones. Registration is now live and you can go online to learn more or register at: http://holisticmanagement.org/cc/. Please join us in celebrating a passionate and inspiring community!
INSIDE THIS ISSUE As agricultural producers get older, more of them are in the process of including more of their families in the operation to prepare for management transfer and asset transfer. Read more about these families including NorthStar Bison on page 8.
The Next Generation
Grazing & Soil Health BY BEN AND DENISE BARTLETT
In Practice a publication of Hollistic Management International
HMI educates people in regenerative agriculture for healthy land and thriving communities. STAFF Ann Adams. . . . . . . . . . . . Executive Director Kelly Curtis. . . . . . . . . . . . Finance and Operations Director Kathy Harris. . . . . . . . . . . Program Director Peggy Cole. . . . . . . . . . . . Program Manager, Texas Mary Girsch-Bock . . . . . . Development Manager Carrie Stearns . . . . . . . . . Communications & Outreach Manager Valerie Grubbs. . . . . . . . . Accounting Manager Julie Fierro. . . . . . . . . . . . Education Manager Stephanie Von Ancken . . Programs / Office Assistant
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Daniel Nuckols, Chair Walter Lynn, Vice-Chair Kelly Sidoryk, Past Board Chair Ben Bartlett Gerardo Bezanilla Kirrily Blomfield Kevin Boyer Laura Gill Guy Glosson Wayne Knight Jim Shelton Sarah Williford
HOLISTIC MANAGEMENT In Practice (ISSN: 1098-8157) is published six times a year by: Holistic Management International 5941 Jefferson St. NE, Suite B Albuquerque, NM 87109 505/842-5252, fax: 505/843-7900; email: hmi@holisticmanagement.org.; website: www.holisticmanagement.org Copyright © 2016 Holistic Management® is a registered trademark of Holistic Management International
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oil Health is a popular issue as evidenced with every farm magazine highlighting cover crops, no-till and “soil health”. A healthy soil, as defined by the NRCS, is “the continued capacity of soil to function as a vital living ecosystem that sustains plants, animals, and humans”. (The bold is Ben’s) To achieve this “living system,” the core practices for a healthy soil are: minimal soil tillage, living roots, soil cover or litter, and plant diversity. That would seem to be an exact description of pastures, but not all pastures would be considered the picture of idea soil health or productivity. In fact, most corn fields often look a lot more “healthy” than many pastures. Here’s the rest of the story. Why is having a “healthy soil” so valuable? We know it takes sunshine, water, and fertility to grow plants. The health or life in the soil can play a huge role in making this system work to our advantage. The sunshine is the energy in the photosynthetic reaction that takes water and CO2 and, with the help of the green leaf, makes sugars. Up to 40% of this sugar is “leaked” out of the roots to feed the life in the soil. The life in the soil, bacterial and fungi in particular, “give back” to the plant: water, nitrogen, phosphorus, and a host of other nutrients and functions. In addition to “feeding” the plants, the soil life produces a glue called glomalin that sticks soil particles together to form aggregates. This is critical because the aggregates create spaces in the soil to hold water and air and allow for root penetration. Also, the life in the soil is what breaks down plant residues and most anything organic into useable plant and soil life nutrients. The soil life then puts this carbon based “stuff” back together again as organic matter. The organic matter holds the water for future plant use. In fact, an increase in 1% of organic matter will generally increase water holding
FEATURE STORIES
LAND & LIVESTOCK
Grazing & Soil Health
NorthStar Bison— Growing a Grassfed Business
BEN AND DENISE BARTLETT.......................................... 2
The Most Important (Grazing) Management Strategy to Date
TROY BISHOPP ............................................................ 3
The Milton Ranch— Preparing for the Next Generation
HEATHER SMITH THOMAS......................................................... 4
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HEATHER SMITH THOMAS......................................................... 8
Sims Cattle Company— Creating Profit Holistically
HEATHER SMITH THOMAS....................................................... 11
capacity by almost 1 acre inch or 20,000 gal/acre or more. The plants and the soil life have an interconnected system that works without inputs supplied by humans. A diversity of plants is critical because each plant has its fellow soil life organisms, and an increase in different kinds of plants means more different kinds of soil life, which in turn results in more nutrients and soil life services being available. If the soil is not alive or the system is not functioning at full capacity due to repeated tillage, long fallow periods, etc., then either plants do not grow as well or we have to add more inputs to make the system function. Soil health is not a warm and fuzzy idea. Enhancing this living system is a way every farmer can work with the soil life so the farmer has to supply less inputs. If you ignore or harm the life in the soil, (the health of the soil), and go it alone, you will have to use more fertilizer to supply nutrients, more pesticide to control the unwanted pests, and pray more often for rain.
Enter Grazing
Where does grazing figure into what happens below the soil surface? Grazing can have a big impact on the soil life and, therefore, future pasture growth. Based on information from Dr. Lee Manske of North Dakota State University and work we have done via a Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) grant on our grazing farm, animals grazing plants sends a big message to the underground world. We used a Solvita test that measures the amount of CO2 produced. The amount of CO2 produced is an excellent indicator of amount of active life in the soil. We found that grazing can increase soil life by more than 25% over non-grazed areas in just 24 hours post grazing. CONTINUED ON PAGE 16
NEWS & NETWORK Grapevine................................................................ 17 From the Board Chair.............................................. 17 Development Corner............................................... 16 Certified Educators.................................................. 20 Marketplace............................................................. 21
The Most Important (Grazing) Management Strategy to Date BY TROY BISHOPP
Editor’s Note: Even if you are not a grazier, please read on as I think what Troy is talking about is about life, not just grazing management.
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ndre Voisin developed the theory of rational grazing. Darrell Emmick gave us prescribed grazing. Jim Gerrish coined the phenomenon of management intensive grazing. Greg Judy sparked the practice of mob grazing and Allan Savory fathered the worldwide application of holistic planned grazing. So what will the Grass Whisperer’s legacy grazing system be in Wikipedia? I’ve come up with a term that is long overdue: It’s called “Linger Grazing” or perhaps “Linger Farming Systems”. This revolutionary idea came at the expense of my friend and fellow grazing aficionado, Nathan Weaver, on a trip to Holmes County, Ohio as I was set to deliver enough grazing knowledge to inspire 800 farmers at the North Central Ohio Grazing Conference. When farmers travel for any amount of time together, I’ve found we share stories, discuss global problems, brainstorm practical solutions and create an atmosphere that will benefit the travelers even after the mashed potatoes and gravy effect wears off. So when the conversation turned to speaking about a message that would resonate or change the behavior and course of land practitioner’s stewardship, I blurted out that we should “linger” more. What transpired after that was a progression of nodding affirmation. We agreed that if we took the time to observe and linger longer in the fields, and in our lives, we would be able to see the things that truly matter. “Huh, it’s that simple”, I thought. I would have to incorporate this sentiment at the podium. Author and motivational speaker, Simon Sinek confirms my take on believing in the linger premise: “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe. The best ideas are the honest ones; ones born out of personal experience. Ones that originated to help a few but ended up helping many”. Linger is a verb which helps me get over the “slacker label” when I’m lying in the grass looking for earthworm holes and not “working”. The dictionary defines it; “as to stay in a place longer than necessary, typically because of a reluctance to leave”. See if you don’t appreciate this action word: “I lingered in the pasture to watch the bluebirds
swoop between the cows. I lingered over a decision. Your beauty gave me cause to linger. I lingered just long enough to see the work of the lord”. It’s a word that substantiates spending time observing and noticing subtle things or changes—critical for farmers to thrive. The linger notion was brought into more clarity by Jerry D (for Dynamic) Miller’s presentation about getting back to the basics of grazing and the premise of timeliness. He said, “if we get the basics right the inputs will take care of themselves”. But we need timeliness in our routines, to make a harmonious home and take time for personal commitment to romance our children about land, animals, people and God’s creation. This “lingering” idea was approaching a crescendo as I took the microphone. I started my talk by asking how many linger in their field margins. Not many takers on this action because as most of us know, lingering has a connotation of being construed as timewasting. “What if I told you it was an absolute necessity to managing land and animals, I bantered. The great Voisin, father of managed grazing, would regularly derive great pleasure simply from lingering and observing his cattle graze the sward”, I continued. After my soliloquy about noticing how cows stir up wildlife excitement, the speed at which dung beetles find fresh pies and seeing all the indicators of a healthy system by sitting with your granddaughter and lingering in the grass, I finally got the up and down nodding I was after. You see, to be a field craftsman or woman, you need to see and experience the subtleties beyond the science and let yourself enjoy the art of grazing. It’s that linger effect that propels you beyond just a fence-mover or gate-opener in lieu of running to another J-O-B… This back to basics belief was never really lost, just hidden by the majesty of inputs that masked the farmer’s eyes and took from the wallet. Inputs abhor lingering to solve problems because you need the time to keep on the squirrel cage of production. David Kline, editor of Farming Magazine, shared with me that back in the days of Hugh Bennett, Aldo Leopold, Louis Bromfield, Paul Sears, Russell Lord and J. Russell Smith who founded The Friends of the Land movement from 1940 to 1954 favored, “the ascendant notions of ecology, environmentalism and intrinsic value of non-human life” and spearheaded the land ethic based on a
lingering strategy. Folks would come to Bromfield’s Malabar Farm in droves from all corners of the country to witness, discuss and linger over ideas to stop erosion and add real wealth from soil health. The observational skills of the friends were heralded in now, rare journals, which I got a chance to see under the flickering of an oil lamp. Never was I so impressed by a group of people that lingered and lamented over the thoughts, strategies and actions in saving our nation’s topsoil. I’ve heard from conference organizers that “linger grazing” was a worthy approach to take and celebrated as a way for farmers to describe to their neighbors why they were just lying in the grass and not having a coronary episode. The idea also gave credence to frolic in the pastures as a family and enjoy the relationships between people, land and community. For me, the linger effect of observing nature and learning from it is the best education a farmer could get and share with others. Try being a lingering grazier this year and see if you profit both financially and spiritually. “Knowledge comes, wisdom lingers” ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson. Troy Bishopp, the lingering grazier from New York, can be reached at: troy-bishopp@verizon.net.
Troy’s Grandaughter, Hadley is already getting atuned to lingering in the pasture. N um ber 168
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The Milton Ranch—
Preparing for the Next Generation BY HEATHER SMITH THOMAS
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fter more than 30 years on their ranch 15 miles north of Roundup, Montana (65 miles north of Billings), the Milton family has made great progress improving the health of the land and cattle. Bill Milton spent summers on his father’s Beartooth Ranch (near Helena, in the western part of the state), then moved to the present ranch in 1978. “My father purchased his ranch when I was quite young, but he died early and that ranch was sold. After I got married, I relocated and started ranching here, in the Musselshell Basin,” says Milton.
Getting Outside Help
Bill began practicing Holistic Management in 1984 when he and his wife Dana and another ranching family attended one of Allan Savory’s week-long workshops in Albuquerque, New Mexico. “We were intrigued by these concepts, and were shaken up a bit. When participating in one of these workshops a person has to be careful because you become ‘born again’ and extremely enthusiastic. Born-again people can sometimes get carried away and be pretty foolish. Now, 30 years later, we feel like we are still on the edge of the learning curve and don’t feel born again at all! We just feel engaged,” he says. He and Dana continually use Holistic Management, trying to look as deeply, thoughtfully and broadly as possible. “We try to practice this process in terms of figuring
out what’s important to us, and what we’d like to create—for ourselves, for our area, and our community. We are constantly testing and experimenting with how to deal with fundamentals, in terms of the land. We go back to the fundamentals of water cycles, mineral cycles, energy flows and energy dynamics on the land. Those things are going on constantly, and we try to deepen our understanding about the land and the community, so we make better decisions regarding how our actions impact all of these things.” After their family attended the class, they were wondering what to do with all the new information they’d received, and how to manage their livestock better. About 40% of their grazing land is public land—Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and state land. To start doing something radically different from what they were doing before required approval, agreement and understanding by other parties. “We formed a team that included BLM, Fish Wildlife and Parks, Natural Resource Conservation Services (NRCS), local people, and Roland Kroos—a Holistic Management consultant. We met him when we were going to various workshops over the years,” Milton says. “Roland was excited about this way of looking at land management and people management, and we crossed paths in the 1980s. We appreciated the value of an outside person looking at our management practices in a similar way but as someone with different experiences and perspective.” Since he
was a Holistic Management consultant, the Miltons hired him to help them design their own approach—both on the land and financial management. “We weren’t very strong in the financial planning aspect so having someone oversee our financial process was both useful and painful. That relationship has been a good one and we used Roland as part of our team over the past 15 years or so,” Milton says. Roland continues as a team member and consultant, and can act as a facilitator. “I am also a professional facilitator and work with many families doing succession planning, and working with large landscapes. I have a lot of experience in facilitation, but early on I learned that even if you are skilled at facilitation you are generally not skilled at facilitating yourself when working with your own family. It’s better to have an outside party when making these decisions,” explains Milton. Roland helped the Milton family think through their decision-making and set up a good process for managing finances, doing budgets, and testing all decisions using the holistic model. They also hired him to monitor a number of monitoring sites that they created on the ranch, to keep track of how their grazing practices are affecting the land, water and mineral cycles, diversity and cover. All of these things mix and blend together, but Roland provides another set of eyes and set of expertise to bring into the decision-making process and this has been very useful. “The principle of having outside eyes and input on your operation, and to actually pay for that service and perspective can be difficult (because that person is being paid to tell you where you are messing up) but he can also tell you when your path seems to be working,” says Milton. Since things are always changing on any ranching operation, it’s never a linear path, and not always easy to tell if you are going in the right direction. “We do this for other people, not necessarily professionally. A ranch is very much invested in a host of various partners who allow us to get done what we need to get done, and we always keep assessing whether what we are doing is really meeting our purpose and supporting our vision,” he explains.
