604 Allan Savory's remedy for Climate Change: use Livestock to create Healthy Rangelands

Allan Savory's remedy for Climate Change: use Livestock to create
Healthy Rangelands

Newsletter published on 22 July 2013

(1) Allan Savory: How to fight desertification and reverse climate
change  (video 22min)
(2) A bridge in the Climate debate: how to Green the world's Deserts
(3) Allan Savory culled grazing animals - then realized that they are
the solution
(4) Cell Grazing
(5) Howard Miller comments on Allen Savory and Cell Grazing
(6) Allan Savory 2013 tour of Australia (Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne)
(7) A Global Strategy for Addressing Climate Change, by Allan Savory (pdf)

(1) Allan Savory: How to fight desertification and reverse climate
change  (video 22min)

Allan Savory on reversing Desertification (22 min):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdyDOHhA9E4

His website: http://www.savoryinstitute.com

TED talk:
http://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s_deserts_and_reverse_climate_change.html

FILMED FEB 2013 • POSTED MAR 2013 • TED2013

“Desertification is a fancy word for land that is turning to desert,”
begins Allan Savory in this quietly powerful talk. And it's happening to
about two-thirds of the world’s grasslands, accelerating climate change
and causing traditional grazing societies to descend into social chaos.
Savory has devoted his life to stopping it. He now believes -- and his
work so far shows -- that a surprising factor can protect grasslands and
even reclaim degraded land that was once desert.

Allan Savory works to promote holistic management in the grasslands of
the world.

(2) A bridge in the Climate debate: how to Green the world's Deserts

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/08/a-bridge-in-the-climate-debate-how-to-green-the-worlds-deserts-and-reverse-climate-change/

A bridge in the climate debate – How to green the world’s deserts and
reverse climate change

Posted on March 8, 2013

by Anthony Watts

This is one of the most important posts ever on WUWT, it will be a top
“sticky” post for a few days, and new posts will appear below this one
during that time.

People send me stuff.

Imagine, shooting 40,000 elephants to prevent the land in Africa from
going to desert because scientists thought the land couldn’t sustain
them, only to find the effort was for naught and the idea as to why was
totally wrong. That alone was a real eye opener. ...

Every once in awhile, an idea comes along that makes you ask, “gee why
hasn’t anybody seen this before?”. This one of those times. This video
below is something I almost didn’t watch, because my concerns were
triggered by a few key words in the beginning. But, recommended by a
Facebook friend, I stuck with it, and I’m glad I did, because I want
every one of you, no matter what side of the climate debate you live in,
to watch this and experience that light bulb moment as I did. The key
here is to understand that desertification is one of the real climate
changes we are witnessing as opposed to some the predicted ones we often
fight over.

It is one of those seminal moments where I think a bridge has been
created in the climate debate, and I hope you’ll seize the moment and
embrace it. This video comes with my strongest possible recommendation,
because it speaks to a real problem, with real solutions in plain
language, while at the same time offering true hope.

This is a TED talk by Dr. Allan Savory in Los Angeles this past week,
attended by our friend Dr. Matt Ridley, whose presentation we’ll look at
another time. Sometimes, TED talks are little more that pie in the sky;
this one is not. And, it not only offers a solution, it shows the
solution in action and presents proof that it works. It makes more sense
than anything I’ve seen in a long, long, time. Our friend Dr. Roger
Pielke Sr., champion of studying land use change as it affects local and
regional climate will understand this, so will our cowboy poet Willis
Eschenbach, who grew up on a cattle ranch. I daresay some of our
staunchest critics will get it too.

To encapsulate the idea presented, I’ll borrow from a widely used TV
commercial and say:

Beef, it’s what’s for climate

You can call me crazy for saying that after you watch this presentation.
A BIG hattip to Mark Steward Young for bringing this to my attention.

“Desertification is a fancy word for land that is turning to desert,”
begins Allan Savory in this quietly powerful talk. And terrifyingly,
it’s happening to about two-thirds of the world’s grasslands,
accelerating climate change and causing traditional grazing societies to
descend into social chaos. Savory has devoted his life to stopping it.
He now believes — and his work so far shows — that a surprising factor
can protect grasslands and even reclaim degraded land that was once desert.

Published on Mar 4, 2013 ...

Allan Savory argued that while livestock may be part of the problem,
they can also be an important part of the solution. He has demonstrated
time and again in Africa, Australia and North and South America that,
properly managed, they are essential to land restoration. With the right
techniques, plant growth is lusher, the water table is higher, wildlife
thrives, soil carbon increases and, surprisingly, perhaps four times as
many cattle can be kept.

