(The following is from my monthly newsletter. This series began in March 2022 and has continued for nearly a year, with its final installment in February 2023. Below is the “better” edited version I originally emailed to my followers.)
In my quest to find topics for this monthly newsletter (and believe me, there are MANY to choose from!), I had a bit of a brainwave and created a series on regenerative grazing that, at least for now, you’ll only find here.
The idea came from a presentation I gave a few weeks ago up north in Savanna, Alberta, Canada (which is about 90 miles [150 km] from Grande Prairie, Alberta, Canada), where I talked for about an hour and a half on the principles behind regenerative grazing. The Peace Country Beef & Forage Association organized the event in partnership with my friend Steve Kenyon of Greener Pastures Ranching out of Busby, Alberta. I must say, I was representing Battle River Research Group more than Praise the Ruminant, but no matter!
So, I figured, why not discuss it a bit here every month? I think (or at least hope) that you folks may find it informative and maybe a little entertaining, too!
For this particular newsletter, I’ll discuss “what is regenerative grazing” and only mention the grazing objectives and tools associated with it. Next month and each month after that (until I run out of topics on this particular subject), I will discuss each objective, followed by each tool. There are five objectives and five tools to discuss, and lots of details in between!
What is “Regenerative Grazing?”
I’ve probably discussed this before in previous newsletters, but I don’t think I ever gave much of a sound definition. You’ve undoubtedly heard plenty about regenerative agriculture or grazing but have probably asked yourself, “Okay, but what is it?”
Here’s my definition, and I have two of them.
- Practice that, among other benefits, captures carbon and improves the water cycle by rebuilding soil organic matter and restoring degraded soil biodiversity.
- Leverages the power of photosynthesis of plants to close the carbon cycle loop and build soil health, crop resilience and nutrient cycling.
Why Regenerative Grazing, Then?
Here, I can’t limit ourselves to grazing; regenerative also includes farming practices. Why regenerative agriculture is needed has much to do with what Darren Qualman discovered and wrote about back in 2017 regarding how much income goes to farmers versus agribusinesses. The level of income producers have acquired over the years has declined, and a huge portion has gone toward agribusinesses. (Blue is the agribusiness portion, green is net positive farm income, and red is net negative farm income.)
The reasons aren’t that “farmers are fools and got themselves into this mess.” No, and as someone who grew up on a farm, I know that’s not the case. My dad wasn’t the kind of person to get fooled into some BS snake oil salesman crap.
But the “why” is how agribusinesses were (and still are) able to create the trap of making themselves the sole means of purchasing and using all sorts of farming inputs for farmers. These include farm machinery, fertilizers, pesticides, crop insurance, etc.
The trap starts with creating a sense of expertise and knowledge in how to grow the best crops that farmers needed to listen to, a bit of a top-down knowledge-is-power mentality that agronomists held. To make sure they weren’t just pissing in the wind, so to speak, the use of demonstration crop plots to show farmers they knew what they were talking about was needed and kept up every year. Next is the “agronomist” salesman tactics to get producers to part with their hard-earned money and buy this “unique” concoction of chemical or blend of fertilizer to grow their particular crop, formulated to meet the needs of the plants and to kill those pesky, yield-compromising weeds. Or switch to this best-performing high-tech seed to create greater profit.
To say that the information they sold was biased is an understatement.
How they seal the deal and give a money-back guarantee is the promise—and often the delivery of that promise—that I just mentioned: to create greater profits. All for the sake of creating greater efficiency.
Our obsession with higher efficiency is not creating the desired whole that is more significant than the sum of the parts. Instead, the sum is less than all the parts put together. Not only that, but it’s also a matter of the ends not justifying the means. By that, I mean the most efficient machinery and the use of precision agriculture do not tell us anything about the efficiency of our food system, not when we’re throwing away almost half the food we’re supposed to eat. In the case of grazing and raising animals for food and fibre, the best genetics for high gains and carcass quality and quality wool (means) don’t justify the ends of how we’re taking care of the land and not managing our pastures to their optimal capacity. I hope that makes sense!
As a result, all producers (not just crop farmers) suffer from it. The graph above, taken from Stats Canada, tells the whole story.
So, how best to fix this problem?
The solution lies both under our feet. But, in my professional opinion, it’s actually right between our ears…
It will take what’s between our ears to help us see differently how what’s beneath our feet can help us!
Seeing Differently: Plants Build Soil
Nature has much to teach us! As do plants!