Improving Management Decisions
The 14,000-acre Milton Ranch is in the Musselshell Basin on the edge of the pine breaks in the open sagebrush/grass uplands. 4 IN PRACTICE
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Their Milton Ranch consists of about 14,000 acres of public and private land combined. “Over the years, as we’ve adapted, we’ve also taken classes with Dave Pratt’s Ranching for Profit school. We’ve spent a lot of time in that circle as part of the executive link where there are groups
of ranchers that form boards for the purpose of developing plans that work both financially and biologically. Between these different workshops and observing other people’s experience in practicing Holistic Management, we quickly moved to a grass-based approach, with little or no farming,” Milton says. He quit haying because in this region haying may be successful only about 50-60% of the time, so it’s not practical to keep a lot of haying equipment. “It’s all dryland hay crops, and unless a person gets more yield and is doing it more consistently, it doesn’t pay,” he says. “It’s always beneficial to involve people who do things better than we do. We have a neighbor who puts up a lot of hay, and he and his family are good at it, and they have good equipment. When we have good years, where we can cut some dryland hay, we just contract with him to do our haying. That seems to be an economical option for us and helps him, as well.” As the Milton family learned more about the interaction and marriage between land and livestock, they began to move their cattle more often. Getting the best performance from the cow is still a work in progress, as they improve the performance and resilience of the landscape. Their ranch is divided into many pastures with single wire electric fence. “It seems to change every year. We’ve never done anything the same, two years in a row,” says Milton. “It’s more about trying to understand the process of decision-making, monitoring, and not becoming too attached to any particular way of doing things. Otherwise, you inevitably run into problems because you are more attached to an idea and less committed to being open to how variable and changing things are,” he says. They were originally doing a rest-rotation with the ranch divided into three units. With that traditional model, you graze one unit during the growing season, another during the dormant season, and rest the third unit. “We then tried to overlap an intensive grazing program with that rest-rotation system—using many paddocks but using each of them in those 3 stages. What we found was that we were leaving the cows too long on one part of the ranch during their high need period (calving, lactating and being bred),” he explains. “I got ‘woken up’ through a workshop with Jim Howell and Zack Jones at Harlow, Montana for ranchers who had some particular problems they wanted to deal with. It was a great workshop, bringing in a group of ranch families and tackling a particular issue—versus just talking about how to do things. Over the course of that workshop I had a breakthrough.
Jim asked me why we don’t just graze the whole ranch during the growing season. I asked what he meant, because we can’t get around that fast with the cattle. But I got to thinking about it, wrestling with my paradigms, because even though it wasn’t giving the results I wanted, I was still attached to it—because it was really good for the grass. Our grass performed well under the management we were doing, but the cattle didn’t perform as well,” he says. So the next year he tried something different. “We used two of the units and went through them very quickly during the growing season. This meant a lot more movement and more temporary fences, and more water development. This is very important when you are moving cattle a lot. We’ve done a lot of water development the past 25 years.” After trying more frequent moves—floating the cattle across the landscape—it seemed to work. He expanded this, trying to move across the whole ranch through most of the growing season, moving every day or two, staying no more than three days in any pasture. “When a person is doing this, you have to think about easy flow—what’s easy movement for cattle, what’s easy for water, what’s easy for yourself. You are in a constant state of cultivating relationship with your place and your cattle, finding ways of doing this to where all the parties are happy, including the plants,” Milton says. In doing that, they continue working to improve the ground. “We make mistakes because sometimes we realize we stayed too long or moved too fast. Our livestock enterprise model includes calving in late April, May, into early June. Then we wean in November or early December. The cattle stay on grass year
round unless it becomes covered with snow. We stockpile straw and use that with some high protein hay or protein tubs or some other form of supplement. We haven’t quite figured out the best and most cost-effective supplement. This year we are using high protein hay.” After the calves are weaned, the steers are wintered at the ranch, then go to a partner at Wolf Point in the northeastern part of the state to run as yearlings and then they go to a feedlot in Colorado. “We are part of the Country Natural Beef co-op. Part of the time we’ve kept the heifer calves at the ranch, but we’ve had difficulty with that program in getting a good breed-back on our two-year-olds. So the last trimester we’ve been feeding them a little extra and calving them out separately. This has helped us get a little bit of improvement,” he says. Now the ranch needs to grow in cattle numbers, as the Miltons are thinking of bringing a family member back to the business. “So this year we are sending our heifers to the person we buy bulls from and he will develop them, breed them, calve them, and bring the bred coming 3-year-olds home to us. This is an experiment. On paper, it looks like it will allow us to grow and make a little more money. It will enable us to put those young cows into a more supportive environment so they can grow,” he explains. But there is also a risk to this plan. At a recent workshop, Fred Provenza was telling about the important relationship between cattle and their feed—finding the right feed to meet their performance in the landscape that they evolve in. The young animals get cues from their mother CONTINUED ON PAGE 6
With higher stock density, Bill has had to work out how to make sure he has adequate water infrastructure to adequately water animals and control them for improved forage quality and animal performance. N um ber 168
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island. What happens with our animals and wildlife is impacted by what happens next to us—not only right next to us but also in the as they go through the landscape, and learn Communication is Key larger region,” he explains. from her about what to eat. They become located Currently the Milton Ranch has 450 cows. “In our field guide project we have invited in and adapted to the landscape through the “In our business there is just my wife Dana and a lot of interesting people—geologists, wildlife experience of their mothers—in terms of knowing I, a brother who is just an investment partner people, photographers, people who work with where to go, how to go, and what to eat. Cattle in the ranch, and a part-time employee, Ryan insects, people who work with plants, soils, relate to the landscape through their palate. McCleary. Between us we have the equivalent etc. It’s a diverse group who all have strong “Even though we need to grow, and need to of about one full-time person, due to our work in practices, perspective and experiences in send animals to another place, this may be a the community and my work going around doing particular pieces of the landscape puzzle. challenge. Our resources dictate that we have facilitation,” he says. Bringing them all together to talk about how other ground somewhere, thus we are not going “What I have learned in terms of successful to create a healthy landscape and be aware to create that ideal model of doing it all within family business, and what we’ve all learned of all these interdependent parts is exciting,” one landscape. So Milton says. we have these other Milton feels that partners, and we over the years he has seem to be getting sometimes been out sufficient performance on the edge doing to get the job done, things—sometimes and making the ranch good, sometimes work,” Milton says. not so good, making “What really works plenty of mistakes, for our business is and is humble about cultivating a lot of sharing their story. partners, both locally “I am not at a place and farther away. This where I want to tell includes the people people that we are who teach us, consult doing some really with us, people who great things and provide grass and they should do it like hay for us, neighbors we do. I am more who help us work interested in telling the place, etc. The people that we are all After learning Holistic Management, Bill quickly moved to a totally grass-based system and idea that ranchers in this together, trying focused on how the grazing planning could help improve ecosystem processes function on the are independent to figure out how land. They also regularly monitor the land to see the effects their grazing is having on the land. is unreal; most of we can make family us realize we could not succeed without the in workshops we go to, is that the main thing businesses work on the land. I tell them this is help of many other people. We embrace our is how well do people communicate and talk what we are experimenting with and that I have interdependence rather than acting like we can about what is important to them and what they a lot of friends who do things differently, but I independently get things done,” he says. need. It’s a practice, not a God-given skill. It’s appreciate and admire them. There’s not just Ideally, their family business would like to something we all have to train ourselves to do. one way to do things,” Milton says. create a good marriage between the cows We’ve found that the weekly meeting, staying “Our field guide is more about how ranchers and the land, where the land is continuing to in touch, checking in on what we are supposed work together and collaborate to make their improve and gain more cover, more waterto be doing and why we are doing it is crucial,” business successful—because it’s very holding capacity, better mineral cycle and more Milton says. important that their family ranch business diversity. “Then we can provide more volume of “When things go wrong we need to talk be successful, for themselves and for the quality forage for the cows so they can do what about it and deal with people’s emotional left community. I am very committed to that. I like they need to do—breed successfully, giving us and rights. When things aren’t going so well sharing what we are doing. Many people come a calf—with very little input, just moving over with our families, we have to be able to talk see what we are doing, but I am always telling the landscape through the year. We target about that, as well. The weekly meeting is a very them that it’s a work in progress. If there is some supplements when we think they are needed, grounding way to make sure that we stay on our little piece that might be useful for someone such as mineral or protein or straw. We use path. When we fall off the path we get back to it else, that’s great, but we are not bragging about straw in winter if we get snowed under. Protein as quickly as possible.” our successes.” supplement and straw works effectively for the Bill facilitates some large landscape issues cattle and it’s fairly economical,” he says. in the Musselshell Watershed Coalition, which Succession Opportunities “We try to make sure their needs are met, is a 350-mile river with irrigation associations, All ranches that go on for more than one and we are trying to find a cow that’s the right agencies, etc. that are working on managing generation have to deal with succession, and size and can produce the right calf that can finish that water. “Our family’s ranch is not an isolated Bill is intimately involved in that process. “I’ve CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5
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in a feedlot and be useful in the marketplace with Country Natural Beef,” Milton says.
learned that building a succession plan is one of the most important things along with making sure that you have a business that can support the next generation. It has to be profitable. You need to spend a lot of time with your kids, and figure out whether they are going to be owners or just work on the ranch.” The Miltons have been going through a lot of versions of their succession plans, exploring different ways to go. Their oldest daughter Moria is a paramedic/firefighter. Sons Cameron and Morgan are a golf pro and a chef. They are all interested in the ranch. “Our daughter is very interested in coming back into the business. As we develop our succession plan and estate plan we are moving toward a model where we will probably separate the land and livestock and the various enterprises,” he explains. “If the kids don’t want to own cattle they can still run the ranch and pay the bills, leasing the ground. There are some merits of separating the land enterprise from the livestock enterprise. We haven’t quite made that shift, but we are giving it a lot of thought because these are quite different enterprises. You can more clearly determine the profitability and effectiveness of an enterprise when you are clearer about the opportunity costs of what the ground is worth where you have your cattle graze. By separating it, you have to deal with the opportunity cost and the cows have to pay an actual lease, to use that ground,” he says. “I think succession planning is something that in a way goes on with all ranchers, almost every single day, in how we relate to our work and to what comes our way. It can be a formal process of estate planning, and conversations with the next generation about where this whole thing is going to go. We have been pretty lucky with that; our family gets along very well. So we will see how that unfolds,” he says. “My wife and I often have interesting discussions about trying not to attach to how we think the next piece should be. We just try to create a healthy landscape and a good, profitable business, and have some flexibility and adaptation/innovation for the next generation to be able to take it to the next place,” he explains. “We are the elders, and elders can provide a lot of useful experience, even though we need to let children do their own thing. We wrestle with this, like every other ranch, but creating confidence in the capacity of the next generation to make their own decisions is important. Right now I’m 66 and still quite active on the ranch, but we want to move leadership and ownership to the next generation as quickly as practical. We want them to experience making decisions sooner rather than later,” says Milton.
When he facilitates with ranchers he tells them that estate planning is quite different from succession planning even though they are interdependent. “We never know when a wreck is going to happen and someone disappears, but we see this pretty often. A rancher or his wife may have an unfortunate accident. That’s why families need to be talking about this all the time, and be prepared for it. If tragedy hits, you can then wrestle with the tragedy but not have to also wrestle with the emotions and difficulties of changing the business. I think a very important practice is not looking at succession as something you have to get done but something
Bill and his grandson Pierce Perez move the cows. that is happening every day,” he says. Bill is currently working with 6 different ranch families on succession planning. “We experimented with something; we had a meeting where we brought in four multi-generation ranches. One ranch has a lot of kids and is really trying hard to figure out how to bring them back into the business. Each family ranch told their story and talked about where they are in their succession planning, what kind of structure they are using, the challenges they had in terms of ownership and leadership and making a transition. That group meeting was so rich, having peers to peers discussions, sharing their work.” Farmer and ranchers tend to share a lot, but when people really talk candidly about their own situation and there’s enough trust to do that, it is much more significant than just going to a succession workshop. “You actually hear people talk about real, tough challenges and experiences they’ve had, and going from one step to the next. Ranchers can have those kinds of gathering and facilitate a lot of learning,” Milton says.