(3) Allan Savory culled grazing animals - then realized that they are
the solution

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Savory

(Clifford) Allan Redin Savory (born 15 September 1935) is a Zimbabwean
biologist, farmer, soldier, exile, environmentalist, and winner of the
2003 Banksia International Award[1] and the 2010 Buckminster Fuller
Challenge.[2] He is the originator of holistic management.[3][4]

Early work in southern Africa[edit]

Savory began working on the problem of land degradation
(desertification) in 1955 in Northern Rhodesia, where he served in the
Colonial Service as Provincial Game Officer, Northern and Luapula
Provinces. He subsequently continued this work in Southern Rhodesia
first as a research officer in the Game Department, then subsequently as
an independent scientist and international consultant.

As late as 1969 he was advocating culling large populations of wild
animals such as elephants and hippos, when they were appearing to be
destroying their habitat.[5][6] He had participated in the culling of
40,000 elephants in the 1950s but he later concluded the culling did not
reverse the degradation of the land, calling that project "the saddest
and greatest blunder of my life."[7][8]

Savory was inspired by earlier work of French agronomist André Voisin
who observed that cattle tended to return to the same patch of grass
after about three days. Savory saw this as a solution of the riddle of
time and that it was the length of time cattle were left in the same
area and not just simple overgrazing which led to problems.[9][10]

Political involvement[edit]

[...] Savory was elected to the Rhodesian Parliament representing Matobo
constituency in the 1970 election. After resigning from the Rhodesian
Front in protest over its racist policies and handling of the war, in
1973 Savory reformed the defunct Rhodesia Party formerly led by Sir Roy
Welensky. In June 1973, Savory made a public statement that, if he had
been born a black Rhodesian, he would have been a guerrilla fighter and
although he urged white Rhodesians to understand why he would feel this.
The reaction to this statement led to Savory's ouster from the Rhodesia
Party. In 1977, moderate white parties united in opposition to Ian Smith
in what was known as the National Unifying Force (NUF) led by
Savory.[11] The NUF party won no seats in the 1977 election, and Savory
relinquished leadership to Tim Gibbs, son of Rhodesia's last governor.
Savory continued to fight Ian Smith and his policies, in particular
opposing the Internal Settlement under Bishop Abel Muzorewa. In 1979,
due to conflicts with the Smith government, Savory left Rhodesia and
went into self-imposed exile to continue his scientific work.

Move to America[edit]

When in exile, Savory worked from the Cayman Islands into the Americas
introducing a plan to reverse desertification of 'brittle' grasslands by
carefully planning movements of large herds of livestock to mimic those
found in nature. Savory immigrated to the US and with his wife Jody
Butterfield founded the Center for Holistic Management in 1984. It later
changed its name to the Savory Center and finally Holistic Management
International. It launched the Africa Centre for Holistic Management,
based in Zimbabwe in 1992 which has 2,520 hectares (6,200 acres) of
land. Savory left Holistic Management International in 2009 to form the
Savory Institute.[12][13]

The various organisations have worked globally with individuals,
government agencies, NGOs, and corporations to restore grasslands
through the teaching and practice of holistic management and holistic
decision making. This includes conservation projects in the US, Africa,
Canada, and Australia, where large tracts of land are being transformed,
as desertification is reversed through holistic management techniques,
notably using livestock and holistically planned grazing as the main
agent of change.[14] ...

This page was last modified on 12 July 2013 at 23:56.

(4) Cell Grazing

http://www.carbonlink.com.au/farmers/cells/index.htm

Cell grazing was introduced to Australia in 1989 and has slowly gained
ground as an accepted grazing management practice. The first cells were
established at Moura in Queensland and Guyra in NSW in mid 1991.

Cell Grazing is based on 7 management principles. These are, in priority
order: 1. Plants need adequate rest. 2. Match Stocking rate to Carrying
Capacity 3. Plan, Monitor and Manage the system 4. Manage Livestock
effectively 5. Maintain a short Graze period (through more paddocks) for
animal performance. 6. Maintain maximum stock density for minimum time.
7. Build diversity of plants and animals.

(5) Howard Miller comments on Allen Savory and Cell Grazing

Howard, a friend of mine, runs cattle and meat-sheep on 400 acres in the
Wagga area (in the south west of New South Wales).

Apart from that, he's on this mailing list, and an expert on Apple
computers.

