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
There’s a longer version with more detail below, about an hour long. Also worth watching if you want to understand the process in more detail:
Feasta Lecture 2009
Extracts available at vimeo.com/8291896
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.
feasta.org/events/general/2009_lecture.htm
Recorded 7 November 2009, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
Yet another comment:
Since Savory was presenting to an audience that was known to be steeped in the AGW “kool-aid”, so to speak, and they commonly speak in absolute alarmist terms, I would be surprised if he DIDN’T come out with a strong statement about his opinion of a solution.
If he had used namby-pamby language, hemming and hawing, and acting like holistic grazing management “could” be a possible solution, “might” be worth looking into, they probably would have trod him into the dirt and moved on to the next show.
We Americans are so accustomed to the idea that “everyone” should have the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”, that we find it nearly impossible to wrap our brain around the rather common mindset that dictates that only the powerful few at the top of the pyramid should have wealth and resources, and everyone else can just eat dirt. I see the movement to destroy the family farm and move everyone off the land and into cities as one manifestation of that attitude.
I can’t help but wonder if the fact that so many of the wealthy individuals these days didn’t actually earn their wealth, but inherited it, and that has caused them to want to prevent there from being any competitors that might threaten their stash.
I thought the Savory anti CO2 stuff spoilt the lecture. He talks about burning as though it was mankind who ‘invented’ it. Surely with so many plants/trees evolving via naturally caused lightning strikes the notion of desertification [and available satellite images of a gradual greening of the southern sahara] for me lessened the impact. Why would he want to reduce CO2 levels if a CO2 increase encourages plant/tree growth? And frankly the thought of sustaining the greening with zillions of hungry cattle and all the husbandry that entails also reduced the plausibility of continent wide re-greening being a real possibility. To me anyway. No question it works but in a scale that would take millennia to change the sat nav image areas of desert to green. Bring on more CO2 I say.
Great find, Anthony! I think Dr. Savory’s work is as important to the future of grasslands as Dr. Norman Borlaug’s work was to the future of feeding the world. I certainly hope he gets more of a chance to teach others about his work. It certainly is a much better idea than what our fool Dr. Hansen would be proposing.
About that burning grasslands – fire is that what they are accustomed to, otherwise they would be a forest. African savanna grasses are developed so that they are able to sprout a lot of biomass, get burned and as quickly as possible to grow again after the fire.
Interesting implications for Australia, where cattle have been shut out of high country grazing on “environmental grounds”. So what happens is that the grass grows, then lightning strikes and creates bushfires that destroy the grass and trees – are we heading for desertification of our mountain areas? The current rationale is that bushfires regenerate the native vegetation.
Another good watch with out too much AGW.
J. Philip Peterson says:
March 9, 2013 at 10:17 pm
Ah. My post was what I understood to be the point of Savory’s post. According to the accompanying text above, this was:
That was what my other post was about, the need for animals in agriculture.
Sure. For me, the misting and the bowing were all part of acting without all of my considerations. Didn’t matter whether the person was a prince or a pervert, I just misted them and bowed to them. It was a marvelous exercise, don’t get to do that too often.
I’ve written on the order of 500 pieces that have been published here on WUWT … after a while, you just get better. I’d lay odds that if you did the same, you’d end up much better than you started …
w.
Having read all of the comments now, I must add that it sounds like Dr. Savory’s ideas are not the only good ones out there. I’m all for whatever works, from rotational grazing on out. Unlike Dr. Savory, I don’t believe that my idea is the only solution. I also have a much greater appreciation for the subtle wisdom of the average farmer who manages his land wisely and keeps the grassland from turning into a desert.
atheok says:
March 9, 2013 at 11:13 pm
What I used to say is that ranchers own their cows … but dairy farmers are married to their cows. Serious work.
w.
The first statement is a little like FDR killing livestock and pouring milk down the drain to induce demand.
What Limits Trees in C4 Grasslands and Savannas?
http://www.sysecol2.ethz.ch/Refs/EntClim/B/Bo248.pdf
Herbivores and fire.
Clive Schaupmeyer says:
March 9, 2013 at 9:00 pm
Here’s how the land use splits out, in billions of hectares for direct comparison with his claim. …
To start with, there aren’t a billion hectares of grasslands in all of Africa …
w.