Inter-Generational Influence
The succession discussions and family
conversations has clearly led to a deeper engagement between Bill and Dana and their children. Bill and Dana’s daughter, Moria, shared how that experience influenced her. “As a child, I was exposed to the importance of caring for the land, the animals, and the family and how they all interconnect. I didn’t realize how fortunate I was until the first year I left for college. Leaving Montana and being exposed to the Northeast, I quickly realized how special the ranch is,” she says. “The first summer I came home from college, I spent working on the ranch with Dad fixing fence and generally helping out. I became more involved in why my parent do the things they do regarding the animals and the land. I learned to appreciate the interconnection of everything on the ranch. If your soil isn’t good, it doesn’t grow good feed. If your feed isn’t good, your cows don’t reach their potential. If the cows don’t do well, the family isn’t compensated,” says Moria. “My father, being a birder and a constant student of the plants on the ranch, began to teach me the different species and when they make their appearance on the ranch. He taught me how recognizing the environment around you gives you clues to how the whole ecosystem is doing,” she says. “Over the years, my mother had great influence in my love of gardening, both vegetable and flower. We realized that there is a continuation of knowledge passed on through the generations. Her mother taught her a small amount which began her foundation. She then educated herself through trial and error and passed on her knowledge to me. I now pass on that information to my son Pierce. Every generation has a stronger foundation,” Moria explains. “This ranch/family was the wonderful environment that I grew up in. Although I currently live in Connecticut and work as a firefighter/paramedic, the ranch will always be my home. My son considers it his second home. I have a strong emotional tie to the land and the way of life. I make sure I come home at least once a year. Knowing that I can retire in 8 years and come home makes it easier living in a fast-paced, financial driven environment where most people are already focused on the next item before they have even finished what they are doing.” With Pierce also enjoying the opportunity of coming to the ranch and helping his grandfather there is now a 3rd generation engaged in the art and business of ranching—a foundation for more generations to come on the Milton Ranch. N um ber 168
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LIVESTOCK NorthStar Bison—
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Growing a Grassfed Business BY HEATHER SMITH THOMAS
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ee and Mary Graese and family have been raising bison in Wisconsin for more than 20 years. “It all started as just a hobby, in 1994,” Lee says. “I had been intrigued by bison all my life, learning everything I could about the Old West. Bison were a big part of that. My brother-in-law told me about the bison at Blue Mound State Park, in southwestern Minnesota, so I went there to have a look, and ended up buying a bull and a heifer. That was the start of it,” he says. “My wife Mary and I owned 10 acres at that time, when I first started thinking about getting some bison. As I learned more about the bison I discovered that there was a good market potential for the meat. My background is in health clubs, and I used to do a lot of power lifting. I realized there were many people who would appreciate the quality of bison meat. A person can only eat so much chicken in a lifetime! I decided that raising bison would be something good for our family to do, and the meat would probably be appreciated by the customers and clients we’d had—and kept—over the years in the health club business,” Lee explains. After Lee decided to get some bison, he realized that 10 acres wasn’t enough. He sold that land and bought 110 acres, and then bought those first two bison in October 1994. “We picked up a few more animals here and there (including 6 bred cows in 1995) and decided to market the meat directly. In 1997 our first animals were ready for slaughter. We had 5 that year. Bison are ready for slaughter by the time they are about 2½ years old.”
The Graese family are busy keeping up with the demand for bison meat as they work with others in their community to raise bison to supply their vertically integrated business. 8 Land & Livestock
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Their bison enterprise continued to grow. “We sold the 110 acres to my brother-in-law, who had been a guide at Yellowstone Park and was coming back to Wisconsin, wanting to get into the buffalo business. He couldn’t find a property he could afford, and he really liked our piece of land. It was already fenced for bison, so we sold him ours and we bought 300 acres just down the road,” Lee says. Their bison ranch is near Haugen, Wisconsin, in the northwestern part of the state—about an hour’s drive south of Lake Superior. Over this almost 20 year journey in the bison industry, the Graese family has turned NorthStar Bison into a vertically integrated grassfed business, utilizing 1,200 acres of leased and owned land as well as buying from bison producers and serving as a leader in the bison industry.
Managing Bison
There has been a lot of learning for the Graese family as they took on this new enterprise, including the challenge of figuring out the best fencing for the job. “We had to do some major fencing on the new property; by the time we moved there we had 45 cows and additional young stock. We’ve had a lot of experience fencing, creating a lot of cross-fencing for grazing, and major perimeter fencing to contain bison. Now, between the property we own and lease, we run about 1,200 acres.” The bison respect electric fencing, so the perimeter fences are generally a 6-strand electrified fence. “The only reason we use 6 wires, with the top one being nearly 6 feet high, is because of the snowpack in winter. For example, 2 years ago we had a total accumulation of 13 feet of snow. Otherwise, a 5-foot high fence would be adequate,” he says. Lee believes these animals are much easier to raise than cattle because they are hardier, and you don’t have to do much with them. “They are very much hands-off, especially when they are calving. You just stay clear; it’s too dangerous to get very close to the cows at that time,” Lee says. “They can withstand incredible injuries that would kill cattle. On our processing floor, the state veterinarians and meat inspectors have seen scars and healed wounds that no one realized the animals had experienced. They will beat each other up pretty badly at times, and can inflict injury with their horns. They are so quick and powerful—very athletic. We see some nasty wounds sometimes, and the veterinarians are amazed that these animals are alive and can keep going. They heal up and have scars, but it doesn’t seem to bother them,” Lee says. The ranch has just two breeding groups now, after downsizing the cow herd. “We got to about 200 cows, but were running into land and supply constraints. Our meat is 100% grassfed and we just couldn’t produce enough grassfed animals. We decided to sell off our main cow herd and run more yearlings. Now we buy some calves and a lot of yearlings—from ranchers whom we’ve built a network with over the years—and we run mostly stockers. We just have two small cow herds, totaling about 45 cows,”
he says. Some of the ranchers he works with, buying their yearlings, are in publicly held herds and some are private landowners. He has also been the high volume buyer at the Custer State Park sale, several years. “We go to that sale every year because those animals now qualify as 100% grassfed. The Park finally went away from graining the animals they were holding for the fall sale. There’s no need for bison to eat grain; now the Park just feeds them some good hay and an alfalfa pellet while they are confined there in preparation for the sale,” Lee says. “We buy stockers, and this is actually easier than raising them from start to finish; it does simplify our management. We’ve been tempted to build the cow herd back up, just because we weren’t getting enough people interested in being 100% grassfed, to provide the young stock we need. They just didn’t understand, or didn’t see the need, but now we are finding like-minded ranchers who can supply us with the calves/yearlings and some that are finished on grass. We typically bring those finished animals here and hold them here for a while, even if they’ve been finished by someone else, especially if they are from the West, in order to ensure consistent Through holistic planned grazing the Graese family has improved pasture productivity. flavor,” he says. “We have some custom grazers who take in yearlings for us; we buy these young animals and divvy them up hay, but they may not eat it; if they’re not interested in eating it they’ll just amongst several people that we trust. We appreciate the attention they stir it around. If we go back the next day and it’s strewn all over, we know pay to the animals and they do a great job of finishing them. We take they don’t need to be fed yet. When we go back the day after that, maybe groups of animals to these custom grazers and this was a way to gain a little bit of it will be consumed,” he says. access to more land for growing grassfed bison. These are people who “We keep checking, and eventually it’s all eaten, so we put out a want to have a ranch/farm but don’t want to sell/market the animals. They couple more small bales. In a day or two the hay may be all gone, so we still want to stay active, raising the animals, so we bring them young bison put a few more out, and then we switch over to a big round bale when to graze on their place. All of them have some of their own animals, but they’ve started eating the hay more regularly. Then we just keep replacing just not enough to fill their places. We help them utilize their extra grass by the round bales as they are eaten, and put out however many bales per bringing them some yearlings to finish,” he says. day that they’ll eat. They are telling us there’s no more grass left—at least On the finishing, the Graese family has learned to do some things over nothing they can dig to—and then they resign themselves to eating hay,” the years that help make it work year round. “We market fresh, rather than Lee says. frozen meat, just by processing the young bulls from early to mid-summer Two years ago they had an accumulation of 13 feet of snow. It got until about mid-January, and then we switch to processing all heifers. so deep that they tried to move the herd into a new pasture. “The snow The heifers hold their body condition better during winter. We do end up was too deep for the bison to get through it; they’d go into the snow and supplementing with hay, however, when the snow gets too deep for them it would hold them up and they couldn’t touch the ground. They were to graze,” he says. excited about getting into a new pasture and they tried to go through the snow, lunging and jumping, but they finally gave up and turned around and Overwintering Bison jumped their way back over to where the snow was beaten down, and we The Graese family puts up a very high-quality hay, from the spring realized we’d have to just keep feeding them in that same pasture.” pastures that get ahead of the grazing animals. During early summer the The snow was so deep they had to start plowing fencelines because bison can’t keep up with the grass when it’s growing the fastest. “That’s the 6-foot high top wire was buried or barely above the snow. The snow when we cut some of those pastures, bale them, and stockpile that feed never crusted; it was fluffy with the surface still soft. The bison didn’t for winter,” Lee says. bother the fences because it was just too much work to struggle through “People who come through on tours, and beef producers we’ve talked the snow. “When we fed hay, we just kept expanding the area that was with at conferences can’t believe these animals will graze through the packed down, putting the hay out in the snow a little bit so they’d beat snow. They tell us that if they have a little snow, their cattle will be standing down more of it. That way we didn’t have such a buildup of manure in just at the gate waiting to be fed. By contrast, bison will forage and graze one small place,” Lee says. as long as possible—until either the snow gets too deep or the grass is Planned grazing during summer, with animal impact and trampling, gone,” he says. greatly improves the soil and forage. “We don’t use any fertilizer, other “Usually we let them tell us when it is time to feed them. How we’ve than what these animals put down on the ground. If we see a pasture that learned to do that is by putting out a little hay after the snow gets deep, may need a little help, it goes to the top of the list for winter feeding.” The to see if they are interested. We’ll take a couple small bales out into the concentration of manure and any trampled hay for litter adds the needed pasture and break them. The bison will always come, and check out the CONTINUED ON PAGE 10 N um ber 168
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organic matter to help the soil, and also reseeds that pasture. The hay that’s put out for the bison contains some seed heads and this is a good way to reseed a pasture. This is the way they add seed to the pastures; they don’t need to do it mechanically. The hay spreads the seed and the bison tromp it into the soil.
Niche Marketing
didn’t stay in it. “When it was my turn to take over the farm I told my dad that he might as well sell it because I didn’t see dairying as my future. So my parents sold it,” Lee says. “At that time, I didn’t know that a person could own bison. I had no clue. I thought bison were only in parks and zoos, and there was no market for the meat back then. In the 1970s there were only 25,000 of them in the U.S. and they were mainly in parks and zoos. Now we are pushing a half million animals. We are still tiny, compared to beef, but it’s growing,” he says. “This is an industry where we are about 20% under supplied for current markets, without even opening up new markets. The beef ranchers are making good money right now. Competition for meat has driven the prices up, which is great,” he says. In order to get all the work done, NorthStar Bison has become a family affair. “Our oldest daughter Renee’s husband, Andre, oversees our processing facilities. Our daughter Marielle and her husband Brett are in charge of the ranch and the bison. Our son Sean is involved in the marketing side and will eventually take over that aspect. Right now he is more involved with the social media, promotion and advertising,” Lee says. Lee’s wife Mary is in charge of sales and customer service. Having a great team makes it all work.