I asked Howard if he's heard of Allen Savory. Yes, he said - he did a
course on Allen Savory's methods some years ago.

Cell Grazing does work, but it requires extra fencing to subdivide the
farm into smaller paddocks - and that's costly.

There is also a need to pipe water to those new paddocks, and supply
troughs.

Some paddocks are naturally more fertile than others, and can support
the herd for more days.

So, Savory's ideas are good in principle, but Howard found it impossible
to implement them completely.

(6) Allan Savory 2013 tour of Australia (Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne)

http://regenag.com

Allan Savory 2013 RegenAG® Australian Tour

Events in Brisbane, Sydney & Melbourne

An Evening with Allan Savory

Join us for an evening with Allan Savory, founder of Holistic
Management, on how we can reverse desertification, heal landscapes,
empower communities and reverse climate change.

Holistic Management is a decision-making framework used world wide that
mimics patterns in nature to pro-actively regenerate grasslands,
watersheds and rural community integrity.

Holistic Management has been recognised across the planet as one of the
most important tools we have to reverse desertification and potentially
heal climate change. Advocates of this technique range from Professor
Tim Flannery to HRH Prince Charles.

  Intro to Holistic Management Intensive Seminar with Allan Savory

Join Allan Savory, founder of Holistic Management, for an intensive
seminar and learn how you can apply Holistic Management to your current
or future enterprise.

Holistic Management is a decision-making framework used world wide that
mimics patterns in nature to pro-actively use herbivores to regenerate
grasslands, watersheds and rural community integrity.

• Currently over 40 million hectares of land are managed using Holistic
Management techniques worldwide.

• Holistic Management was recently identified by the Australian
government as a key approved technique for soil carbon sequestration.
With recent market developments, it’s also increasingly clear in
Australia that an enterprise based on grass-fed stock makes sound
financial sense from every angle

These events are proudly sponsored by The National Landcare Facilitator.

(7) A Global Strategy for Addressing Climate Change, by Allan Savory (pdf)

download pdf at
http://www.savoryinstitute.com/.../GlobalStrategyforAddressingClimateChange2_1.pdf

A Global Strategy for Addressing Climate Change

Executive Summary

Introduction

A Two-Path Strategy is Essential for Combating Combat Climate Change

1. High Technology Path. This path, based on mainstream reductionist
science, is urgent and vital to the development of alternative energy
sources to reduce or halt future emissions.

2. Low Technology Path. This path based on the emerging relationship
science or holistic world view is vital for resolving the problem of
grassland biomass burning, desertification and the safe storage of CO2,
(legacy load) of heat trapping gases that already exist in the atmosphere.

[...]  Moreover, the current focus on carbon emissions from fossil fuels
ignores the massive annual burning of the world’s grasslands and
savannas and its enormous impact on global climate change.

[...] An important spinoff with humans soon to fight worse wars over
water than over oil, is that any increase in soil organic matter and
improvement in soil structure, which is again dependent on soil life,
also greatly increases the rate of water infiltration and retention in
soil. The amount of water that can be held in the ground through healthy
soils dwarfs the storage in the World's largest dams. This in turn helps
minimize the frequency and severity of most of today's floods and
droughts that are not caused by any weather change but by land degradation.

On rangelands improving soil health may also enhance the storage of
inorganic carbon, which is more common in arid areas. The science about
inorganic carbon storage in arid soils remains fuzzy, but it is a
reasonable assumption that improving the effectiveness of the water
cycle, through reversing degradation of the world’s rangelands, is
likely to increase inorganic carbon sequestration because water plays a
role in most soil chemical reactions.

Creating Healthy Cropland Soils: Most are Degrading—a New Agriculture is
Required

Excessive soil exposure throughout most of the year leads to soil
degradation, and the excessive use of chemicals and pesticides further
compounds the problem. Although industrial agriculture, which promotes
both practices, was hailed as the answer to feeding the world, it has
proved highly damaging to soils, illustrating once again the challenges
arising from technological fixes for nature's processes. Independent
scientists involved in sustainable agriculture estimate that the entire
legacy carbon load could be absorbed in the world's croplands, were they
properly managed.

What is certain is that an enormous amount of carbon could be
sequestered, given improved agriculture. World wide, most cropland
soils, whether rain-fed or irrigated, have lost much of their organic
matter and soil life, resulting in more rapid soil erosion than at any
time in history—about 21 gigatons per year on croplands alone, which is
more erosion than continental glaciers managed at their peak during the
Pleistocene Ice Age (New Scientist 18 December 2006). Recent estimates
put the amount of eroding soil annually going down the world's rivers at
about 24 billions tons or 4 tons per human alive today.

