What are we going to do about this?

"What you see in green is not desertifying, and what you see in brown is."
(Source: Allan Savory's TED Talk "How to fight desertification and reverse climate change")

Back in the day, when humans shifted from nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyles to a settled agricultural existence, a little problem cropped up:

Over time, the land being farmed...began turning to desert.

Land that had once been lush and life-sustaining? Became barren, dry, and unable to support life.

Desertification in progress (Tabernas Desert, Spain)

There has probably always been some amount of natural desertification due to climate shifts and changing rainfall patterns.

But the start of human agricultural activity put the process on a faster track.

When we leaned into mechanization and efficiency during the Industrial Revolution, the global shift from grassland to desert accelerated significantly—and that faster pace has only increased since.

Today, the amount of desertified or desertifying land on earth amounts to...well, a whole bunch.

Varying sources say anywhere from 1/3 to 75% of the earth's landmass is compromised in some degree by desertification.

Moving quickly now (Namibia, Africa)

A while back, Jordan pointed me to Allan Savory's 2013 TED Talk on desertification as a helpful starting point for understanding the way we farm.

A native of British colonial Africa, Savory is an ecologist who has spent much of his career seeking ways to fight desertification and reverse climate change.

Originally a researcher and game officer in Zimbabwe and Zambia, he accepted the conventional scientific wisdom of the time: that grazing livestock were the undisputed cause of widespread land degradation that he and other researchers were witnessing.

But then he noticed that the national parks and protected areas from which livestock had been removed were deteriorating faster than areas that continued to be grazed.

One of the U.S. National Parks which contributed to the theory that desertification isn't resolved by removing livestock

On his first visit to the United States in 1969, Savory was shocked to find U.S. national parks like the one above desertifying as badly as anything in Africa.

He was also surprised to learn that livestock hadn't grazed there for 70 years.

Why wouldn't the land have recovered by now, if livestock were the problem?

He began looking at data from research plots in the western United States that had removed cattle to prove that livestock caused desertification.

What he found, over and over, was this:

Before removing cattle, 1961: grassland

After removing cattle, 2002: scrub bushes and bare earth

In hindsight, Savory shares that what he and other scientists had failed to understand was that in environments with seasonal humidity—where part of the year is wet, and the other part very dry—the soil and vegetation had developed alongside very large numbers of grazing animals. And, these grazing animals developed with ferocious pack-hunting predators.

The main defense of grazing animals against pack-hunting predators?

Moving in herds.

And large grazing herds, Savory explains, "dung and urinate all over their food. They have to keep moving. It was that movement that prevented the overgrazing of plants, while the periodic trampling of plants ensured good cover of the soil."

He concluded that fertile, healthy grasslands cannot exist without large herds of grazing animals any more than large herds of grazing animals can exist without fertile, healthy grasslands.

Savory's solution to fighting desertification and reversing climate change?

Put grazing animals back on the land.

Since the massive native herds of "keystone species" (for example, bison and elk in North America, wildebeest and zebra in Africa) were severely diminished or near-extinct due to centuries of hunting and habitat disruption, only one option remained to make Savory's solution a possibility.

It was an option that was "unthinkable" both to himself and to the scientific community at large, who had for generations placed the blame for land degradation squarely on grazing livestock.

With shock, Savory came to understand that the problem could only be solved with grazing livestock.

In his TED Talk, he says plainly:

Mimic migration using livestock to restore depleted land?

Yes, please. 🌾

Here are some of the things we do on our farm:

• Our cattle graze intentionally portioned sections of land that are proportional to the size of the herd—so the density and impact of animals on the land mimics that of a large, native migrating herd.
• Our cows remain on each section of land long enough that they eat both their favorite grasses and the less-popular plants as well. This provides maximum nutrient diversity for the cows (a farmer's version of making sure the kids eat their vegetables) and ensures even grazing across all plant types—so regrowth will continue to mimic the biodiversity of native grasslands.
• Cows are moved to the next section of fresh grassland long before they graze the plants to the ground: usually once they've consumed only about half the original height of the grass. This 50% mark stimulates vigorous regrowth without shocking the plant into halting root development—keeping roots, plants, and soil healthy.
  

These are all practices that fall under the umbrella of managed grazing, which we talk a lot about on our farm.

And the 3 specific practices above are examples of the HARVEST phase of managed grazing.

Here are a few other things that happen on our farm, which mimic migratory herds:

• While our cows graze, they distribute manure and urine. This provides nutrients and fertility to the soil beneath them. (And because they are moved frequently, they do not overfertilize the area.)

• Also while they graze, our cows trample grasses—breaking down organic material, pressing crushed leaves into the earth, forming a protective cover for the land. This provides a natural mulch and compost layer, as well as a good dose of healthy aeration to the soil. (And because our cows are frequently moved, they do not stay long enough to damage the soil or turn it to mud, or create an overly-thick mulch cover which could smother new plant growth.)

These 2 activities are examples of the DISTURBANCE phase of managed grazing.

On the next page, we'll talk about the other  two phases of managed grazing, and we'll continue to see how movement is key to everything we do on our farm.

As we said on the last page...

Managed rotational grazing on farms like ours mimics the movement of migration.

It accomplishes the vast ecological benefits of global migration on boundaried, modern farmland.

...all while providing essential food to human populations, humane and species-aligned care to animals raised for food, and crucial restoration to depleted soil.

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🤎

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The food we raise is great for the planet. It's great for you. And it gives the animals who are raised here a truly great life.

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