At first the Graese family depended on a local processing plant, and then purchased their own plant in Conrath, Wisconsin in 2005. This enabled them to have more control over their processing schedule, and “field kill” the animals for harvest. Currently they have two processing plants. “We sell everything from ala carte to large orders. If someone wants just one pound of ground meat we sell ground meat and other cuts at our outlets at both processing plants. These plants have a store area where people can come in and buy what they want, but the majority of the meat gets shipped out. Thus we have become shipping experts over the years. My wife jokingly tells people that she has a PhD in shipping,” Lee says. “We do a lot of retail, sending the meat to the end users’ doorstep. We use wholesale for whole carcass utilization. If there are some cuts that Incorporating Holistic Management are starting to build up we try to find a wholesale account that will take One of the tools that has helped them improve their business is a larger volume.” Marketing the meat is more complex than just growing Holistic Management. “We utilize holistic principles in our decisionthe animals. making process and not just in how we manage the land and animals. “We are finding more people who are willing to grow for us and We look at all of our decisions in terms of how they impact the whole. become part of our supply chain.” NorthStar Bison has developed working Sometimes when you look at just one segment, it will alter something relationships with a number of ranchers in the upper Midwest who have else. We are vertically integrated and we have cows, young stock, the been raising bison. processing plant, the sales “Many of them had been and marketing. If you only doing direct marketing after the look at one piece of this, crash in our market happened and make all your decisions in 2000 and a person could based on that one piece, you’ll hardly give animals away. A lot hurt some of the other parts of bison producers turned to and it won’t work very well. direct marketing themselves. Sometimes there are things Our daughter and son-in-law that seem logical until we look recently picked up a trailer load at everything else,” Lee says. of animals from a guy who had “My daughter Marielle and been doing that, but he’s getting her husband Brett oversee the up in years and slowly weaning ranch and they come forward away his direct market accounts with ideas for the ranching and selling his animals to us. side. They are good ideas He holds back a few just for the for the ranching aspect but easy sales. But some people, I don’t always do them, just like him, are no longer willing because we have to base all to go and beat the bushes our decisions on the whole. One of the advantages of raising bison in Wisconsin is their ability to overwinter in for customers anymore. He’s heavy snows. While the Graese family utilizes some stockpiled hay, the bison also dig Sometimes financially it may slowing down and just wants not be the right move, or there through the snow for forage. to ranch.” are higher priorities elsewhere Lee says that if his family had been able to just raise the animals that we need to take care of first. Short term, something might look early on, they probably wouldn’t have become vertically integrated. It’s good, but long term it may not put us where we want to be eventually. a lot of work to market your own animals direct to consumers. “I got into We have to ask if this is where we want to go, and if the answer is no, this because I wanted to ranch, and raise the bison. I didn’t want to be a we don’t do it—no matter how good it looks at the time. We don’t want processer or a shipping expert, but that aspect had to come with it.” something we do now to take us away from where we want to be in the He grew up in the dairy industry and saw what it was like being a price- future, taking us out of sustainability,” he explains. taker, dependent on outside factors and other people making the prices. In September 2015 the Graese hosted a seminar at their ranch, and He didn’t appreciate that aspect of dairying and this was the reason he Roland Kroos, a Holistic Management Certified Educator, participated 10
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in this. There were a number of bison ranchers attending the class. “We had a gentleman here who moved to the U.S. from South Africa and lives in North Carolina raising bison as well as some local people,” Lee says. “The Oneida Nation of Wisconsin will be sending some of their people to another class we are holding. They have a very large herd of bison in the Green Bay area that they’ve been managing for several years. Gail Griffin has been president of the NBA (National Bison Association) and she said that other than buying bison, the investment into that September class was the next best thing they’ve ever spent money on. It was a great success,” Lee says. “We forget how different we are. My daughter has gone to the FFA convention with the NBA, promoting the bison industry. When she came back she told us that she never realized how different we are. We are way different from ‘normal’ agriculture—very unique in what we do and how we do it.” Bison are unique animals and managing them with holistic principles, to be sustainable, is totally different from mainstream agriculture. “After attending the FFA convention, she told us that of all the thousands of kids they talked to, she could count on one hand the kids who planned to do something in animal agriculture. A few were going to do dairy and a few were going to do beef. The others were planning to go to work for agribusiness companies.” That’s not a sustainable future. Big corporate businesses just keep growing and they don’t put back
anything into the land like grass farmers do. “Some of the land we utilize is much healthier than it was, and the difference is like day and night. This is especially true on the pastures where we held the Holistic Management class, on the Boy Scout reservation that we’ve leased for about 20 years. When we first went in there with our animals, weeds would hardly grow on some of that land. In earlier years it had been leased to conventional farmers to grow crops. They’d mined that soil down to nothing. It’s a light, sandy soil anyway, and it needed more organic matter,” Lee says. After bringing in the bison, the soil health improved. “We haven’t used any fertilizer except the bison manure. We went out there to do the pasture walk during our seminar, and turned some soil over to see what’s underneath. The grass was so tall that Dave Griffin said all he could think of was that we should make some hay! We told him that no, this was our stockpile to graze in winter and early spring. The bison will get to eat this! But most people think in terms of making hay and hauling it to them later.” It’s better for the land if the animals can eat it on the spot and put the litter and manure back into the soil. The Graese family has come a long way from their early days when they purchased their first 2 bison. Along the way, they have grown their own business and an industry, healed land, and learned about Holistic Management—a tool they want to share with others. “Holistic Management revolutionizes people’s thinking and the way they look at everything, including their lifestyle,” Lee says.
Sims Cattle Company—
Creating Profit Holistically BY HEATHER SMITH THOMAS
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cott and April Sims and their son, Shanon (and wife Melinda), ranch holistically near McFadden, Wyoming. Scott’s grandparents bought the place in 1942 after working in the oil fields for 13 years. “We don’t have any oil in our income from this place, however—just cattle,” says Scott. “My dad ranched with my granddad for several years, but they didn’t get along well together so my dad went back to college and became a hydrographer (water commissioner) here in the valley, administering the water here. As my granddad was getting older, he got crippled (a cow got him down) and ended up leasing the ranch to my dad and myself in 1976. My brother Olin came into the family operation in 1983,” Scott says. Once Scott (and later Shanon) took Holistic Management training, they were able to manage more effectively to increase land productivity, changing herd management, and involving others in the family to create more ownership in the family’s holistic goal. In doing so, they have been able to get more family members back on to the ranch, leaving off-ranch jobs that took them away from the family. On top of that, they were able to meet their profit goals. While the Sims note there is always room for improvement, they are pleased with the progress they have made.
The Early Days
The Sims Ranch has always been a cow-calf operation and hay ranch. “We fertilized the hay meadows and put up lots of hay, and sold hay, and kept building our cow numbers. Between Dad and April and me, we started out with about 75 cows and just kept building up the herd over the years. Now we are running more than 600 cows on the place,” Scott says. During the 1980’s the ranch was doing well, the calves were getting
The Sims Family (left to right): Shanon, Jentry, Melinda, Kagan, April, Scott heavier all the time and the herd was growing in numbers, and the ranch was growing extra hay to sell. “Then in the late 1980’s my brother and I were riding across a pasture after we’d moved the cows out to summer grass. We asked ourselves if we were really being sustainable. We were doing well, but perhaps at the expense of the land. Riding across the pastures that day, we realized that we needed to be doing something different. It just seemed like the grass didn’t look healthy. We had quite a bit of larkspur and some weeds and we thought we should be doing something else to correct this,” recalls Scott. “During the late 1970’s through early 1980’s my family plowed up a lot of marginal rangeland that had been abused years earlier with previous owners—not so much from mismanagement but because this area had been a large water gap for cattle, back before there were fences.” “To resolve that, we put a lot of crested wheatgrass in that area, which greatly increased the forage production on that ground. This gave us an CONTINUED ON PAGE 12
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opportunity to go out on grass earlier with the cattle in the spring. We started using AI with the cattle in 1975, so this worked very well—having the crested wheat pasture to utilize while breeding the cows,” he says.
Improving Practice As the Sims began to think about how to improve the forage stand and land health, they began to explore other natural resource issues. “My family was doing a lot of farming at that time, putting in the crested wheat. Then we looked at what else we should do—whether to plow and plant summer grasses and if so, which ones we’d want to use. About that time, in cooperation with University of Wyoming and the Soil Conservation Service we put in a test plot—several varieties of summer grasses, to see which ones would do well in our area, at 7,200 feet,” Scott says. “About that same time, we noticed that we were getting a lot of broom snakeweed in our crested wheat, and this weed was also coming into our native range. So we had Tom Whitson from the University of Wyoming come out and set up some test plots and try different chemicals on broom snakeweed. We had success killing it, but within about three years it came back. This was not a long-term solution, and we soon had lots of broom snakeweed again. In that same time frame, we decided to do some spraying on the rangeland because it didn’t have much grass, and also had a lot of broom snakeweed and many flowering plants that we didn’t understand,” he says. “What we learned later was that by doing all that spraying we were not only killing the broom snakeweed but also killing a lot of forbs that were high in phosphorus. We were buying expensive mineral for the cattle, and killing our phosphorus source!” Another thing they noticed was that the heavy cattle use in the AI pastures made a difference. “We’d set up some pens that we brought the cows into for heat detection. Those areas got used hard, with lots of trampling and manure, and there wasn’t much grass left by the time we got done. But the next year they grew very well. We didn’t know what that was all about,” says Scott. In the winter of 1989 he and his brother Olin went to one of Allan Savory’s schools. “We’d been hearing about Allan Savory and thinking about doing some type of rotational grazing. There were several systems being used at that time, but we didn’t understand how they might work, or
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if they would be better than what we were doing, so after we heard about Allan we decided to go to his 5-day school in Bozeman, Montana. Roland Kroos was one of the instructors and we learned a lot. It was more than we could actually absorb at that time. It has taken us years to absorb this,” he says. “We came home and started dividing pastures. We realized we were overgrazing and needed to rest the pastures. Before that, it was basically a summer-long grazing situation without much planning. We needed to create some animal impact as well as some rest periods. So we started fencing and soon realized that we also needed to develop some water. Many of the sources of water we used to use—windmills and reservoirs— were not adequate when we started grouping cattle. We needed more reliable sources for that many cows. We could no longer depend on a source that might water 15 to 20 head at a time, because we might have 100 cows coming to water at once. When we started putting water into the ground instead of letting it run across the ground, the reservoirs dried up, so they weren’t a good source anymore,” he explains. “We started putting the cattle together in bigger groups, moving them through the pastures faster, and began to see some differences. Probably one of the biggest learning curves we had was at the school when they talked about using a pasture and not going back onto it until it’s had a chance to recover. There was talk about 30 days of rest and recovery, up to 90 or 120 days. It didn’t take us long to find out that our pastures didn’t recover that quickly. All we have is cool season grasses. After you graze that type of pasture, it’s not going to recover the same year,” he says. “We decided to go through each pasture just one time during the grazing season. April and I went to a monitoring school in Paso Robles, California in 1990 and then began to do some monitoring of our grass, using a dart-throw system that was taught through Holistic Management. That was one of the best things that we did, when we began monitoring the land. We could see some changes, though slow, and by doing the monitoring we could actually document a lot of things that were happening out there. We started to see plants closer together, more litter on the ground, higher numbers of insect populations. It was really exciting to see this,” Scott says. Many people come home from this kind of school and are enthusiastic about what they’ve learned and start putting cattle together in bigger groups, and expect to see a lot of immediate changes. “If they don’t monitor, they may become disenchanted with it; the monitoring is what kept us going,” he explains. “We came home from the school and applied Holistic Management to grazing our rangeland. We still had our hay meadows that we were fertilizing every year, and selling the hay. The good thing about the way we sold our hay was that the cattle came here to eat it; we fed them on the ranch, so the manure stayed here,” says Scott. “But with the commercial fertilizer, our fields ended up changing from several species of grass to a monoculture of creeping meadow foxtail. When we did the rangeland monitoring we were looking at ground cover and living organisms and diversity. We didn’t monitor our hay meadows, but we could look at them and see that we had a monoculture. We weren’t improving the plant community,” he says. “In more recent years we decided that if we were going to manage holistically we needed to manage the whole ranch that way. Many years ago we decided that we were never going to spend more than $30,000 annually on fertilizer, which at that time was enough to fertilize the whole place. Two years ago, $30,000 fertilized less than 40% of the place. Fertilizer became more expensive and it seemed like we weren’t producing as much as we were earlier, and still had a monoculture,” he explains.
