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.
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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
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Peter in Ohio
‘…”No-one knew then that he would go on to destroy his country, starve his people, wreck an economy,….”
————————————–
Anyone taking even a cursory glance at the history of post-colonial Africa had a pretty good idea of what Mugabe’s Zimbabwe was going to look like.’
The time being focussed on was the self-proclaimed, quasi-dictatorial, militarily-enforced, minority invader-colonist government of the Smith regime. US War of Revolution pro-democratic patriots would have recognised the situation for what it was instantly.
As for what was to happen in ‘post-colonial Africa’, in hindsight we are all pretty right, usually.
OTOH, who would have been able to predict that nations cobbled together from European border disputes, economies based on extracting value for metropolitan powers, with no history of civil institutions, no history of democracy, and centuries of learning that might is right would suddenly behave just like middle-class western democracies?
Bill Parsons says, ‘…cows need around 20 gallons a day.’
While some of that wil be lost maintaining temperature control, a lot of it ends on the ground by way of being a component of urine and dung.
OTOH kangaroos can survive off plant moisture.
http://www.livescience.com/27400-kangaroos.html
And as anyone who has had a look at fresh kangaroo dung can confirm, it contains very, very little moisture. In the desert, everything hangs on to what it get, moisture-wise and then tends to use it abstemiously.
This goes to my point that one of the issues with Savory’s (shorter) presentation above is that he tends to use ‘desert’ and ‘rangeland’ interchangeably. What might work in African savannahs with regular rainfall would probably not work in Australia’s boom and bust deserts.
Gary Lensman says
‘Sorry Ace, you said
Quote
Mimicing nature’ in a holistic way can not mean having a human population of 10 billion or 20 billion or 30 billion or wherever optimum human population it is that endless growth advocates think we should be aiming for.
Unquote
As I said, hyperbole.
And you did not answer my question, which form of science is your god?’
It is not me who is calling for a global population. I was merely reporting what pro-development people are promoting. If they are being hyperbolic, so be it. You have missed my point. You cannot run 100 billion people (or even 7 billion people) on planet earth by mimicing nature. You have to ignore nature and make your own rules. We are doing that. Therefore we are on our own.
http://growthunlimited.blogspot.com.au/2006/12/happy-new-world-with-100-billion-people.html
In answer to your question, there are no gods.
William Abbott says
‘When you own the land you have every incentive to take care of it, to make it more productive & more valuable.’
I agree with this statement but with an important proviso. The land has to be able to generate a profit. In Australia we have regrowth areas that were cleared and then abandoned because they became unprofitable to farm. (I believe that the Wildnerness area that featured in American Civil War battles was the same) . When capital has dried up, personal energy has dried up, so do maintenance of farm infrastructure, care for soils and care of biodiversity. (I should mention in passing that some of Australia’s regrowth areas are being re-cleared and are being farmed profitably using new farming techniques.)
Right now we have farmers literally walking off the land in the eastern and north-eastern stretches of Western Australian wheatbelt because their climate is changing… drier, more variable rains, different seasonality of rains, and warmer. IMHO, these farmers would be amongst the most sophisticated dryland farmers in the world. They are masters at minimum tillage and soil moisture conservation.
But they simply cannot make a buck any more. These farmers were the least likely sociological group in Australia to support AGW. Now they are openly discussing the possibility that ‘…something might be going on.’ And why wouldn’t they? They are now amongst the world’s first AGW refugees.
John in New Zealand says:
‘What I found amazing was that so many people in positions of power had no idea that rotational grazing is sustainable. I now have a better understanding why the greenies want us to be vegetarians. They think livestock are bad for the environment.’
I am not sure ‘greenies’ think. They seem to be some sort of hate-object for large numbers of WUWT posters. I have never seen a green-skinned person but when I do, I will ask them what they really think.
One of the concepts of understanding energy and nutrient flows in both natural and anthropogenically-modified systems is that of trophic levels. Simplied, it says that if you eat grass to maintain yourself, you use less energy and nutrients to gain and maintain body weight. If you eat things that eat grass, including cattle, you use far more energy and nutrients to maintain the same body weight. If you eat eaters of grasseaters, say lions, then again you go up the trophic chain and you use extremely high amounts of nutrients and energy. (Amongst other things, this explains why the only eaters of eaters of grasseaters are small parasites).