Data for the graph is from the GAEZ study, Dataset 1 and Table 44.
he may be right, but may be exagerating too.
He is talking about grasslands that became desert..
Arid lands have been restored across the globe using a variety of techniques. This is probably a good technique for restoring vast tracts of land. If you want your eyes opened on how degraded soil handles a rain shower vs healthy soil you have to watch this:
(one minute).
Frankly, I’ve been telling for years that desertification is the most important cause of global warming. Hopefully this video will do some good.
Larry in Texas says:
March 10, 2013 at 12:35 am
Great find, Anthony! I think Dr. Savory’s work is as important to the future of grasslands as Dr. Norman Borlaug’s work was to the future of feeding the world.
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I’m afraid that this kind of hyperbole, like Anthony’s in making this a sticky post, just illustrates how removed most people are from contemporary agricultural practice.
There is nothing wrong with people like Savory spruiking their nostrums about how to save the world, but anyone who claims to have the One Right Way is always wrong in part. People who make a lifetime career of it are would-be messiahs or their followers. Undeterred by being wrong, they just find a new One Right Way.
I agree with David Hoffman and others who have pointed out that there is nothing new about anything he says. What’s more, it is just absurd to apply it across the board. There is a big difference between a claypan desert and a sandy desert and a stony desert.
Most importantly, in a real desert, it ain’t gonna happen. He is talking about semi-arid regions, at the margins. A few years of serious drought and most of his projects would be in ruins.
He’s a pretty good snake-oil salesman, as the comments here indicate. But, other people have been doing what he talks about for a very long time, where it is applicable. They weren’t trying to save the world, just to make a living. That’s how human progress usually happens.
The errors already identified and his lack of citations would have him shot down in flames if his name ended in Mann or Ehrlich.
farmerbraun says: March 9, 2013 at 9:50 pm “Organic” because it arose from a concern for conservation of soil carbon , or organic matter. If you don’t mind me asking Geoff, what exactly is the problem that you have with that?
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Don’t play the disingenuous game, please. You now that there is a self-invented definitional difference between normal farming and organic farming that is far deeper than your chosen words suggest. The latter dissuades the use of agricultural chemicals. It is based on ignorance of the chemistry of plant growth. It is an insult to chemical professionalism.
I’m not going to give oxygen. Just the one example, where in your studiously principled way you say from the tablet of stone “To maintain the long-term fertility of soils.”
You cannot maintain the fertility of soils when you harvest plant or animal crops and take them off location. There are a dozen or so moderate to trace elements, leaving aside for the moment other than inorganic chemicals, that are depleted each time you take material off the site. One of them will eventually fall below the level need to give growth and the crop will fail. Perhaps one example is potassium. Repeated removal of potassium is not balanced in most cases by the rapid decay of enough bedrock to replace the potassium. Hence, addition of fertilizer in the form of KCl (potash) is commonly a part or normal farming. Another inorganic example would be zinc, another molybdenum. All of these have recorded instances where crops have exhausted the supply; but the soil has recovered after their addition as chemical fertilizers, which is against the Holy Writ of strict organic farming.
I spent some years researching the nutrient supply of plants and their effects on soils. I will state categorically that if you tried to feed the world by organic farming as currently most usually defined, you would be rewarded by mass starvation. It is nothing more than a trendy, passing, “Child of Nature” trend. Try to harm as few people as you can if you opt for it.
OTOH, the way that Allan Savory presents his case is far less troublesome and far more full of logic, observation and likely success. This is because his method is designed to increase the long-term fertility of the soil – by a plausible mechanism.
Picked up on this org from a comment on another thread. Seems very pertinent on this one.
http://www.heifer.org/ourwork/success/africa/florence-yotamus-testimony
Allan Savory put forward proposals like this in what was Rhodesia before it became ZImbabwe. I was there at the time as a TV producer and we followed up on this. Although some pooh-poohed the idea, many of my farmer friends implemented the ideas which proved very successful. Rhodesia was once a vibrant food producing nation with some of the best grass-fed beef in the world with it’s healthy low fat/cholesterol content. Sadly all my friends farms have been invaded and stolen. When there no so long ago, all the cattle had been slaughtered, no crops planted and most of the farm houses vandalised and destroyed. South Africa is experiencing low rainfall this season and the maize crop has been adjusted downwards by some 15/20%. As South Africa feeds most of the southern region, there is every chance of a future famine on a biblical scale.
