(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 my followers.)
As this Regenerative Grazing Objectives & Tools series begins, we begin with probably the most important objective (which heavily influences our tools): understanding your context.
Know Thy Context: Your Triple Bottom Line
In layman’s terms, context is the situation you find yourself in. The more professional dictionary term (via a quick Google search) defines it as:
“The circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood and assessed.”
In other words, your context defines what decisions you need to make in your life, your [farm] business, your family, and your finances according to the circumstances influencing you to make such decisions.
Your context ultimately depends on environment, people, and finances. This is your “triple bottom line.“
While we tend to focus heavily on our environmental context to determine how to graze our pastures, what crops to grow, or how to maximize productivity out of our livestock, we do so at the expense of our other two contexts. The social and financial contexts are often ignored until they can’t be any longer. Some might argue that the financial context isn’t ignored, but how many producers know their net income? Or what their gross margin is? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think many do.
To help you better understand your context, I want you to consider a few areas: first, the social and financial contexts, then the environmental ones. I’m lumping social and financial together in this newsletter as they tend to go together like bread and butter.
What are your Social & Financial Contexts?
The Savory Institute course identifies the social and financial contexts under a “Whole Under Management.” This WUM approach (love the acronym) identifies three key areas:
- Decision makers
- Resource base
- Money
I believe two other areas also need to be accounted for:
- Goals, plans and objectives
- Time constraints
Let’s briefly examine all five areas, not in any particular order!
What are your plans, goals, and objectives?
These plans and goals you’ve set up for yourself and your operation may be short-term (for this month, the next six months, or next year or two) or long-term (to be accomplished in 5 to 10 years). Perhaps you’ve already written down your plans to understand better where you want to be, or maybe you haven’t. Either way, now is the best time to do so. Don’t forget to sit down with your family and discuss it with them, too! Have them write down their plans and goals before you all meet together so you can see where you all would like to be in the future. Your discussion should reveal some interesting insights you probably didn’t see before!
Your objectives are how you will achieve those goals and put your plans into action. For example, “I would like to aim for $10,000 in direct market sales for my beef in 2 years.” Objectives should be clear about what you want to achieve and in what time frame. Your plans are going to make it happen!
Your plans, goals, and objectives are your own and certainly will be subject to time and money constraints, but here’s a little secret I’m going to share with you: If you want something badly enough and have a burning desire for it to happen coupled with the unyielding faith that it will happen in the future, it’ll come sooner or later. The power of thought and intent, expressed positively, is nothing to take lightly!
Who are the decision-makers?
The decision-makers for your business or operation are those affected by your decisions or vice versa. These are the managers, stakeholders, bankers, accountants, hired workers, business partners, lease-holder/renters, or your family members (your spouse and children, or your parents or grandparents who live on the farm and influence or are influenced by your decisions).
These are the people you need to make the tough calls with, have lively, sometimes head-butting discussions with, and ultimately make the farm tick (or not). While I’m not a human resources specialist by any means, what I do know is that communication lines need to be wide open for things to run as smoothly as possible, and this is easier said than done.
Regardless, these decision makers determine how a certain set of plans turns out and whether they’re feasible for everyone involved, environmental, time, and money constraints aside. Understanding who your decision makers are and what they can bring will mean the difference between success and failure for your farm business.
Who and what is your resource base?
Your resource base is more than just land, your house, your livestock, capital, and equipment. Your resource base is also social, referring to the extension specialists and consultants (like yours truly), wildlife/conservation organizations, farm supply businesses, and agriculture equipment dealers. All these are there to support you so that you can produce what you need or want. Without them, you won’t be able to grow grass or raise beef for your customers.
What is your financial situation?
Money can be considered a “resource,” but unlike land, a pregnant cow, or even a seeder, its use is highly fungible. Money is the crucial financial context affecting your decisions and how far your plans will take you.
I’m asking you to identify your financial situation by taking into account your loans, credit, situation with trading goods for goods, income, costs, cash available from your business, investors, and other financial details.
You may be in a situation where cash is tight or you’ve got so much money coming out of your ears that you don’t know what to do with it. Either way, your financial context is the only thing that will pull the reins back on progress or let the horses run free.
What are your time constraints?
Time is another particular context that fits the social and financial schemes. Time constraints can be identified as how much time you want to spend with your family instead of the farm, time for holidays, going to events where you learn about better grazing practices or bull sales or having fun at the local fair. Time constraints also include how much time you have available to work on your operation as opposed to your off-farm job.