In the sense that cattle grazing, along with associated hydrology changes, along with associated land management changes such as the intentional and non-intentional introduction of propagules has a major impact of reducing wild genese by extinction or range contraction. If one way of looking at the environment is range of wild genese, then cattle are bad for the environment. Very bad.
The concept of trophic levels has relevant applications. If you want to minimise the rate of loss of wild genetics by extinction, (or more usually, by contraction of range) then, logically, you would seek to obtain human nutrients from as far down the trophic chain as you get and in so doing reduce anthropogenic pressures and disturbances on nature.
OTOH, if you are concerned that around 1 billion people a year go to bed hungry each night, one strategic solution would be to move human consumption of nutrients and energy as far down the trophic chain as you can get.
Anssi V. says:
March 11, 2013 at 10:27 am
Thanks, Anssi. It’s a fascinating link, but I’m not sure what it means. The most common orange color means on the order of 10 fires per 1000 sq. km per day, or one fire per 100 sq. km. That’s one fire per 10,000 hectares per day, or one fire per 25,000 acres per day …
So how big are these fires, and how significant is this, if we have one fire per 25,000 acres (10,000 hectares) per day?
w.
John Tillman says:
March 11, 2013 at 10:42 am
They say 11,450 pounds of CO2 per passenger car (5190 kg). That’s about 3,100 pounds (1,415 kg) of carbon per car. Six thousand cars will produce about 18 million pounds of carbon annually … sorry, but that agrees with my figures. I figured more gasoline (US mileage and distance vs European), but the difference wasn’t large Something is terribly wrong with his numbers.
w.
retiredranger says:
March 11, 2013 at 11:30 am
… [much good stuff] …
First, thanks for your experienced and considered views, much appreciated. And your point is well taken, that the original ecosystems need to be considered when looking at the effects of grazing.
I’m curious as to the disentangling of the reduction in grazing versus the protection of the riparian areas. What are the different effects of each one applied separately?
All the best,
w.
People critical of the Savory presentation perhaps need to know that this video is only an introduction to a 40 hour (basic) course. (Stan Parsons and others run similar courses) The ideas are simple but a better understanding only comes with time and experience (such is life).
Just a few points (and please note that I do not have any great understanding of the whole thing)
1. Perhaps the most important idea is matching Stocking Rate to Carrying Capacity. People questioning how Savorys ideas could work in semi-desert environments need to note this.
2. The best practitioners use Grazing Charts (A1 size). That is their grazing database (in some cases going back decades). The performance and production is well documented.
I know two researchers (and have heard of a couple more) who wanted to do research on this stuff, however none were able to get funding. No funding means no research which means nothing in the literature. It tells us more about the grant makers than anything else.
3. Rest for the pasture is critical, but is it too much or too little for the preferred pasture species and is it enough to break the life-cycle of ticks, worms etc. This rather depends on weather variations and whether you live in a brittle or non-brittle environment.
4. Infiltration is essential for production. Run-off and evaporation are dead losses (except for where run-off is required for dam water).
5. Succession in the pasture community is an indicator of the success (or otherwise) of the management practices employed. This can be and is monitored.
The introduction of fencing started the demise of shepherds. I’ve often wondered what the shepherds knew but the fence builders did not. I very much doubt that this kind of knowledge is innate. We often see successional changes following periods of low prices or prolonged drought. The old timers decide that they have had enough and pass on or sell the farm/ranch. Most of them keep much (or all) of what they know in their heads. When they leave, or die, that knowledge is lost “like tears in rain”. How much of what our forbears knew (and probably learnt the hard way) has been lost to us?
Justus says:
March 11, 2013 at 3:18 pm
Thanks, Justus. The great desert belts of the planet are located at ≈ 30° north and south of the Equator. The dry air from the tropics descends there, meaning little rainfall.
Now, these desert belts are not fixed. They shift unpredictably polewards and equatorwards. As a result, some of what you call “the encroachment of deserts” is nothing more than these natural swings. So not all desert encroachment is “a very real problem caused by humans”. Some is, absolutely … but not all.
w.
Larry in Texas says:
March 11, 2013 at 3:26 pm
I wouldn’t go that far. But his constant attacks are wearying. He’s a smart guy, and insightful. I just wish he do that instead of trying to tear things down.
w.
