‘Cattle are the key’

racHel leaTHe PHOTOs, bOzeman Daily cHrOnicle Alex Blake gives a tour of a pasture on Aug. 11, 2022, on his ranch near Big Timber. Blake is working with Western Sustainability Exchange and Native Energy to implement more high intensity, short duration grazing practices into his ranching habits in order to sequester more carbon in the soil.

‘Cattle are the key’

Some Montana ranchers turn to regenerative grazing to capture more carbon

By ISABEL HICKS BozEmAN CHroNICLE

BIG TIMBER — Kevin Halverson, a longtime rancher in Sweet Grass County, walked through two of his cattle pastures on a hot August morning, looking out at the jagged Crazy Mountains on the horizon.

One pasture, grazed by his cattle last winter, had sprawling green vegetation creeping up Halverson ’ s shins. The other pasture was in a lengthy rest period, where native grasses touched his hips and danced in the early August breeze.

The two landscapes showcased Halverson ’ s new grazing plan: moving cattle frequently between small pastures, allowing grazed pasture long periods of rest, and grazing year round, even in the winter.

What Halverson is doing on his land is called regenerative grazing, and it ’ s part of a larger movement to restore soil health and make grasslands more productive. Based on how Indigenous people grazed herds for centuries, regenerative agriculture aims to work with nature and the grassland ecosystem, rather than against it.

By making soil healthier, the land is better able to capture carbon from the atmosphere and sequester it in the ground — and now regenerative ranchers in Montana can get paid for that.

Halverson ’ s ranch is part of a regenerative grazing program facilitated by Western Sustainability Exchange (WSE) and Native Energy. The program pays ranchers for the carbon they sequester in the soil through changing their grazing practices, and its popularity has only grown over the past five years.

As production costs soar, drought persists, and ranchers find it increasingly difficult to stay in the business, the program provides an additional income stream for Montana ranchers just trying to make ends meet — so long as they can swing the changes to their ranch and have faith the carbon market will stick around.

Improving the roots

Cows are selective grazers — that means when they ’ re put into a large enough pasture, they ’ re only going to eat the grasses and native foliage that taste best to them. They ’ll keep coming back to the same tasty chompeddown plant, never affording it time to regrow properly. Eventually overgrazing shrinks the roots and erodes the soil.

But when cows graze a small pasture for a short period, they ’ll eat every type of plant. Then, when the pasture is left to rest — often for months or a full year — more grasses will accumulate on the land over time.

That ’ s because when cows are moved frequently, they ’ll eat the vegetation to a partial level, rather than to the ground. They ’ll lightly disturb the soil with their hooves, which

Kevin Halverson walks through a pasture on leased land Aug. 11, 2022. He is checking on a water project he completed last fall. The smaller pastures require additional places for cattle to get water.

Page 16 - Agriculture Magazine, Fall, 2022 mixes their urine and manure into the topsoil, helping improve soil fertility. They ’ll also stomp weeds and grasses down, which adds organic matter to the soil.

Once they move to a new spot, the original pasture is still covered with vegetation, the root systems in the soil are left undisturbed, and the soil can retain more moisture. That will promote much more plant growth than an overgrazed, barren pasture with short root systems. More grass means a rancher is less dependent on hay. It also means more photosynthesis, where plants suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and into the soil.

That sequestered carbon is worth a certain amount of money, which can be paid to the rancher and then sold to a business as a carbon offset.

A carbon offset is a credit people receive for reducing carbon dioxide emissions, a greenhouse gas scientists say contributes to climate change.

As more businesses start to prioritize sustainability and try to cut their emissions — like Patagonia, Ben & Jerry ’ s, and Clif Bar, to name a few — they sometimes find themselves unable to meet their emission reduction goals. That ’ s where offsets come in. By paying for projects that reduce emissions elsewhere, like the regenerative ranching program, businesses can apply those emissions reductions to their own operations. It ’ s a voluntary, market-based strategy for businesses to address their impacts on the planet.

Key to carbon storage

WSE, based in Livingston, has been around for almost 30 years. Its mission is to preserve open space by keeping ranchers in business, said Holly Stoltz, WSE spokesperson.

“Ranching has to stay profitable to stay around, ” Stoltz said.

In 2017, WSE partnered with Native Energy, a company based in Vermont that sells carbon offsets to businesses, to start the Grasslands Regenerative Grazing Project. According to Stoltz, Native Energy picked Montana for their offset program because they felt this region could sequester the most carbon, based on the expansive grasslands and soil quality.

Alex Blake, the regenerative ranch program manager for WSE, was one of the first ranchers in the grasslands program. He has a ranch and tree nursery near Big Timber.

Blake had been wanting to transition to regenerative grazing for a while, and the program made it much quicker and more financially feasible for him, he said.

He said his ranch still needs the same amount of labor, they just do a different kind of work.

Blake ’ s goal is to increase native grass production and not feed his cattle any hay, instead having them graze on grass and native range year round. He still buys some hay in the winter, in case there ’ s so much snow his cows can ’ t graze, but is largely trying to move away from costs of machinery, putting up hay and the labor it requires.

While the ranch doesn ’ t cut and bale as much hay as it used to, it moves the cattle between pastures more, Blake said. In the summer, Blake often moves the cattle daily. In the winter, it will be about once a week.

Blake also started slowly moving back the ranch’ s calving date — when cows give birth — about 10 years ago. Ranchers typically calve around February, but now Blake calves in May and June.