Since they were no longer fertilizing all of the fields, they had some meadows they had not fertilized for a few years, and were starting to see some diversity coming back into those meadows. “There were a lot more forbs coming in, especially alsike clover and red clover. Our production was down but the quality was going up,” he says. This past season, 2015, was the first year they didn’t use any fertilizer at all, and they don’t intend to use it anymore unless they really need to. “We’d like to get away from fertilizer altogether,” he says. In 1991 they leased the adjacent ranch. “We didn’t want to put up any more hay, and we’d heard about Gregg Simonds and the Deseret Ranch doing some windrow grazing so we started doing that on the leased ranch. This was a paradigm shift because we were afraid we were going to starve those cows by making them eat hay out of a windrow. But it worked well. When we first started, we had maybe a month to 45 days of feed in windrows, and then we gradually expanded that time, to where last year we were able to graze cows on windrows up until mid-April. Then we do actually feed a little hay in the spring when we’re calving and it’s really wet, but we are trying to get away from that altogether. Right now we’re only feeding about ¼ of a ton of hay per cow for the winter, versus the 2.25 ton we used to feed, to winter a cow,” says Scott.
during the summer, it would become more palatable for the elk. The elk had been leaving that unit and going to the nearby ranches in the spring. The ranchers didn’t want elk on their places,” Scott says. “We took our cows up there for several years—from 2002 through 2008. We took 300 cow-calf pairs up there, and when we first started we took them in June. The Game and Fish wanted about 90% utilization that first year, because those old hay meadows had several inches of duff and decadent material that needed to be cleaned up. We were shooting for 90% removal but didn’t get that much. The grazing started to make a difference,” he says. “Before we took our cows up there, we looked at that place, and in one meadow there was nothing growing but mustard and Canada thistle. The one spot we saw a blade of grass was in an old elk track, where a seedling had started to grow. This land definitely needed more grazing activity. Our efforts were successful to improve it, and grouping cattle that tightly helped them learn to eat a lot of different things—competing with each other,” he explains. “We were grouping the cattle tighter up there than what we were doing at home, so that was an eye-opener to us, regarding what you can train cattle to eat. An example is whitetop (an invasive plant that crowds out native species). We’d put the cattle into a new pasture and then Drought Management we’d see them all in a tight wad-- and “For years, our dad told us that 1954 our first thought was that a calf died and was a drought. He told us boys that we’d they were all grouped around it, but we’d never really seen what it was like to be go over there and find they were eating dry, in our lifetimes. If we started to get whitetop,” says Scott. The Sims learned early on that land change can be subtle. dry, then we’d get some rain. It never got Shanon says this happened often Learning how to read the land and developing biological very dry here until 2002. My brother and I enough that finally he and the Game and monitoring transects has given them the information they always figured that if we got into a drought Fish biologist became curious and took needed to keep persevering in their management practices. we just wouldn’t sell any hay, and we a sample of whitetop and sent it to an thought we’d have enough to get us through,” says Scott. analytical lab for a nutritional analysis—and discovered that it was 24% “In 2002 it got dry enough that we weren’t able to sell hay, and ended crude protein. “The cattle were craving the protein,” Shanon explains. up selling about 140 cows just so we wouldn’t have to buy hay. This Taking 300 head to that pasture in 2003 (and having sold 140 cows was an eye-opener for us and we felt like we needed to be planning for because of the drought) enabled the Sims family to rest one-third of their drought. We’d heard some people saying that a person really needs to be home pastures. “We got through those years, and after that we’d go into resting about 10% of their place for a full grazing season, to help improve the rested pastures first thing in the spring to utilize the old growth--to go the pasture and wildlife habitat. We also heard about what Ray Bannister along with the green grass that was starting,” says Scott. (in Montana) was doing. He was only grazing a pasture once every three “We went through several years with this rest period and producing years, letting it rest for two years and then he’d go in the third year and more grass, and realized we should keep doing it. Then in the drought of really hammer it. We decided that we would rest 1/3 of our pastures,” 2012 we ended up having to use all of our pastures. We didn’t get any Scott says. moisture that spring so we had no green grass to go out on. The good This worked very well because 2002 was very dry and 2003 brought thing was that we had lots of pastures and were able to take those cows more moisture and they put up lots of hay. “One reason we were able to and run them quickly through all of those pastures, just spending a few do this was that we hired our cows out, leasing them to Wyoming Game days in each pasture. That got us through to where we could start our and Fish to graze a habitat management area where they needed to grazing season and it kept the cattle in better condition. After that we improve winter range for elk. This was on a ranch that had been sold to started getting some rain and some grass growth and were able to go the Game and Fish, up next to the mountains and adjacent to our place. back through those pastures again,” he says. That was the only year they The Game and Fish bought it because it had lots of elk on it,” he says. went through the pastures twice during the growing season; the first time “After they bought it, they didn’t graze it for many years. The University there was nothing growing and the cows were just utilizing the old feed, of Wyoming ran some cattle on it at one point and then it wasn’t grazed but the second time there was some green grass. for several years. There were some irrigated meadows and they quit Shanon points out that it would have been beneficial for the plants if irrigating.” It wasn’t very productive and the elk no longer were they hadn’t needed to go through the second time, but the only choices attracted to it as winter range because it was just old dry grass with no were to do that or sell cows. That winter they did buy a little hay. young regrowth. “We’d heard about bale grazing, so we scattered some bales out in the “The local game warden could see what we were doing on our own meadows, giving the cows enough for three days’ feed,” says Scott. “They place, and realized that if they had some cows on their elk winter range CONTINUED ON PAGE 14 N um ber 168
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Creating Profit Holistically
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cleaned up the hay and did very well. Then in 2013 we still had to graze all those pastures because we still didn’t have enough rain. In 2014 we had enough moisture that we could go back to resting one-third of the pastures again. But the great thing about 2014 was that we sold steer calves for more money than we’ve ever done before, and didn’t have to sell our cows. We got through the drought without having to reduce numbers,” he says.
Herd Management
heifers the middle of April. We are still debating amongst ourselves, feeling that maybe we should calve later, from a nutritional standpoint, but then some of the marketing and other priorities get in the way. We have 3,000 acres of irrigated meadow, so whether we are haying it or grazing it, we still have to irrigate it, and it’s tough to irrigate and calve at the same time. We used to start calving about the 10th of March (and the heifers about the middle of February) until we set them back. We now start the heifers the middle of April,” Shanon explains.
Improving Genetics
The cows are a mix of Angus, Gelbvieh and Simmental. “What “We’ve come a long ways in the past 5 years,” says Shanon. “Originally we are shooting for is a half Angus, quarter Gelbvieh and quarter Simmental. I don’t know if we’ll ever get there, but that’s the general we thought that Holistic Management was just something a person did in goal.” This can help optimize heterosis. the summertime up on the hills, grazing the cattle. But now we’ve really “For a couple years we worked with Leachmans when they were embraced it on our whole operation. The best example recently was last still in Montana, and used some of their Stabilizer composites (1/4 Red spring when we had the opportunity to lease the ranch next to us. This doubled our hay meadows and added a little bit of upland grazing. We had Angus, ¼ Hereford, ¼ Gelbvieh, ¼ Simmental). We really liked those cattle, but now we are trying to find a happy medium between the to make a decision regarding how we were going to use this additional philosophy of Kit Pharo (smaller, efficient cattle) and Lee Leachman. We ground if we decided to lease it. I have two children and we knew we want to utilize heterosis but still find needed room to expand, for them, so an efficient, smaller-framed animal,” it was an obvious plus to lease a ranch Shanon says. that was right next door. But we had to “It may seem kind of backward, figure out the best way to use the feed,” using Simmental or Gelbvieh to find he explains. a smaller animal, but with careful “We sat down and went through the selection a person can fine-tune the decision-making process. We’d been genetics to fit their own environment. taking our replacement heifers to a We raise our own bulls because we use feedlot in Torrington, at lower elevation, AI, trying to keep bulls from our most putting them on silage, etc. to develop productive older cows, with an eye them through the winter, and then bring toward longevity and efficiency. We still them back home for the summer to have some bulls that don’t turn out, but graze. We decided that we’d try leaving in the long run we think this will work,” the heifer calves on the cows for the The Sims have been working on their herd genetics, working he says. winter, not weaning them until they are toward a smaller frame animal. Their cows are a mix of Genetics is part of the equation, 10 months old. Our hope is to end up Angus, Gelbvieh and Simmental. selecting animals that will work well with a shorter calving season and better in your own environment. “That’s the cows,” says Shanon. tough part for me, however, because even though I got a degree in The calves learn a lot, that first winter, with their mothers—on how to Animal Science I came home and learned that we made money by range graze, what to graze, etc. “I think the calves are already smarter than the management! I still like to play with the genetics, however, to create a cows are. When we checked on them in late November, they’d look up at hardy cow that can go out and help with the range management.” us with a mouthful of grass and were very happy, though the cows were In the last three years, he says they have kicked the crutch out still looking for us to show up with the hay wagon,” he says. from under their cows. “After we made them do more of their own feed “Another way we are using Holistic Management is hoping to make harvesting, we had some cows show up that were never meant to live hardier cows. We are trying to get our minds wrapped around the fact that here. They are not efficient enough. They look pretty rough, standing a 450-pound calf is worth more than a 550-pound calf—in that there is right next to a cow in condition score 5 or 5.5 that looks great while still more profit in a smaller calf that you’ve put less inputs into.” This is often putting everything she needs into her calf. So we have lots of potential a hard thing for people to realize because ranchers have always been for improvement across the herd,” says Shanon. encouraged to maximize production, and there can be a big difference between production and profit. Using A Holistic Goal “We are really cutting back on the amount of supplemental protein “One thing we have done is to try to increase our stock density,” says we feed. In the past we’d start in mid-November feeding supplemental Scott. “When we first started doing this we had 1 cow-calf pair per acre, protein and the cows would stay on it through winter until green grass and in recent years (especially this summer) we’ve run our stock density in the spring. Now we are using fecal sampling methods (through Texas up to 60,000 pounds per acre, just by moving the cattle more often. The A&M University) to measure the nutritional quality of feed. We use this to cows are more content, doing that. We feel like there is lots of potential monitor our cows’ intake of protein and energy. Hopefully this winter we in herd effect, hoof action, etc.” are not going to be supplementing at all until possibly March, when we Four of the family members (Scott and April, Shanon and Melinda) get into that last trimester. Instead of just throwing a lot of supplement out went through another Holistic Management school at Medicine Bow, there, we are getting a bit more scientific about it,” Shanon says. “The cows are bred to calve the first of May, so we usually start calving as a refresher course. “Then we had Roland Kroos work with us to put 14
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together a holistic goal. Way back, when Olin and I went to the earlier school, we had a three-part holistic goal. We put it together and then showed it to everyone else in the family, and they just said ok, sounds good. We just stuck it in a drawer and thought about it, but it’s not like everyone had ownership in it. So we had Roland come meet with us last year in October 2014 and involve the whole family,” says Scott. “April and I have a daughter, Kendra who is a chiropractor. She practices in Saratoga four days a week, but is still on the ranch helping us otherwise. She does sit in on and participate in our sessions. It was a really worthwhile process to go through this again, to put together a holistic goal that we all feel like we have ownership in,” Scott says. Shanon graduated from college in 2001 and went to work fulltime on the ranch. Then in 2007 he became a partner in the company. “From my perspective there was always a Holistic Management goal that we could read, but it was never really at the forefront when we made decisions,” he says. “It wasn’t necessarily what we were driving toward. Then after sitting down with Roland and having everyone involved in writing that goal it is amazing how often we pull that back out and read through it when we make a decision, to make sure we are on the right track. It gives us guidelines, and ownership. I think all of us feel more ownership when we make a decision because we all understand that we are working toward a common goal,” Shanon says. For awhile, April worked part-time in the oil field because the family didn’t feel they could afford to not have someone working off the ranch. “After leasing the additional ranch, we became profitable enough that she was able to quit that job. She’s now working on the ranch and we are all much happier about that.” In the beginning, April worked on the ranch and hadn’t planned to have an outside job. “Then I broke my neck and wasn’t sure how much I would be able to do, and the oil-field job came open and led into two or three other jobs. After while a person gets used to that extra money to help things along, and starts thinking they can’t afford to not do this. But it was time to quit that job; I am glad to just be working at home,” April says. That was something that Roland helped the family with—planning their profit instead of planning their expenses. “We were able to address those concerns about the income that she was giving up,” says Shanon. “This year we were actually able to plan for a profit plus meet everybody’s personal needs. It’s just a matter of switching the formula; instead of letting the expenses dictate us, we were able to dictate the expenses a little more. I think as we keep practicing this, we will be able to do an even better job of planning our profit,” he says. Many people who go to a Holistic Management school come home and spend thousands of dollars putting in fences and water developments and later find out they didn’t put the fences in the right place. Some of them even went broke doing it. “We just kept adding a few fences every year and found out where the weak links were. One year it might be fences and another year it might be water. We’ve been doing this since 1990 and put in 4 miles of one-wire electric fence this fall. We now have 135 pastures, but a lot of our fences are just one or two wires,” says Scott. The pastures range in size from 5 acres to 2 sections (1280 acres). “Some places we have a lot of flexibility and some places we still have as much as 2 sections to try to work with,” says Shanon. “This year we still had cattle in the uplands in a 2-section pasture in late November. They’d been in there for about 2 weeks and were starting to look a little tough, just because we weren’t moving them fast enough. They’d gone through the good feed and the bad and were down to the ugly. So we had to move them out of there. If that big pasture had been split into 4
