Farming with Livestock might be the ticket to Saving the Planet

Bare earth cannot retain water or regulate temperature. At this point, 2/3 of the earth’s land mass has experienced desertification and become bare, exposed earth. Bare earth turns to dust in the hot sun, all the nutrients wash away and the soil erodes in the rain, so it’s no wonder our planet is losing it’s ability to maintain consistent temperatures or regrow plant life, and that we are seeing evidence of climate change with growing concerns as to whether the planet will be capable of producing what humanity needs to survive as our population explodes.

photo from youmatter.world

On a small scale, we can see real evidence of how regenerative farming works by looking at my garden. Making sure I never have bare soil, I’ve created my own tiny, humid microclimate in my garden and that is the very reason I rarely, if ever have to water it, yet even in the heat of summer, it is a virtual Jurassic paradise. I’m constantly adding animal manure and compost and covering bare soil with plant matter and wood chips to keep the moisture in. The earth somehow knows the negative effects of bare soil, and that is exactly why we, as gardeners, battle so many weeds. Weeds are the earth’s natural remedy to covering the bare bits of earth we have exposed with our shovels and hoes. They keep the moisture in the soil by shading it from the oppressive afternoon sun with their foliage. Their roots keep the earth form compacting, and as plants travel through their life cycle, they provide sustenance for creatures above ground in the form of their greenery or fruit, and below ground as they drop their leaves, die, and decompose, thus providing sustenance for creatures below the soil’s surface like worms and bugs who further aerate the soil with their tunnels and paths, whose frass (bug poop) fertilize the soil, and round and round it goes. Even the specific weeds that grow in certain areas of the garden are often the earth’s own way of finding perfect balance; if the soil is compacted, weeds with deep taproots like dandelions will grow to break up the soil’s surface and bring nutrients from deep below up to the surface. in nitrogen deficient areas, weeds that are natural nitrogen fixers will pop up. Learning about the science of how the earth “fixes” itself has led me, as a gardener, to “fight” weeds a whole lot less and instead, figure out ways to work with them to have a better all around garden experience. Watching which weeds grow where help me to know what to plant where. Keeping weeds in my pathways helps keep more water in the soil, meaning I water less. But, I digress, this isn’t intended to be an article about gardening or weeding, it’s meant to be an encouragement to look into regenerative agriculture and rotational grazing of livestock.

For more information on rotational grazing and regenerative agriculture, check out Joel Salatin, Jim Gerrish, Richard Perkins, Greg Judy, and Allan Savory

For much of the last 100 years, researchers and scientists alike have been placing a huge portion of blame for the earth’s desertification process on farmers raising livestock. However, researchers like Allan Savory have now proven that desertification is actually caused, not by the introduction of animals, but, on the contrary, the REMOVAL of large herds of grazing animals. Before human influence, enormous migrating herds of buffalo, elk, deer, zebras, elephants… would pass through an area, intensely graze it, take what they needed, leave concentrated amounts of manure as they ate, and then move along. They wouldn’t overgraze, linger long enough to compact the soil, or eat amongst their own manure and become infected with parasites, because they were constantly on the move. They brought with them an entire ecosystem of predators, birds, and insects that all played their own positive part in the care and maintenance of the land. As human civilization expanded, however, their land started disappearing and thus, so did the herds, and with their disappearance, so went the earth’s ability to regenerate and regrow.

Thankfully, There’s hOPE.

It would be impossible to re-introduce the populations of wild grazing animals and their predators that made up the whole grassland ecosystem in a way that could actually repair the damage that’s been done to the earth at this point, but without doing SOMETHING, the desertification of the planet will continue to occur. Thankfully, however, there is an exciting SOLUTION. Farmers can use livestock to mimic the grazing herds of old, implementing intensive rotational grazing, MULTIPLYING the land’s ability to nurture and sustain EVEN MORE livestock, REVERSING climate change by fixing our soil, WHILE raising animals that can be harvested for meat to supply humanity’s growing demand.

Large herds of livestock, disrupting the soil with their hooves, eating plants in masse at the proper point in their lifecycle to encourage re-growth rather than overgrowth, and leaving their manure in the soil to fertilize it for short, intense periods causes plant life to multiply, soil health to improve, and carbon sequestering to occur en-masse, just like like the large grazing herds of days gone by. We, as farmers, can help provide the other elements of the “ecosystem” by using multiple species who prefer different plants, whose hooves and style of walking are different, whose manure breaks down differently. We can mimic the birds that swarm around the grazing animals in the Sahara, eating flies off their backs, scratching the manure into the soil, eating the fly and parasite larvae out of the it, and leaving little manure deposits of their own, by following our grazing herds with chickens, turkeys and ducks. Even on a small scale, you could do this too with a few backyard chickens and/ or rabbits.

Our local grandfather of regenerative agriculture, Joel Salatin, practicing intense rotational grazing on his farm has increased his pasture’s ability to sustain a cow from 80 days of grazing per cow per acre, to 400 days of grazing per cow per acre. He now even gets government credit for carbon sequestering within his soil. The proof is in the pudding my friends, or, in this case, the patty. 

By beginning to think of our larger pastures as hundreds of tiny pastures, with easily mobile fencelines using electric wire/netting and solar chargers (I get mine from Premier 1) , we can rotate our diverse herd (cows, goats, sheep, donkeys) to graze in a concentrated manner on all their diversely favorite species of plants and grasses, while moving them frequently across the land to keep them from congregating, compacting, or overgrazing any one area. After I move the livestock, I bring in the chickens in their mobile coop, let them clean up the bugs, manure, etc, and then do a quick finish mow with my Cub Cadet mower.

And that, my friends, is exactly why I’m doing what I am as far as rotational grazing with my livestock here. It’s not only helping me to raise healthier, happier animals with less human input (no more de-worming or vaccinations because they’re not hanging out where they’ve manured), I am also saving huge amounts of money on livestock feed and I’m stewarding the piece of the earth I’ve been given to manage to the best of my knowledge and ability. Even after just 8 months of doing this, our pasture is SO much greener and healthier than it was before we moved after decades of overgrazing and improper management. My soil will improve vastly year over year, erosion, even on our steep hillsides will become an ever smaller issue for us, and our land will be host to a far greater diversity of species of plant, insect, and wildlife as time goes on. This fall I’ll be overseeding the whole pasture with a new group of grasses and plants prescribed by our local ranchland advisers. I’ll also be bringing in a few head of beef cattle to increase our grazing capacity. Over the next few years, butchering and selling the beef will repay the infrastructure investments I’ve had to make to get to this point and soon, provide a small profit to sustain the farm activities while also giving me an opportunity to be involved in the production of high quality nutrition for my local community, and that’s really what this is all about.