When calves are born in the winter, they need to be fed a lot more hay compared to calves born closer to the summer grazing period. They also can be more susceptible to illness because of the colder weather, Blake said.

Calves born in the spring may not be as big as their winter counterparts, or will just take longer to get to their full size. Blake lost a few cattle the first few years he shifted the calving date, but said the change is not as difficult as he thought it would be.

“It ’ s exciting to be part of the program, ” Blake said. “There were some unknowns going into it, but now we have a clear path forward — which is exciting, because we believe in the program and want to be a part of it. ”

Four Montana ranches, including Blake ’ s, signed up to be part of the grasslands program in 2018 — bringing 35,000 acres under regenerative grazing management. Another ranch

Kevin Halverson walks along a road that divides recently grazed foliage from ungrazed on Aug. 11, 2022. Halverson is working with Western Sustainability Exchange and Native Energy to implement more high intensity, short duration grazing practices into his ranching habits in order to sequester more carbon in the soil.

just joined the program last year. The participating ranches so far are in Big Timber, Turner, Roundup, and Jordan.

A UC Davis study from 2018 found that grasslands store more carbon than rainforests in a changing climate. While grasslands sequester carbon underground, forests store it in trees and leaves — so when the landscape is hit by a wildfire or drought, much of the carbon is released back into the atmosphere. Grasslands, on the other hand, can keep it in the ground despite inclement weather. They are an often overlooked, yet deeply important, part of addressing climate change, Stoltz said — and cattle and other herd animals play a huge role in keeping grasslands healthy.

“Cattle are the key, in a lot of ways, to addressing climate change, ” Stoltz said.

Validation

This July, the grasslands program got third-party validation from the company Verra. That means Verra vetted the program ’ s structure and modeled how much carbon could potentially be sequestered. The validation means carbon credits can start being issued to ranchers in the program based on the models.

So far, the five ranches in the program have only received payments for infrastructure they need for regenerative grazing. It will take another year or two for them to start receiving money for their sequestered carbon, said Chris Mehus, program director for WSE. The timeline is still a little up in the air.

That ’ s because WSE still needs to take soil samples from the ranches to compare to the baseline ones they took in 2018, Mehus said. It takes about five years for carbon content in the soil to change enough to be measured.

By comparing the two samples, they ’ll be able to tell exactly how much the soil carbon content increased. Once they have those results, the program will receive verification from Verra, the final step in the third-party vetting process.

Dozens more ranches are interested in joining the program now that it ’ s validated, Mehus said.

The validation is a big deal. It provides ranchers interested in the program confidence that it ’ s here to stay.

Several ranchers, including Halverson, were part of the Chicago Climate Exchange, a carbon offset program that shut down in 2010 due to inactivity in the U.S. carbon markets.

Jay Bodner, executive vice president of the Montana Stockgrowers Association, said ranchers are more optimistic the carbon market will stick around this time, now that more national and international businesses are participating. Before, the carbon market was mostly government-run, based on Obama-era cap-and-trade legislation. But with partisan gridlock on energy policy it faded into the background.

The carbon market is still developing today, Bodner said. It ’ s not yet a reliable income source for ranchers. Ranchers have to ask themselves if there is enough value to be gained from offsets given the changes to their operation they ’d need to make.

As the market continues to develop,

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Clouds float over Kevin Halverson’s winter pasture on Aug. 11, 2022. Lack of moisture and an abundance of grasshoppers has reduced the amount of available grass by half.

carbon credit prices might increase. Many ranchers are waiting to revisit the decision a few years later once the market is more developed, Bodner said.

“But it ’ s good that some members are getting in early and getting their feet wet, ” Bodner said.

Growth period

Following the announcement of the program ’ s validation, Mehus said they added 250,000 acres to the application pipeline. Seven ranches are nearing contracts, which will add 180,000 acres to the project.

Several new companies have purchased offsets from Native Energy following the validation, Mehus added.

“The program is in a really exciting period of growth and opportunity right now, ” Mehus said.

Ranchers involved in the program sign a 30-year contract with Native Energy.

Mehus said ranchers must be willing to “ significantly ” improve their grazing practices to be part of the program. “You can ’ t get paid for doing what you ’ ve already been doing, ” he said.

But changing grazing practices has a huge cost barrier for many ranches. They need electric fencing and new water infrastructure to make the changes the program asks for.

That ’ s why Native Energy funds the HelpBuild program, a subset of the grasslands program that gives money to ranchers up front to make the changes.

The HelpBuild program helps ranchers with the transition to regenerative grazing by paying upfront for the new infrastructure they need, like electric fencing to make smaller pastures and wells and water tanks to bring water to dry areas.

For Halverson, that money has paid for electric fencing and six new 15,000-gallon water tanks so far, and underground piping that carries water from springs to the tank.

Because the cattle are in tight quarters compared to one bigger pasture, each pasture they graze needs a water source, Halverson said.

The new infrastructure is a longterm investment to Halverson. He isn ’ t expecting to see the payoff right away. But he knows regenerative management will leave the land in better shape for his son.

“Most ranchers are going to try to protect what they have, because it just gets poorer and poorer as life goes on, ” Halverson said.

Halverson said he ’ s always looking for ways to improve his land and his cash flow, and this program checked both those boxes.

“Carbon credits help us do the work we want to while also adding an income stream, ” he said. AG