Neither industrial agriculture nor organic agriculture as currently
practiced can sustain global civilization. The industrial model fails
because it is fossil-fuel based, a net carbon emitter, not only because
of emissions from machinery, but because it destroys the ability of
cropland soils to store carbon and water. The organic model is much
closer to a solution, but it isn’t focused on the needs of a population
predicted to rise to 9 billion people living mostly in cities. And
historically, what today's sustainable agricultural movement describes
as sustainable agriculture is the same form of agriculture that led to
the demise of more than twenty civilizations world wide through
biodiversity loss and land degradation.

We need a new form of agriculture close to today's organic cropping
practices that can provide easily harvestable and transportable excesses
to feed urban populations. The new agriculture will need to be truly
holistic in that it mimics nature and restores soil health— keeping
soils permanently covered with cropping practices more akin to nature’s
polyculture complexity than today's single-crop fields that leave the
soil bare between plants and rows and, in many cases, over the entire
non-growing season.

Such a new agriculture will remove and store carbon from the atmosphere
risk-free, while also increasing water retention. The knowledge to begin
doing much of what is required is already available within the
sustainable agriculture movement and refinements addressing the reasons
for past failures would arise quickly once good minds and resources on
focused on the need.

According to the United Nations, one-third of the earth’s land surface
(10 billion acres/4 billion hectares) is threatened by desertification,
the bulk of which is rangelands. And this estimate is conservative.

Rangelands are similar to croplands in that if the soil is bare any time
of the year, they will deteriorate and release carbon previously stored.
At the same time the ability of such rangelands to store water are reduced.

Because so much of the soil in rangeland areas is bare – grasslands that
appear healthy to anyone driving by in a vehicle commonly have 50% to
90% of the soil bare and exposed between plants - the erosion figures
from them dwarf the dramatic figures recorded for croplands.

The generally accepted wisdom is that livestock overgrazing and
trampling is responsible for a major part of the damage, but, using a
simple grazing planning procedure that I (working with many ranchers in
Africa) developed more than 40 years ago, and fieldtested on rangelands
the world over, livestock can be used to restore rangelands to health
and productivity.

In fact, as we have discovered, only through increasing livestock
numbers while planning their concentration and movement carefully can
desertification be reversed on most rangelands.

Once restored, rangelands can store even more carbon than croplands can
for two reasons: the rangelands of the world dwarf the croplands in
size; and most croplands support annual plants with lesser root volume
and depth than the perennial plants of healthy rangelands. Root volume
and depth is crucial to both carbon and water storage in soils.

The planning procedure for livestock that is reversing desertification
mimics the movement and grazing patterns of the wild herds of old,
minimizing overgrazing of plants while harnessing the beneficial
soil-preparation effects of trampling hooves that knock down old
vegetation, chip bare soil surfaces, and cover them with fertilizer
(dung and urine).

The increase in vegetation that results gradually fills in bare spaces,
keeping the soil covered year round, and once again storing both carbon
and water. The grazing planning procedure, combined with the rest of
what has become known as Holistic Management, not only enables us to
massively reduce carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, it also helps ensure
food and water security. What’s more, it produces greater revenue for
land managers than the cost of implementation, while generating a truly
sustainable form of wealth in healthier, more productive, land. Further
detail available in "Holistic Management: A New Framework for Decision
Making" Second Edition, Island Press 1999" [...]

The Urgent Need to Reduce Biomass Burning

According to one NASA expert, every year a land area half the size of
Africa is burned at some point. This biomass burning occurs in forests,
which get most of the attention, and much more extensively in the
world’s grasslands where the practice has a long tradition.

Biomass burning releases CO2 into the atmosphere. In fact biomass
burning accounts for 40 percent of C02 annual production. French
research has shown that a one and a half acre median (average intensity)
grassland fire releases more carbon dioxide than 3,694 cars per second
and more nitrous oxide than about 1,400 cars per second. Many of
Africa’s fires—over 2 billion acres burn annually—rage for hours or days.

A current example provides additional perspective to grassland burning.
In early 2007, the BBC news reported that the London-based department
store chain, Marks and Spencer, was going to spend £200 million (US$ 400
million) on a five-year plan to make the company carbon neutral. Marks
and Spencer Chief Executive Sir Stuart Rose was quoted saying that the
company's major carbon neutral shift was estimated to achieve savings
equivalent to 100,000 cars being taken off the road annually.