Common is the prevailing belief that soil grows plants. Add a certain amount of these types of nutrients (usually nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), and sulphur (S)) when sowing your seeds, add water (H2O), and guarantee your plants will grow!
Well, hang on a minute. What’s the elemental makeup of plants themselves?
The answer is that it’s not primarily a combination of N, P, K, S, H, and O. No, it’s Carbon (C).
I even looked it up myself. The diagram below is from The Nature & Properties of Soil (15th ed.) by Weil & Brady.
Plants comprise 42% Carbon, then 42% Oxygen, and only 8% Hydrogen. The rest (N, P, K, S) and other minerals are nearly insignificant.
Where do plants get carbon from?
The air, of course. Same with O (oxygen) and H (hydrogen).
Water, of course, is pulled up from the roots.
But carbon!! Wowzers!!
This simply means that what plants capture via photosynthesis and merely exist, they put back in the soil when they die and decompose.
But why doesn’t modern agriculture acknowledge this?
Nature vs. Nurture
Because agribusinesses don’t want producers to secure a life of financial, social, and ecological security from nature or use soil microbes as their primary employees, the narrative that soil is nothing more than a growing medium used to grow plants is continuously pushed because it means inputs must be purchased and then put down for plants to grow. Doing so replaces the soil microbes as employees and makes the seed/chemical/fertilizer company agronomist the primary hired “employee” to provide nutrients for your plants instead.
The other reason is that we’ve ignored nature for so long! Nature has never needed synthetic inputs to grow plants. And yet, we’ve been taught that “plants need nutrients from the soil to grow.” (Yes, I was taught this same thing in school.) When we start asking how plants grow without human-made inputs, the old school of thought can’t exactly answer it.
The reality is that we’re only telling a small part of the story. A big chunk is missing, and that is how soil microbes are the primary drivers of how plants get nutrients from the soil. This has been happening for EONS, long before humans even thought about agriculture, learned about the Law of the Minimum, or figured out how to turn ammonium nitrate from a weapon of war to fertilizer for wheat.
I like to call it BUBBA or the Biological Underground Bartering Biomass Association. (I do hope that quip catches on…)
How does this translate toward regenerative grazing?
In my professional career, I’ve seen (and will admit, I have given advice) folks who believe their pastures will perform better if they apply fertilizers or chemicals to kill off these weeds. Often, the results are satisfactory, but only in the short term. The long term is more costly and concerning from multiple standpoints. Weeds always return, pasture fertility declines over the year, and inputs must be purchased and applied again to feel satisfied that something was done to increase productivity.
And yet, the management of those pastures remains unchanged.
Regenerative grazing, then, is not only a plea and a message to change the way we view how plants get their nutrients or how the soil is a living, breathing skin of the Earth. It’s also a call for a change in how we manage our landscapes using livestock. Without changing the management, we won’t heal the earth or ourselves. We won’t be more resilient in the face of an ever-changing climate; we won’t be able to capture carbon; we won’t be increasing biodiversity, building soil, or putting more money in our pockets versus the agribusinesses.
Instead, we’ll continue doing the same thing year after year, hoping for a different result each time.
The solution isn’t to eliminate animals entirely, as some “special interest” groups try to tell us to do to be more “green” and “help save the planet.” Sorry; we actually need these animals and a lot more of them, not less and less.
We need these animals to help us manage the plants to help us build more soil.
Just how are animals going to help us? I’ll give you a hint. It’s not just their mouths. Or hooves.
It’s also by this, and an essential tool, indeed:
The Grazing Objectives & Tools I Will Discuss:
As mentioned above, I will cover these five grazing objectives:
- Know Your Context: Your Triple Bottom Line (April 2022)
- Effective vs. Noneffective Water Cycle: The Soil Needs Armour (May 2022)
- Capturing Solar Energy: Flow from Sun to Earth (June 2022)
- Nutrient Cycling: More than Just Capturing Carbon (July 2022)
- Building Biology with Community Dynamics: Polyculture is Your Friend (August 2022)
Next, we will talk about the five grazing tools:
- TIME is Everything: Recovery Periods & How Long to Graze (September 2022)
- Your Organism Employees: Stocking Rates, Stock Densities & Animal Impact (October 2022)
- Human Creativity: Not Just Child’s Play! (November 2022)
- Money & Labour: How Much Are You Willing to Use? (December 2022)
- Technology: Fun with
ToysTools, Please Use Responsibly (January 2023)
I look forward to writing these as much as I hope you look forward to reading them!