different pasture we could probably have spent another 6 or 7 days out there, moving them around it, especially if we hadn’t gotten a foot of snow,” he says. Scott says that when they started managing for what they wanted rather than managing against the things they didn’t want (like broom snakeweed), some of the big challenges went away. “Yes, we still see some broom snakeweed out there once in a while, but it’s just an occasional plant that’s part of the mix; it’s no longer taking over. The larkspur is not as much problem now, either, the way we’ve been grazing. We don’t have very much larkspur anymore because it can’t tolerate heavy grazing. The cattle still eat it, along with everything else, but we don’t have as many problems,” says Scott. The larkspur is actually high in protein and if no one cow loads up on it too much, it’s not so deadly. Cows eat it, and in this kind of program it’s just another forage, especially if they can graze it at the right time when it’s less toxic than at other phases of growth. “In that area we have developed more pastures, where we can really control the grazing on it. Rather than trying to control it with spray, as we did in years past, this is the route we are now taking. You can beat yourself up trying to spray, and that’s what Shanon and I used to do. My dad loved to spray and he was very diligent about it, but we weren’t really making progress. I felt it was a waste of time,” Scott says. Shanon’s wife Melinda feels that the Holistic Management approach has helped their whole family with becoming more flexible. “We have more flexibility in anything that we do now—whether in how we graze a hay meadow or put up hay on it or windrow it. With Holistic Management we have the flexibility to do many different things now, and we are very open minded,” she says. Last summer a group of NRCS scientists visited 5 different ranches in southeast Wyoming and the Sims ranch was one of them. “We took them on a tour around our place and they looked at what we are doing,” says Scott. “There were several people who kind of cornered April and me privately and asked if Allan Savory was for real, and if there is any value to Holistic Management. I am not sure that we can (or that we need to) really prove a lot of the science behind this, but I can say that during the years we’ve been doing what we’re doing, we see real value in it,” he says. “We are seeing a change in the land, seeing the value of grouping cattle and what it can do for the land—not only for profitability but also for the health of the land and the wildlife that live on it. Science or no science, we are going to continue on with what we are doing here.” “Oftentimes the difference between being successful or not is just the people,” says Scott. “We have been very fortunate in our family, going back to my grandparents and my parents, that everyone has been very open-minded and always eager to try different things. We’ve never had any big roadblocks in terms of what we’ve been trying to do, as often happens in families,” Scott says. Shanon adds: “A perfect example of this was back in 2003 when I wanted to start breeding some Simmental into the herd and I was talking to grandpa about it. He said, ‘I don’t agree with what you are doing, but I am not going to stand in your way!’ He was not going to be in the way of my success or my failure—whichever way it turned out.” That willingness and support to let other family members learn and have ownership in developing the ranch has been a hallmark characteristic of the Sims family, one that has served them well over the years as they have learned Holistic Management and put it into practice. Ultimately, the increased flexibility and higher team function that the Sims have developed will only increase their ability to learn and capitalize on new opportunities in the ever-changing landscape of ranching. N um ber 168
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Grazing & Soil Health
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In addition, other research has shown that animals grazing or biting plants will actually stimulate a faster re-growth rate. It almost sounds too good to be true but research demonstrates that proper grazing will actually stimulate greater plant production. You can “eat your grass and have it too,” and it really makes sense because grazing forages and grazing animals have co-evolved and actually depend on one another for existence. So, why don’t most pastures look better than corn fields, or in dry areas, why is the brush doing better than the grass? Those sorry looking pastures you see are the results of poor management of the plant-animal interaction. There is a delicate balance between the plants and the animals and it’s our job to keep that interaction beneficial to both. Here are the three key principles to better soil life via grazing: 1. Put more animals in a smaller space for a shorter period of time. Ideally, animals should move on to new areas before they take a bite from a plant that is trying to regrow. That usually means three days is max in one spot. More animals, smaller paddocks, and less time will get you more uniform and less selective grazing, more hoof action on the soil surface, and a better distribution of the manure and urine. 2. Leave appropriate plant residue. Remember the important role green leaves and photosynthesis plays in feeding the soil life to feed the plants—grass grows grass. You are not “wasting” feed by leaving some residual that feeds the re-growth process, keeps the soil covered to protect it from hard rains and the heat from the sun, and provides carbon for all the soil life below the surface. 3. Provide adequate recovery periods between grazings. Appropriate recovery times allows for root re-growth, the increase in soil life, and for the plant to build reserves. If a grazed plant is not allowed to recover, it gets weaker and weaker, grows less and less, and finally is crowded out by plants that were not grazed. Pastures don’t become “poor and weedy/brushy” all by themselves, our (mis)management makes them that way. If we “invest” in soil health and if we are better grazing managers, we can spend less on inputs to grow our crops, catch and hold more water, and make better use of the most important free input—sunshine. If we can grow more grass, we can feed more livestock or the same livestock for a longer period and use less stored feed. It is critical to understand and appreciate our partners below the soil surface and how to manage our grazing to encourage their assistance. It’s not just healthy soil but healthy soil for healthy plants for healthy livestock for healthy people. We are part of the system. Ben and Denise Bartlett run Log Cabin Livestock in Trenary, Michigan. Ben is a Holistic Management Certified Educator and can be reached at: bartle18@msu.edu.
DEVELOPMENT CORNER 2015-16 Texas Beginning Farmer and Rancher Report
30 farmers and ranchers with an average of 3 years of farming experience participated in the 2015–2016 Beginning Farmers and Ranchers in Texas program. 96% of them graduated from the program. The program was divided into five 2-day sessions. The first session took place in October 2015 at Green Fields Farm, near Temple where participants learned about holistic goal setting, decision testing, and ecosystem health analysis. In November, 2015, participants headed to Montesino Ranch, in Wimberley to learn Grazing Planning and Time Management. The third session, which focused on financial planning took place in December 2015, at Kerr Wildlife Management Area, in Hunt. Session 4 took place in January 2016, where participants headed back to Wimberley, Texas to Red Corral Ranch, to focus on Marketing and Business Planning. The last session took place in February 2016 at Bamberger Ranch, in Johnson City. These last sessions focused on Land Planning, and Leadership and Communication. Here’s what the evaluations showed about the program outcomes:
Key Post-Session Impacts % reporting improvement
Key Impacts Human Resource Satisfaction with Time Management
95%
Satisfaction with Communication
91%
Satisfaction with Quality of Life
86%
Clearer sense of what your farm is managing towards
95%
Better Ability to Determine Resources Available to You
100%
More Efficient Use of Resources
86%
Improved Communications on the Farm
91%
Improved Decision Making
95%
New Policies and Systems Implemented
64%
Better Relationships
91%
Financial Resources Increased Farm Profits
32%
Increased Net Worth
36%
References Defoliation induces root exudation and triggers positive rhizospheric feedbacks in temperate grassland, E. W. Hamilton III, etc., Soil Biology & Biochemistry, 40 (2008) 2865-2873.
Strategies for More Effective Reinvestment in the Business
86%
New or Improved Record Keeping Systems
95% 100%
Compensatory plant growth as a response to herbivory, S. J. McNaughton, OIKOS 40 329- 336, Copenhagen 1983.
Improved Ability to Articulate Goals and Objectives of Business to Others Improved ability to determine most effective enterprises
68%
Enhanced Understanding of Your Farm Finances
82%
NC SARE Farmer and Rancher Grant FNC 14-943
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From the Board Chair BY DANIEL NUCKOLS, PhD
H
olistic Management is directly connected to, and part of, improving the quality of the overall national economy and its natural environment. Unfortunately, such a linkage is not exemplified or measured in the one national statistic meant to gauge human economic welfare. Of course, I am referencing our country’s main calibration of economic prosperity, Gross Domestic Product (GDP). GDP is formally defined as the “total dollar market value of all final goods and services produced in a given time period, usually one year.” The first-year college student of economics can quickly cite the flaws in the measurement: 1) the product or service must be sold in the formal market to be counted—leading the late Nobel Economist Paul Samuelson to quip, “GDP immediately falls when a man marries his maid;” 2) many improvements in, or worsening of, the quality of life or products are also not captured; 3) the issue of poverty and the maldistribution of income is not addressed and; 4) any severe decline in air and water quality is not taken into consideration, nor is the exploitation of finite natural resources, usually meaning oil, gas, and precious metals. Conspicuous in its absence as a listed failing of GDP accounting is soil mineral depletion and soil’s overall erosion. You will not find the topic of soil and land management in the standard mainstream economic principles texts, as was also true with two articles in the April 30th, 2016 Economist publication about the failing of GDP as a measurement of human well-being entitled, two articles entitled, “How to Measure Prosperity” and “The Trouble with GDP.” In essence, the sorts of ecological problems not addressed by mainstream economic discourse—yet treated in HMI literature—are simply not on the table
GRAPEVINE The
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when it comes to GDP accounting. WHY? The easy, yet troubling, answer is that GDP only addresses “growth,” output per capital, ignoring sustainable “development.” Thus, poor traditional industrial land management may create growth opportunities for Monsanto and Cargill—similar to how a crime spree creates more jobs for locksmiths—but does not address how/why the problem came about, and how our quality of life is affected. Fortunately, R.T. Naylor of McGill University, and others, have succinctly articulated an historical narrative that sheds light on more fundamental problems. Quoting Naylor, all human economic activity involves interference with and disruption of surrounding ecosystems, including the “earth system” itself. But for most of human history, political, cultural, and technological constraints together ensured that human demand remained relatively small, compared to the ability to supply resources and manage wastes, while Malthusian disease, limited food supply, war and social strife helped keep global population from increasing too rapidly. Of course, certain land areas did experience cropland and soil erosion, forests devastated, ground water drained, and the most accessible minerals depleted. But as Naylor explains, there was always more “empty” land to replace it. So the negative human impact on various parts of the global ecosystem was marginal, and nature, given enough time, could usually reverse much of the damage. However, the last two hundred years or so have seen three interacting components ensure that this “global ecosystem self-healing process” to be problematic. Naylor recognizes that enormous advances in food supply, sanitation, and medicine have permitted a remarkable growth in population. Second, today’s consumers regard “economic growth” as their birthright, expecting a continual rise in their income, with the corresponding ability to purchase the goods they desire. CONTINUED ON PAGE 21
people programs projects
N E W S F R O M H O L I S T I C M A N AG E M E N T I N T E R N AT I O N A L
In Remembrance of Argo Rust
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Sadly we say good bye to Mr Argo Rust who passed away on March 19, 2016 in Swakopmund, Namibia. Together with a group of similarly minded farmers in Namibia, we walked together on an exciting path. Argo and his brother, Burkart, let us see things, that we didn’t recognize before. Very often simple obvious things. In the late 1970s Argo started offering seminars in Holistic Management. Our conversations were filled with controversy. As an agricultural economist, I had learnt to think only in economic terms. I had never heard of a life goal. Now my thinking and management on the family farm were widely opened up. Argo pulled back the curtain so to speak for my whole life. We looked at the familiar ways differently and then changed them.