While this is a truly admirable effort, it pales when compared to the
CO2 contributions from biomass burning. Converted to car days per year,
Marks and Spencer’s 100,000 cars would be equal to 365 million car
days/year. Taking the known emissions from grassland fires, this is the
approximate equivalent of the emissions from one 15-acre grass fire in
Kansas, Kenya or Zimbabwe, burning for 15 to 20 minutes!

African experts such as this example from a recent BBC report
illustrates are not correct when they state "Africa is being cheated
again by the industrialised West," says Jacob Nyanganji of Nigeria's
University of Maiduguri. "Africa does not produce any significant amount
of greenhouse gases, but it's our lakes and rivers that are drying up.
America has refused to ratify Kyoto and it is our lakes that are drying up."

The Justification for Grassland Burning and the Overlooked Damage it
Does to Soils

Sometime within the last 100,000 years, human populations began altering
entire continents using fire, mainly as a hunting aid as was first well
documented by Australian scientific writer Tim Flannery. Today,
grassland burning is advocated by major environmental organizations as
well as governments, resulting in billions of acres burning every year,
often as management policy.

While climatologists often warn that the burning of tropical forests is
contributing to global warming, they seldom mention the greater annual
burning of the world’s grasslands other than to excuse, pardon or praise
the practice as being necessary for grassland health.

Some scientists argue that CO2 and other gases that reach the atmosphere
as a result of grassland fires is not significant because it is
subsequently withdrawn from the atmosphere by the next season’s growth
of grass. And this does occur. But the argument ignores the many months
that CO2, nitrous oxide and other gases produced by the fires remain in
the atmosphere and the affect the fire has on the land. The soil exposed
by the fire heats up in sunlight and releases carbon and also water
(through surface evaporation). That in turn reduces soil life and
organic matter, impairs the subsequent growth of plants, and when the
rains return they are less effective (less soaks in and more evaporates
or runs off) as desertification increases.

The main justification for grassland burning today is to induce
sprouting regrowth. A fire clears away old, stale leaves that damage
grass plants retarding new growth. Removing old leaves that weaken
plants also helps prevent damaged grassland giving way to brush. A fire
causes plants to flush green earlier in the new growing season, in some
cases even before the first rains fall. For way too long a time, the
soil damage produced by frequent burning was overlooked because there
appeared to be no alternative to fire as for most of human existence we
have only had two tools with which to manage our environment at large –
fire and technology - from early chipped stones or pointed sticks to
today's machinery or chemicals.

An alternative to grassland burning and inevitable desertification first
became apparent to me working as a young biologist/game ranger in Africa
in the 1950s. Studying the damage experienced through government policy
to burn Africa's grasslands I could not help but observe that the
healthiest land was associated with remnant wild populations of large
game animals. Where large populations of thousands of buffalo and other
game, complete with packs of lions that followed closely and kept the
herds bunched, the soil and vegetation was healthiest. What the wild,
large concentrated herds did not consume, they trampled onto the ground,
thus removing the old growth and preparing both plants and soils for new
growth. The animals in intact communities were doing what we were using
fire to do, but doing it better with no adverse effects of soil,
wetlands, springs and rivers.

The world’s vast savannas and grasslands developed over millions of
years with soil, soil life, plants, grazing herbivores and their
predators—all acting as one vast indivisible functioning whole in
nature. The world’s large grazing animals tend to run in herds as a
defense strategy against pack-hunting predators. The larger the number
of animals, both prey and predator, the larger the herd masses. Such
herding grazers have what are referred to as non-self-regulating
populations. This means their numbers are only controlled by accident,
disease or predation, rather than any innate breeding control.

Because they cannot regulate their own numbers these populations were
often enormous with numbers running to many millions. The diaries of
early travelers in Africa and the Americas record vast herds, which in
all likelihood were but remnants of earlier much larger numbers. In the
early 1800s, for instance, some 17,000 antelope were shot in a one-day
hunt provided for the Prince of Wales in South Africa. Records kept by
early South African pioneers describe substantial wetlands, sponges and
springs associated with the vast herds but which dried up rapidly as
soon as the herds were killed off and their former role was replaced
with fire.