Yay thanks, I have been enlightened.
The hooves of a million livestock will plough a desert
@Clive
“That’s 10,000,000 sq km or one third of the entire land area of the African continent is burned annually. Is that possible? Seems a stretch.”
Burning was used in northern Alberta (for example) to keep the forest back. Without humana management burning the open spaces each year, the forest would completely take over and the deer production drops off a lot. West of Stoney Plain the forest has completely taken over after burning was stopped a few decades ago.
Burning in Africa is largely to get rid of the thick hay left from the summer. After burning, usually done when the ground is slightly damp and wind is low so no one loses a house, the green sprouts are visible a few days later and the animals are driven there to graze on them.
If the burning is banned (as is often the case) inevitable fires from lightning of a spark from a fire lay waste huge regions as happened around Badplass a decade ago. The fire is very hot and destroys everything.
Fynbos is a vegetative cover the requires fire to survive. Around Cape Town the protea flowers by the highways are burned individually by road workers so they will bloom. Fire is part of the environment, naturally and eternally. All biomass fires are Carbon neutral, in case you are worried about that, just like stable grassland or a stable forest. The smoke prodices rain somewhere else. Carefully timed fires can induce rain in a drought (a traditional practise of natives in N America and Africa).
Leaving cattle to eat whatever they like in a large area results inevitably in the growth of everything they do not like, which then takes over, reducing production.
davidmhoffer says:
March 9, 2013 at 4:54 pm
Francois GM;
I can’t believe 15 million hectares have been saved from the desert and we have no scientific data to show for it.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Was that his claim?
Wow.
At 6000 cars per hectare, he is off setting the co2 from 90 billion cars.
I’m guessing we have no scientific data for that either….
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You must have missed it in the first part of the long video where he talks about Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.” In less than 2 minutes into his lecture he starts.
How much reference do you need?
My guess is he couldn’t stand being out of money after spending it on bullets while CAGW gets all the dough. It looks like biodiversity loss was not enough so he added desertification and climate change. He did what the team did and just changed the name.
It’s now all called Environmental Malfunction.
Don’t tell Mann or we’ll have Climate Disruption causing cows to stop grazing…with proof.
He’ll get his money without our help because he tipped his hat to Al Gore and CAGW.
cn
Geoff Sherrington, well said.
Just like some fool above claimed that this was as important as the contribution of Norman Borlaug, the notion that the application of science to farming is ‘going against Nature’ and doomed to eventual failure is hippie nonsense promulgated by the well-fed.
As for goats, they are the cockroaches of the mammalian world, along with rats. They serve a useful purpose, but anyone who knows anything about them know that in a confined or low-food area, they have a scorched-earth eating policy.
My old man used to keep one on a long chain when he owned acres. He would tie it up anywhere that noxious weeds were becoming a problem. After a week or two, the ground was suitable for reseeding or replanting. Not a blade or leaf or root was left.
With regard to soil tillage Peter Andrews, a leading Australian Horse Trainer and soil conservationist and author of “Back from the Brink” , says a good horse paddock should never be plowed and should contain 85 different plant species.
During WWII in the UK horse breeders stood by their gates with guns to stop the authorities from plowing up their horse paddocks to raise food, it was that precious to them.
geran says:
March 9, 2013 at 7:48 pm
Christoph Dollis says:
March 9, 2013 at 6:16
(…..)
There’s more to it than just any personal appeal he might have. And no, his killing 40,000 elephants, in error, doesn’t impress me. His owning up to it does.
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Sadly, there is nothing a false messiah can do to alienate his followers….
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He had to admit it before he could start on his new venture.
You know he would have been caught and the greenies would never let it slide.
But forgiveness, sure it’s easy as long as you hate CO2, okay.
cn
NASA did a radar scan of the Sahara from the Shuttle and they found direct evidence that it was once a lush wet grassland…that there was a Great Lakes worth of fresh water beneath the surface that bubbled up here and there into lush oases. The last remnants of what once was. Further research determined that the cause was a drastic climate change; that the Monsoon rain belt drastically shifted away and withdrew it’s blessings. Within a short couple of years desertification set in. The native populace relocated to the lush fertile Nile Valley and founded the Egyptian Civilization. This was all chronicled on the excellent History Channel documentray ‘How the Earth Was Made’.