At the end of the 1980s, Argo and Burkart spearheaded the formation of the Namibia Centre for Holistic Management in order to more effectively spread the practical experience they had gathered and to address the interest of our new political leaders. At these occasions Argo generously opened up his farm and home. His enthusiasm and efforts for a good cause were infectuous. When we are willing to leave the safe tracks of conditioned thinking and habitual doing, this happens only when we are challenged and convinced by people who we trust. Argo and Burkart achieved this although Argo remained open to new insights and didn’t come with fixed recipes. It is a big joy to me that Argo could still know that the prize of Young Farmer of the Year 2015 went to Judith Isele, arguably Namibia’s most accomplished Holistic Manager. In this way the tree you planted forty years ago, starts to bear fruit. Sincerely, Hans-Peter Luehl N um ber 168
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Land & Livestock 17
Development Corner
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 16
BWF PARTICIPANT BEHAVIOR CHANGE
2015-2016
Forge Relationships That Positively Impacted You
95%
Completed Holistic Goal/Whole Farm Plan
82%
Completed Financial Plan
82%
Completed Land Plan
77%
Completed Biological Monitoring
68%
Completed Grazing Plan (grazers in group)
68%
Completed Business Plan
59%
Completed Marketing Plan
45%
Colorado Whole Farm/Ranch Business Planning Results
HMI’s Whole Farm/Ranch Business Planning Training Colorado course wrapped up in March of 2016 in Montrose. The training classes were taught by Holistic Management Certified Educator Cindy Dvergsten. The class was diversified, with both beginning farmers and 5th generation ranchers attending. Operations were diversified as well, with cowcalf operations, a goat dairy, a quail farm, and a dude ranch just some of the enterprises Class participants had the opportunity run by class participants. to learn from each other as well as Thanks to our the instructor. collaborators Valley Food Partnership, Rocky Mountain Farmers Union, National Young Farmers Coalition, Mountain Roots Food Project, and the Indian Ridge Farm & Bakery. Here are some participant comments: “Every day I appreciate this course even more. I really benefited from learning about budgeting and making financial decisions that honor my values.” “I spent an evening with my 7 and 9 year old sons talking about cows and hay. This is the first time I ever included them in discussions about what is important to them and their perspective of the ranch. We were having so much fun that we went past their bedtime and my wife made us quit.” “My God, what have I been doing all these years? I was just winging it with the marketing. Now I have a business model that will focus on what really works for us and we can let go of marketing that does not provide results.” “This course has helped me put all to pieces together. I realize now that I have more than one market in my business model (as a ranch manager) in that my landlord needs to be considered as a customer”. “Setting the holistic goal and learning how to work with my family will make a big difference in helping me figure out how to keep our ranch in the family.” “Learning about the tools of management and making my tool box inventory is helping me focus on putting time and money into
18 IN PRACTICE
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July / August 2016
the right places.” Here’s some of the outcomes from the series: Outcomes
% of participants
Assessing how time is spent on your farm
100%
Increased ability to use the whole farm goal to guide communication on your farm
100%
Increased ability to develop a written whole farm/ranch goal
100%
More confidence in delineating farm resources for management
100%
Increased ability to define your management team for effective management
94%
Your ability to develop a business model for your farm/ranch 100% Intention to complete or modify a marketing and business plan as a result of today’s session
100%
How to effectively promote your products/services
87%
How to use your financial plan to profitably price your products/services
83%
How to define your target market
80%
Improved skills in developing a whole farm financial plan
100%
Increased ability to assess the cash flow of your plan
100%
Intention to complete or modify a financial plan for your farm
100%
Considered the course to be good or excellent
100%
Increased ability to increase your farm’s rough net worth (balance sheet)
100%
Increased ability to prioritize and cut expenses on your farm
93%
Increased ability to get the profit you need from your farm
87%
Improved skills in developing a whole farm financial plan
100%
Texas Whole Farm/Ranch Business Planning Results
A diverse group of participants attended Holistic Management International’s Whole Farm/Ranch Business Planning Series, which took place January–March 2016 in Henrietta, Texas taught by Holistic Management Certified Educator Peggy Sechrist and Certified Educator Trainee Deborah Clark. Participants are running a diverse selection of enterprises, including cattle, vegetables/produce, sheep, poultry, bees, goats and fruit. Most of the participants had limited exposure to Holistic Business Planning and said they were there to create a working plan for their farm or Instructors Peggy Sechrist and Deborah ranch business. This series gives participants a chance Clark teaching business planning. to work on all aspects of a business plan including whole farm/ranch goal, strategic goals, decision testing, financial plan, marketing strategies, target market analysis, and developing SMART goals for their business plan. Thanks to supporters Henrietta and Clay County Chamber of
Commerce and the Birdwell-Clark Ranch. Overall satisfaction of the course was 100%. Here’s some of the key outcomes from the course: % of respondents
Outcomes Increased ability to integrate social, economic, and environmental factors into your decision making
100%
Increased conflict resolution skills on the farm/ranch
100%
Increased ability to use your whole farm/ranch goal to guide communication on your farm/ranch
100%
Increased ability to develop a whole farm/ranch goal
89%
Improved skills in developing a whole farm financial plan
100%
Increased ability to assess the cash flow of your plan
100%
Increased ability to determine viable profitable enterprises for your farm
91%
Increased ability to get the profit you need from your farm
91%
Your ability to develop a business plan for your farm/ranch
100%
How to use your financial plan to profitably price your products/services
100%
Oklahoma Whole Farm/Ranch Business Planning Results ‘Get Down to Business in Oklahoma,’ part of HMI’s Whole Farm/Ranch Business Planning Series wrapped up this past February. The three 2-day workshops took place at the John E. Kirkpatrick Horticulture Center at OSU– Oklahoma City. Designed to focus on the business side of farming and ranching, students were introduced to a variety of topics, including goal setting,
decision testing, time management, leadership and communication, financial planning, marketing and business plan creation. Certified Educator Tracy Litle was the lead instructor, with assistance provided by Julie Gahn from the Oklahoma Farmers & Rancher Association.
Oregon Whole Farm/ Ranch Land Management Results
24 farmers and ranchers participated in HMI’s Improving Land Productivity series, which ran through March and early April at the Jackson Soil & Water Conservation District in Central Land Management participants learning Point, Oregon. Instructors about how to inventory forage. were Certified Educator Rob Rutherford and Certified Educator trainee, Angela Boudro. These participants, who manage 3546 acres of land, engaged in HMI’s experiential curriculum to learn and experience holistic goal setting, on-farm decision testing, ecosystem analysis, biological monitoring, grazing planning, and land planning. Participants noted 92% satisfaction in the course and instructors. Here’s what the evaluations showed: % of participants
Outcomes
Participants learning how to test decisions toward a holistic goal with instructor Tracy Litle (on left).
Outcomes
% of respondents
Increased ability in creating a whole farm/ranch goal
100%
Increased ability to make complex decisions on your farm as a result of today's class
91%
Increased ability to monitor your farm's/ranch's ecosystem
100%
Increased knowledge in assessing recovery periods
88%
Increased knowledge of how to assess quantity of forage in a pasture
81%
Increased knowledge of how to improve land health with livestock
81%
Increased knowledge of how to determine the number of animals your pasture can support
88%
Intend to change any management practices as a result of this session?
93%
More confidence in developing written whole farm goal
90%
Increased ability to determine your farm’s rough net worth
100%
Increased knowledge of how to prioritize land/infrastructure development/investments
94%
Skill in determining viable profitable enterprises for your farm
100%
Increased knowledge of design strategies that can build resilient, diversified farms
85%
Skill in determining your farm’s projected revenue
100%
Skill in developing a whole farm financial plan
100%
Getting the profit you need from your farm
100%
Increased ability to determine your farm’s rough net worth
100%
Skill in prioritizing and cutting farm expenses to guide reinvestment in your farm
95%
How to write a SWOT analysis for your farm/ranch
100%
Developing a marketing plan that meets your farm needs and goals
100%
Increased ability to develop a business plan for your farm/ ranch
93%
Thanks to our collaborators, Jackson Soil and Water Conservation District and Oregon State University Extension Services.
California Whole Farm/Ranch Land Management Results
HMI’s Whole Farm/Ranch Land Management Course took place in Willits, California at the Grange Farm School in February and March of 2016. Long-time Holistic Management Certified Educator Richard King was the instructor. The classes were attended by a diverse group of land CONTINUED ON PAGE 21
N um ber 168
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Certified
Educators
The following Certified Educators listed have been trained to teach and coach individuals in Holistic Management. On a yearly basis, Certified Educators renew their agreement to be affiliated with HMI. This agreement requires their commitment to practice Holistic Management in their own lives and to seek out opportunities for staying current with the latest developments in Holistic Management.
U N I T E D S TAT E S CALIFORNIA
Lee Altier College of Agriculture, CSU 400 West First St., Chico, CA 95929-0310 laltier@csuchico.edu • 530/636-2525 Owen Hablutzel 4235 W. 63rd St., Los Angeles, CA 90043 310/567-6862 • go2owen@gmail.com Richard King 1675 Adobe Rd., Petaluma, CA 94954 rking1675@gmail.com • 707/217-2308 (c) 707/769-1490 (h) Kelly Mulville P.O. Box 23, Paicines, CA 95043 707/431-8060 • kmulville@gmail.com Donald D. Nelson 11728 Shafer Ave., Red Bluff, CA 96080-8994 208/301-5066 • nelson-don1@hotmail.com Rob Rutherford 4757 Bridgecreek Rd., San Luis Obispo, CA 93401 805/544-5781 (h) • 805/550-4858 (c) robtrutherford@gmail.com
* *
COLORADO
Joel Benson P.O. Box 4924 Buena Vista, CO 81211 719/221-1547 • joel@holisticeffect.com Cindy Dvergsten 17702 County Rd. 23, Dolores, CO 81323 970/882-4222 • 970/739-2445 (c) wnc@gobrainstorm.net Katie Miller 22755 E Garrett Rd, Calhan, CO 80808 970/310-0852 heritagebellefarms@gmail.com
*
Cliff Montagne Montana State University 1105 S. Tracy, Bozeman, MT 59715 406/599-7755 (c) • montagne@montana.edu NEBRASKA Paul Swanson 5155 West 12th St., Hastings, NE 68901 402/463-8507 • 402/705-1241 (c) swanson5155@windstream.net Ralph Tate 1109 Timber Dr., Papillion, NE 68046 402/932-3405 • 402/250-8981 (c) Tater2d2@cox.net NEW HAMPSHIRE Seth Wilner 24 Main Street, Newport, NH 03773 603/863-4497 (h) • 603/863-9200 (w) 603/543-7169 (c) • seth.wilner@unh.edu NEW MEXICO Ann Adams Holistic Management International 5941 Jefferson St. NE, Suite B Albuquerque, NM 87109 • 505/842-5252 anna@holisticmanagement.org Kelly Boney 4865 Quay Rd. L, San Jon, NM 88434 575/268-1162 • Kellyboney_79@yahoo.com
I N T E R N AT I O N A L
*
IOWA
& Erin Wilson *4375Torray Pierce Ave., Paullina, IA 51046-7401
712/260-6398 (Torray) • 563/419-3142 (Erin) torray@gmail.com • wilsonee3@gmail.com KANSAS Bill Casey 13835 Udall Rd., Erie, KS 66733 620/423-2842 • bill.caseyag@gmail.com MAINE Vivianne Holmes 239 E Buckfield Rd., Buckfield, ME 04220-4209 207/336-2484 • vholmes@maine.edu
*
MICHIGAN Larry Dyer 1113 Klondike Ave, Petoskey, MI 49770 231/347-7162 (h) • 231/881-2784 (c) ldyer3913@gmail.com MISSISSIPPI Preston Sullivan 610 Ed Sullivan Lane NE, Meadville, MS 39653 prestons@telepak.net 601/384-5310 (h) • 601/835-6124 (c)
*
MONTANA
Roland Kroos 4926 Itana Circle, Bozeman, MT 59715 406/522-3862 • 406/581-3038 (c) kroosing@msn.com
20 IN PRACTICE
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AUSTRAILIA
Judi Earl “Glen Orton” 3843 Warialda Rd. Coolatai, NSW 2402 +61 409 151 969 (c) • judi_earl@bigpond.com Graeme Hand 150 Caroona Lane, Branxholme, VIC 3302 61-3-5578-6272 (h), 61-4-1853-2130 (c) graeme.hand@bigpond.com Dick Richardson “Spring Valley,” 165 Ironbark Lane Frogmore, Boorowa NSW 2586 61-0-429069001 (w) • 61-0-263856224 (h) dick@dickrichardson.com.au Jason Virtue P.O. Box 75 Cooran QLD 4569 61-0-754851997 • jason@spiderweb.com.au Brian Wehlburg Pine Scrub Creek, Kindee, NSW 2446 61-2-6587-4353 (h) • 61 04087 404 431 (c) brian@insideoutsidemgt.com.au CANADA Don Campbell Box 817 Meadow Lake, SK S0X 1Y6 306/236-6088 • 320/240-7660 (c) doncampbell@sasktel.net Ralph Corcoran Box 36, Langbank, SK S0G 2X0 306/532-4778 rlcorcoran@sasktel.net Allison Guichon Box 10, Quilchena, BC V0E 2R0 250/378-9734 • allisonguichon@gmail.com
*
July / August 2016
Kirk Gadzia P.O. Box 1100, Bernalillo, NM 87004 505/263-8677 (c) • kirk@rmsgadzia.com Jeff Goebel 1033 N. Gabaldon Rd., Belen, NM 87002 541/610-7084 • goebel@aboutlistening.com Kathy Harris Holistic Management International 5941 Jefferson St. NE, Suite B Albuquerque, NM 87109 505/842-5252 • kathyh@holisticmanagement.org NEBRASKA Craig Leggett 6143 SR 9, Chestertown, NY 12817 518/494-2324 (h) • 970/946-1771 (c) craigrleggett@gmail.com Erica Frenay Shelterbelt Farm 200 Creamery Rd., Brooktondale, NY 14817 607/539-6512 (h) • 607/342-3771 (c) info@shelterbeltfarm.com Elizabeth Marks 1024 State Rt. 66, Ghent, NY 12075 518/828-4385 x107 (w) • 518/567-9476 (c) Elizabeth.marks@ny.usda.gov Phillip Metzger 120 Thompson Creek Rd., Norwich, NY 13815 607/334-2407 (h) • pmetzger17@gmail.com
*
NORTH DAKOTA Joshua Dukart 2539 Clover Place, Bismarck, ND 58503 701/870-1184 • Joshua_dukart@yahoo.com SOUTH DAKOTA Randal Holmquist 4870 Cliff Drive, Rapid City, SD 57702 605/730-0550 • randy@zhvalley.com
*
associate educators provide * These educational services to their communities and peer groups.
