Allan Savory: Hope for Reversing Desertification and Climate Change - What You Can Do

The costs are less and profits are the same.

 

Cost is the fencing and daily labor of moving livestock

 

The fencing is portable, and it takes less than one hour to move the cattle. You just open the fence and they move. Not to mention the number of head is double per acre in some cases.

 

If it's financially rewarding ranchers will do it. If your concern is carbon sequestration though the best thing you can do in this area is stop eating meat.

 

You are half right. If it is profitable it will become popular, which it is and will. However, one thing that is necessary to mitigate climate change is to regenerate soil carbon in grasslands. Regen Ag does this by using the cattle.

Here is a good Ted Talk by Savory on how this works.

 

So what would be better in your and his opinion, raising cattle like this or to just stop raising cattle period?

 

Well, in the world we live in, we need the cattle to help restore grasslands. In a perfect world, we could work toward the restoration of bison herds in North America, other continents could do something similar. I would like to see massive bison herds roaming free again. Possibly using cattleman to drive the bison herds, culling them out. I am really just daydreaming there. I think that in places like the rainforest of the Amazon, we should probably return as much of it to forest land as possible.

 

Interesting theory because from what I hear cattle flatulence is 4% of our C02 contribution so you seem to think that would be more than counterbalanced by this rotation method and we are better off with cows than without. I'm sure true believers who enjoy steak will love this theory!

 

yes. There is already research to support this theory. Carbon sequestration associated with this type of managed grazing offsets methane emissions from cows. Not only that, but the result is increased grass plant biodiversity, which improves the cows diet and lowers methane.

 

My question is if it more than offsets cows. 4% plus?

 

Here is an open article on the research being conducted around the southern great plains.

GHG Mitigation Potential of Different Grazing Strategies in the United States Southern Great Plains

Abstract
: The possibility of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by ruminants using improved grazing is investigated by estimating GHG emissions for cow-calf farms under light continuous (LC), heavy continuous (HC) and rotational grazing, also known as multi-paddock (MP), management strategies in Southern Great Plain (SGP) using life cycle assessment (LCA). Our results indicated a GHG emission with these grazing treatments of 8034.90 kg·CO2e·calf−1·year−1 for cow-calf farms in SGP region, which is high, compared to that for other regions, due to the high percentage (79.6%) of enteric CH4 emissions caused by relatively lower feed quality on the unfertilized rangeland. Sensitivity analyses on MP grazing strategy showed that an increase in grass quality and digestibility could potentially reduce GHG emission by 30%. Despite higher GHG emissions on a per calf basis, net GHG emissions in SGP region are potentially negative when carbon (C) sequestration is taken into account. With net C emission rates of −2002.8, −1731.6 and −89.5 kg C ha−1·year−1 after converting from HC to MP, HC to LC and from LC to MP, our analysis indicated cow-calf farms converting from continuous to MP grazing in SGP region are likely net carbon sinks for decades.

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/7/10/13500/htm

 

Well it sounds like true believers can just keep eating meat and blame ranchers for not raising cows "the right way". How convenient.

 

Absolutely not. I highly recommend avoiding industrialized farming products as this is the root cause of climate change and all modern pollution problems.

 

Now I'm confused. Seems like you just said cows raised like this did more good than harm.

 

Savory found that grasslands need grazers because the land improves when exposed to saliva, manure, and urine. The livestock are concentrated in smaller areas for shorter amounts of time. More land gets fertilized and grasses have time to recover between grazings. Therefore, cattle can be used as a tool to improve pastureland fertility and tilth. I have five small pastures for my goats. They usually stay a week or so on each pasture. It is a variation of Savorys method but my land is improving....In the spring I will have Rygrass planted and they will rotate every couple of days. The rygrass is an annual and will die off mid summer. Last year one is pasture made a fine watermelon patch. Next year probably field peas.

 

What you are doing on your land is great from an agriculture point of view. From a big picture cattle raising perspective (big cattle if you will) I'm not so sure. Seems like land allowed to go ungrazed by livestock would be better for the land and streams that run through it. I have a five acre meadow in front of my house that only deer and elk browse and it looks better every year. Ten years ago the people I bought this place from had horses on it and it was a mess. Now the natural vegetation has returned, the trails have healed up and it looks like a meadow you would camp in while backpacking.

 

These grazing methods build soil. It is a natural part of grasslands to be mowed by the herds of megafauna such as buffalo, or in this case cattle.

 

As per the OP and this method in Africa I see it doing more harm than good because of the expansion necessary that would drive even more elephants out of their natural habitat.

 

Why This Farmer Wants To Go Beyond Organic

 

What expansion? All this is doing is regenerating the soil of agricultural land. In fact, if these methods resulting in regenerated soils were adopted across Africa, the total amount of land used for agriculture would decrease.

 

If you constantly move cattle you need more grazing land

 

If you do it correctly, you increase the productivity of the land, thereby reducing the demand for land.

 

Possibly but I'm skeptical. You first have to increase amount of land grazed in order to constantly move cattle to fresh grass.

 

http://pastureproject.org/pasture-management/rotational-grazing-systems/

 

Yeah that could work with sufficient time and money