Today with far fewer numbers still, the same land is considered desert,
despite no change in rainfall. The evidence appears strong that large
numbers were the rule rather than the exception in the grasslands humans
inherited. And yet to save these grasslands today, the common
prescription is to reduce or remove the animals, especially livestock,
so the grasses and soils can “recover” and then to burn the old material
to keep the plants alive.

In fact, only large herbivores, wild and domestic, can restore
grasslands to their former health and productivity on the scale needed
and with the speed required. They can replace the need for frequent
burning, which pollutes the atmosphere and exposes soils, while
enhancing the production of organic matter and maintaining soil cover.
What’s more, they provide these services while also producing food and
fiber for people. Since we generally aim to keep wild animals wild, the
large herbivores most easily harnessed for this task are livestock.
Under Holistic Management planned grazing they become tools for land
reclamation, while also producing sustenance or a profit for those
managing them.

Today some 12 million hectares of rangeland are under holistic planned
grazing in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Africa and Australia mainly. Many
are the people witnessing the reversal of desertification using greatly
increased livestock numbers integrated with wildlife.

Part 5.

The Vilification of Livestock as a Cause of Global Climate Change Versus
the Truth: They’re a Vital Part of the Solution to Climate Change

While livestock are the only practical and readily available tool with
which to reverse the degradation of the world’s rangelands to address
this aspect of global climate change, we face an extraordinary situation
of great confusion and danger.

Powerful bureaucracies, such as the United Nations Food & Agriculture
Organization (FAO), and major environmental organizations, ably assisted
by the media, are today vilifying livestock, cattle in particular.

Take, for example, the recently released FAO report that cattle are
responsible for more greenhouse gases than automobiles. The report calls
attention to how much methane cows produce, as well as the high amount
of water required to produce a pound of beef or gallon of milk.
Tragically even the professional Society for Range Management in an
issue paper on global climate change states that “Methane from grazing
livestock represents about 20% of the total U.S. emissions.

What is consistently ignored is the fact that what is actually being
condemned by the research is industrial agriculture with its factory
model of animal production. Because mainstream institutional researchers
and others are not distinguishing between animals in factory settings,
overfed grains they did not evolve to eat, and animals grazing on ranges
as they evolved to do, they are doing untold damage by causing
unnecessary confusion.

The world's enormous population, increasingly in cities, needs to be fed
and healthy meat and milk will be required. To reverse desertification
world wide will require many millions more cattle, goats, donkeys, sheep
and camels than we have today. To illustrate this need for increased
livestock to reverse desertification, which is counter intuitive, the
Africa Centre for Holistic Management is managing rangeland in Zimbabwe.
On this land they are running 400% more livestock than it originally did.

Through two recent serious droughts they have increased livestock
further and the river that had gone dry in most years is once more
flowing perennially in most years supporting a great increase in animal
life. Both the retention of water and carbon, which follows a similar
fate being linked to soil organic matter, have increased. Visiting range
scientists from the Cape to Ethiopia are now benefitting from this case
study example.

It is counter-productive to quote numbers of cattle, assume ranges are
overstocked and then condemn meat production. Take Texas as one example.
The official USDA stocking rate for cattle in West Texas a hundred years
ago today looks like science fiction. Travel any day through hundreds of
miles of West Texas and you are likely to count less than 100 head of
cattle in 300 miles. The ranges you will drive through exhibit mile
after mile of dying grassland with generally over 80% bare soil between
plants, and being severely invaded by woody plants. As you travel, you
might pass one of the feedlot concentration areas conveniently
positioned for cheap grain transport, and here you will smell before you
see the hundreds of thousands of animals in pens being force fed grain
as they are readied for slaughter.

It is these animals we need desperately to get out of pens and back onto
rangelands and to increase dramatically if we are to restore rangelands
to health and address global climate change to save our cities.

Part 6. The Need for a Holistic World View

We need to recognize at a deep level our dependence on the environment,
yet we are disassociated from it. Example: Nobel Prizes are awarded for
so many areas of endeavor, but not for agriculture or the environment.

The earliest beginning of the holistic world view of which I am aware,
because he brought it into the English scientific literature, occurred
with the publication of Holism and Evolution in 1926 by Jan Christian
Smuts. While others, since Smuts, have involved themselves in
philosophical holism I chose to avoid this path in favour of learning
how we could actually make decisions holistically because past
civilizations and peoples that undoubtedly thought more holistically and
were more in tune with nature still succumbed to environmental
degradation. [...]

Only through uniting and diverting all the resources required to deal
with climate change and land degradation can we avert unimaginable
tragedy. We have all the money we need. All we cannot buy is time.