Blain Hjertaas Box 760, Redvers, Saskatchewan SOC 2HO 306/452-3882 • bhjer@sasktel.net Brian Luce RR #4, Ponoka, AB T4J 1R4 403/783-6518 • lucends@cciwireless.ca Noel McNaughton 5704-144 St NW, Edmonton, AB T6H 4H4 780/432-5492; noel@mcnaughton.ca Tony McQuail 86016 Creek Line, RR#1, Lucknow, ON N0G 2H0 519/528-2493 • mcqufarm@hurontel.on.ca Len Pigott Box 222, Dysart, SK, SOH 1HO 306/432-4583 • JLPigott@sasktel.net Kelly Sidoryk Box 72, Blackroot, A B TOB OLO 780/872-9761 (h) • 780/875-4418 (w) 780/872-2585 (c) • sidorykk@yahoo.ca
* *
KENYA Christine C. Jost ICRAF, Box 30677, Nairobi 00100 254-736-715-417 (c) • c.jost@cgiar.org MEXICO Iván Aurelio Aguirre Ibarra Pitiquito, Sonora 662-3210951 (c), 622-1231168 (h) rancholainmaculada@gmail.com NAMBIA Wiebke Volkmann P. O . Box 9285, Windhoek 264-61-225183 or 264-81-127-0081 wiebke@afol.com.na
TEXAS Lisa Bellows North Central Texas College 1525 W. California St., Gainesville, TX 76240-4636 940/736-3996 (c) • 940/668-7731 ext. 4346 (o) lbellows@nctc.edu Guy Glosson 6717 Hwy. 380, Snyder, TX 79549 806/237-2554 • glosson@caprock-spur.com Tracy Litle 1277 S CR 305, Orange Grove, TX 78372 361/537-3417 (c) • tjlitle@hotmail.com Peggy Maddox 9460 East FM 1606, Hermleigh, TX 79526 325/226-3042 (c) • westgift@hughes.net Katherine Napper Ottmers 313 Lytle Street, Kerrville, TX 78028 830/896-1474 • katherineottmers@icloud.com Peggy Sechrist 106 Thunderbird Ranch Road Fredericksburg, TX 78624 830/456-5587 (c) peggysechrist@gmail.com
*
*
WISCONSIN Heather Flashinski 16294 250th Street, Cadott, WI 54727 715/289-4896 (w) • 715/379-3742 (c) grassheather@hotmail.com Larry Johnson W886 State Rd. 92, Brooklyn, WI 53521-9102 608/455-1685 • 608/957-2935 (c) larrystillpointfarm@gmail.com Laura Paine N893 Kranz Rd. Columbus, WI 53925 920/623-4407 (h) • 608/338-9039 (c) lkpaine@gmail.com
*
*
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. Usiel Seuakouje Kandjii P. O . Box 23319, Windhoek 9000 264-812840426 (c) 264-61-244028 (h) kandjiiu@gmail.com NEW ZEALAND John King P. O. Box 12011, Beckenha, Christchurch 8242 64-276-737-885 • john@succession.co.nz
*
SOUTH AFRICA Sheldon Barnes P. O. Box 300, Kimberley 8300 +27-82-948-2585 (c) barnesfarm@mweb.co.za Wayne Knight Solar Addicts, P.O. Box 537, Mokopane, 0600 South Africa 27-0-15-491-5286 +27-87-550-0255 (h) • +27-82-805-3274 (c) wayne@theknights.za.net Jozua Lambrechts PO Box 5070, Helderberg, Somerset West, 7135 +27-0-21 -851 5669 +27-0-08-310-1940 Ian Mitchell-Innes 14 Chevril Road, Ladysmith, 3370 +27-83-262-9030 ian@mitchell-innes.co.za UNITED KINGDOM Philip Bubb 32 Dart Close, St. Ives, Cambridge, PE27 3JB 44-1480-496-2925 (h) +44 7837 405483 (w) pjbubb99@gmail.com
*
From the Board Chair
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 17
Third, technological inventions and innovations have shifted energy foundations from a renewable solar flow to a finite fossil-fuel stock. Naylor rightfully claims that these three factors now threaten the biosphere, through climate disruption, depletion of the ozone layer, and biodiversity loss that obliterates many food webs and weakens surviving species. Moreover, the use of toxic, carcinogenic, mutagenic pollutants and the evolution of super-pests are beginning to resist restorative human technological responses. For those of us who believe in a Holistic Management approach to land stewardship, any continued intense use, and heavy reliance upon, the same mental constructs, technologies and institutions that brought forth this malaise, will only make it more difficult to chart a different path. Thankfully, such a viable path is now being addressed through holistic land stewardship and the discipline ecological economics—not to be confused with environmental economics, a field that has fundamentally ignored how a market economy is connected with the biosphere and its feedback loops. Ecological economics, by contrast, fuses ecology with economics to study and gauge how natural ecosystems support economic systems. The distinction between these two fields in economics is important and calls for further comment, which I hope to provide in my next IN PRACTICE column.
Development Corner
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 19
managers, with 52% cattle raisers, followed by chickens (38%), pigs (24%) sheep (34%) and goats (34%) rounding out the livestock. 38% of class participants grew vegetables, 21 percent fruit, and 10 percent flowers. Participants were fully engaged during The series of the land planning class. workshops included an Introduction to the Holistic Management framework for decision-making, Biological Monitoring, Planned Grazing, and Land Planning. In the end, the participants learned a great deal about managing their own unique situations with more ease, so that they could become more successful. Thanks to the Christiano Family Fund and the 11th Hour for their support of this program and to our collaborators the Grange Farm School, the Farmer’s Guild, and the Mendocino Resource Conservation District.
THE MARKETPLACE
ral Services, Inc.
E? R U T S A P E S N E D NUTRIENT
KINSEY Agricultu
How many animals truly receive feed that has been grown with correct nutrients added to the soil? 95+% of all pasture and hay soils we test do not have the fertility required to provide the animals that eat it with even close to good nutrition. What about yours? You can only manage what you correctly measure. Soil test as soon as conditions permit to add lime or other needed nutrients for pasture and hay crops.
Soil test as soon as conditions permit to add lime or other needed nutrients for pasture and hay crops.
For consulting or educational services contact:
Kinsey Agricultural Services, Inc. 297 County Highway 357 Charleston, Missouri 63834
Ph: 573/683-3880, Fax: 573/683-6227 www.kinseyag.com • info@kinseyag.com
10% off all soil analyses Use “IP16” code when completing soil form
Good until July 15, 2016 N um ber 168
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T H E M A R K E TT PP LL AA CC EE
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Great Visual Barrier
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80 0 -52 7-0 9 90
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CORRAL CORRAL DESIGNS DESIGNS
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How can RMS, LLC help you? On-Site Consulting: All aspects of holistic management, including financial, ecological and human resources. Training Events: Regularly scheduled and customized training sessions provided in a variety of locations. Ongoing Support: Follow-up training sessions and access to continued learning opportunities and developments. Land Health Monitoring: Biological monitoring of rangeland and riparian ecosystem health. Property Assessment: Land health and productivity assessment with recommended solutions.
22 IN INPRACTICE PRACTICE 22
h
May/ /August June 2016 July 2016
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Learn how how good good stockmanship stockmanship can can make Learn make your livestock handling experiences your livestock handling experiences enjoyable, easier, and more profitable and how livestock livestock marketing marketing based based on on today’s how today’s price (no crystal ball) can help you price (no crystal ball) can help you realize realize your profit goals. Join us: August 4 - 6 — Sheridan, WY May 25-26 — 2 Day Stockmanship September 12 - 15 — Exira, IA only, Dickinson, ND "My son and I sorted, loaded and delivered 33 May calves 30-June 1 —Brian 3 Day feeder Saturday. saidMarketing/ we should send Stockmanship, Wawota, SKhandle you guys a Thank You Note each time we cattle. This was the smoothest and easiest it’s Coming also to Alberta, Wyoming, ever gone. Price was good too. The only people and Iowa! who don’t like this method are the folks who have never taken the time to learn and try." — Ben www.handnhandlivestocksolutions.com www.handnhandlivestocksolutions.com info@handnhandlivestocksolutions.com info@handnhandlivestocksolutions.com 417-327-6500
THE MARKETPLACE
Larry Dyer
HMI 2016 GATHERING
Ecological Agriculture Consulting
Helping farms and communities through the holistic lens of an ecologist Educational Programs Group Process Facilitation • Group and Individual Consultation • •
PAICINES, CALIFORNIA OCTOBER 14-16, 2016
Specializing in: • Organic vegetable production • Season extension • Passive solar greenhouse management • Local food systems • Whole Farm Planning with Holistic Management® 1113 Klondike Ave., Petoskey, MI 49770 231-347-7162 • 231-881-2784 (cell) ldyer3913@gmail.com
KIDS ON THE LAND
Kids On the Land is a unique STEM environmental program designed to teach children about the region where they live, connecting them to the land and a more sustainable future. Kids On the Land, Executive Director, Peggy Maddox, along with Board Chair, Katherine Dickson, were named Conservation Teachers of the Year by the Soil and Water Conservation Districts of Texas.
Kids On the Land is ready for an appearance in your school district. Peggy Maddox can come help your host landowner and school get started. • Make a donation • Offer your land as a site for a KOL program • Become a volunteer Executive Director – Peggy Maddox 325/226-3042 peggy@kidsontheland.org http://kidsontheland.org
On the ground learning with a community of inspired, passionate land stewards. Registration now open!
SPEAKERS WILL INCLUDE: • Greg Judy • Brock Dolman • Owen Hablutzel • Richard Wiswall • Paul Kaiser • Jessica Prentice • Charlotte Smith • Dr. Thomas Cowan • Rebecca Burgess • Kelly Mulville • Joe and Julie Morris • Tina Williams • Allen Williams • Leslie Dorrance • Judi Earl
You value sustainability...
...you’ll find value in our deep roots
Rocky Mountain Farmers Union has been working for farmers and ranchers since 1907, focusing on educational programs, creating cooperatives, and securing legislative actions. Our Cooperative Development Center dedicates itself to building local economies. We’re here for you.
rmfu.org • susann.mikkelson@rmfu.org N um ber 168
h IN PRACTICE 23
Nonprofit U.S POSTAGE
PAID Jefferson City, MO PERMIT 210
a publication of Holistic Management InInternational 5941 Jefferson St. NE, Suite B Albuquerque, NM 87109 USA return service requested
please send address corrections before moving so that we do not incur unnecessary postal fees
“ My support of HMI began in 2002 because there are few ways one can invest in an organization focused on the vitality of the land. That land is central to healthy food, and to the lives of people just like you and me in every community. It turns out everything we care about in a thriving world goes back to that land. Is it any wonder I continue my support including through my estate?” — Ron Chapman
How Donating Now Can Benefit You THANK YOU TO ALL OUR SUPPORTERS! Your ongoing commitment to supporting HMI’s mission has allowed us to continue educating people and helping communities by teaching them regenerative agricultural practices that promote healthy land. Your continued support of HMI has provided us with the opportunity to educate farmers and ranchers in communities across the United States and around the world. But what if your donation could go even further? What if your donation could help to ensure that the next generation, and those after, can continue to experience the benefits of healthy soil, nutrient-dense food, and a cleaner environment? And what if that donation provided you with a long list of benefits as well? Today, it’s easier than ever to join supporters like Ron (above) in providing HMI with a charitable contribution through your estate. By making a gift of appreciated securities, surplus life insurance, or even real estate, you can experience some of the following benefits: • You can make a gift of appreciated securities – and realize greater tax savings in the process
• You can make a gift that will cost nothing during your lifetime and
will last forever
• You can make a gift that will pay you income
for life
• You can preserve your estate and also deliver years of income
that will continue to help support our mission to educate people in regenerative agriculture • You can donate you house, take a tax deduction, and continue to live in that same house at no cost • You can turn surplus life insurance policies into a significant gift If you’re interested in hearing more about HMI’s estate giving options or want simple wiring instructions for your stock brocker, please contact Kelly Curtis at 505/842-5252 x 107 or kellyc@ holisticmanagement.org. Your support is appreciated by our organization today, and by the millions of folks that will enjoy healthy soil, nutrient-dense food, and a cleaner environment for decades to come. Won’t you help us make that possible?
How It Works Your gift of appreciated investments to HMI increases the impact of your dollars, helping your money heal more land, produce more healthy food and cultivate even healthier communities! Securities gift with a basis of $10,000
Securities gift with a basis of $10,000
Value of gift
10,000
Cost at time of purchase
10,000
Tax-deductible amount
10,000
Appreciated value at time of transfer to HMI
20,000
Impact dollars of your gift
10,000
Tax-deductible gift amount
20,000
Impact dollars of your original $10,000 investment
20,000!
Cash gift of $10,000
By donating appreciated securities rather than a cash gift, this donor’s original $10,000 investment has substantially increased the impact of their dollars—even doubling it!
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