Time, as we’ll see in a future newsletter sometime this summer (stay tuned!), determines how fast those calves are going to grow for market or how fast the grass is going to grow for the next grazing. It also determines when you can seed (and then harvest or graze) that cover crop you want to put in to improve the soil for this year and for the years to come.
What a great segue! Time (pun not intended) to look at your environmental contexts.
What are your environmental contexts?
When looking at environmental contexts, three key areas play a big role in your grazing/farming/growing operation:
- Location
- Soil type
- Climate
Where in the world are you?
Your location is more than just what country, state/province you live in, or what your GPS coordinates are. Your location determines the sort of climate you have to deal with, the kind of soil your operation sits on, and even what natural biome or region has been historically known for your area. All these determine what you can grow, what you can raise, and how you can do it.
What’s your soil type?
By “soil,” I refer to the conservative definition of soil, which is the mineral and geological components derived from the parent material sitting well below the surface. Three primary textures, sand, silt, and clay, in descending order based on particle size (sand has the largest particle size, clay the smallest), ultimately determine what can grow there and how. We will discuss that in our water cycle newsletter a little more about next month.
An easy way to find out what kind of soil you have is to do some digging. No, I mean, do some digging. Some guides are done by soil scientists on figuring out soil texture, most of which involve a little bit of water and getting your hands dirty. Rubbing a clump of soil in between your thumb and forefingers to figure out texture, trying to rub out a soil ribbon, and even daring yourself to nibble a little bit on some soil (yes, I’ve done it and no, it’s not that bad), are some great tips to try on your own.
The not-so-easy way that doesn’t involve a shovel, a little water, and some dirty paws is to look at the growing plants in your area. Certain species of plants have preferences for growing in places where it’s sandy or heavy clay or nice loam. For example, Canada thistle (Cirsium arvense) loves heavy clay soils. Prairie Smoke (or Old Man’s Whiskers; Geum triflorum) thrives in sandy-tending soils. You’d need a few reference materials to give you an idea of what is growing in your location and why they like growing there.
What’s your climate like? How about: where are you on the brittleness scale?
In terms of climate, we’re often concerned with not just the amount of annual precipitation we get but other factors, including humidity index, growing degree days, frost-free days, average temperature (summer vs. winter), seasonality, day length, and so on.
It might be just me, but it seems that our primary focus on climate is how much precipitation one gets in a year and whether that’s above or below average or about normal.
But what if I told you that that’s the wrong question to ask?
The type of climate we live in should be more attributed to the “brittleness scale.” This scale takes into account not the amount of precipitation an area gets but rather its distribution, as well as the average annual humidity index.
The brittleness scale also considers the plant decomposition rate for your area, how quickly bare soil gets covered by biology, and the dynamics of community succession.
Very humid environments (non-brittle) have very fast plant decomposition rates due to the readily available and highly active soil biology already present. Any bare soil is quickly taken over by biology; if it’s not in a matter of hours, it’s days. Plant community succession is fast and often results in a “climax community” of woody species, like tall trees, shrubs, and dense vegetation.
Very brittle (or arid) environments behave oppositely. Plant decomposition rates are very slow to almost non-existent, where dead plants are weathered by wind and some rain and oxidize instead of breaking down into soil organic matter. The leaves of these plants are brittle (hence the name), and they easily crumble when you try to crumple them in your hands.
Bare soil often remains as such, probably being covered by biological crusts that are nature’s last-ditch effort to try to maintain some soil stability. Bare soil in very brittle environments is prone to spreading rather than being overtaken by biology in less-brittle environments, leading to desertification. Plant community succession is also slow, with some woody species but mostly herbaceous communities, including annual and perennial forbs and grasses. Taller woody species find it difficult to survive in such environments because of the lack of moisture just below the surface unless they’re beside a river.
Where on the brittleness scale are you? Most areas are in the middle, leaning towards brittle tending (6 to 8 or even 9) or less brittle tending (5 down to maybe a 2 or 3). I highly recommend you take some time to analyze your area to determine that for yourself!
Overall…
Knowing your context takes some time, as you need to examine your finances, social surroundings, and the environment in which you live and work. A good understanding of all these will help you determine where you can go—and how far—on your regenerative grazing journey.
Next time, we look at the second grazing objective, water!