Climate Ace says:
“These farmers were the least likely sociological group in Australia to support AGW. Now they are openly discussing the possibility that ‘…something might be going on.’ And why wouldn’t they? They are now amongst the world’s first AGW refugees.”
The world’s first climate refugees? That’s emotion talking. Ever hear of the Azteks?
The climate is always changing. Always has, always will. Naturally.
A key limiting factor to the amount of land mass that can be covered by vegetation is CO2. More than half of the current land mass on earth is relatively barren. If you want a lusher planet all over, you need much more CO2 in the air. This man seems to be attempting to cover a vast amount of land with vegetation for the main purpose of reducing CO2 concentration worldwide, which in turn would place even lower limits to the amount of vegetation that can be sustained. The required additional CO2 has to come from somewhere. Or else you will need to desertify other regions or at least put plants on a low CO2 diet somewhere else. There is some kind weird contradiction in these endeavors, as if someone were trying to increase something by reducing (or for the purpose of reducing) the amount of food available to sustain the very increase you are trying to obtain.
Well, maybe if you bring atmospheric CO2 levels down enough, you may get the oceans to start regurgitating some of the carbon they hoard, but that’s a slow process. I think it’s great to want to green deserts. But you shouldn’t simultaneously get all excited about the prospect that, once those deserts they take from the air all the food they need to become green, there will be a lot less food available to keep them that way. This is what really excites him.
One way or another you will need more CO2 to have more land covered by plants. If you give me a little toy desert, say in a greenhouse, and you tell me: “now green it!” The first thing I will ask is whether I can pump in some extra CO2, the more the better. I wouldn’t say that my goal is to have as little CO2 available as possible. Good lord!
DB Stealey says
‘Ever hear of the Azteks?’
Frankly, no. Are they related to daleks?
Climate Ace;
OTOH, if you are concerned that around 1 billion people a year go to bed hungry each night, one strategic solution would be to move human consumption of nutrients and energy as far down the trophic chain as you can get
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Since the problem is entirely one of corrupt and ineffective governance rather than a shortage of food, this would solve precisely nothing.
My guess is that Savory based that comparison on somebody’s estimate of total CO2 emissions from all the worlds’ passenger cars.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The CO2 number is so unsupportable that I suspect the number was arrived at a different way. It is a technique (which I despise) frequently used in marketing strategies. Find some element that is produced in minute (the smaller the better, as long as you can measure it) quantities by gasoline and in larger (significant) quantities by burning grass. Both quantities could be completely meaningless, as long as the ratio is 6,000 to 1.
I saw an advert on tv the other day claiming that two slices of bread contained a long list of vitamens and minerals. Why two slices? Wouldn’t one slice have the same? Turns out no. Some of the list occurred in amounts so small that they needed two slices just to have enough to measure and say it existed. So the list gets longer, but half of it is meaningless. This is the same thing, I’m betting they found something (ash maybe?) that barely occurs at all in gasoline and there’s 6,000 times as much…but still meaningless….in grass. Hmmm. Does gasoline produce THC? I bet grass produces at LEAST 6,000 times as much.
The most important thing to remember with grazers in Africa might be this…
http://www.dump.com/wildebeestcontemplate/
Climate Ace says: March 11, 2013 at 4:52 pm
“…… In Australia we have regrowth areas that were cleared and then abandoned because they became unprofitable to farm. …..
Right now we have farmers literally walking off the land in the eastern and north-eastern stretches of Western Australian wheatbelt because their climate is changing… drier, more variable rains, different seasonality of rains, and warmer. IMHO, these farmers would be amongst the most sophisticated dryland farmers in the world. They are masters at minimum tillage and soil moisture conservation…..”
Ace, should we also consider other factors in this which would have major impacts on profitability in marginal conditions?:
1. Massive increases in fuel costs, and also associated logistics/transportation.
2. Increased salaries for workers and great difficulty in getting workers – due to the mining boom.
3. Increase government costs and much greater administrative requirements: GST +Carbon Tax.
4. Bracket creep in taxation: A greater proportion of profit is paid in tax in the face of rising turnover and costs.
5. Recent periods of high interest finance have eaten away cash reserves.
6. The loss of the AWB single trading desk (Privatised!), and associated further exposure to the biased ‘free market’ concepts of (primarily) USA centric ‘big business’, loss of moderation of prices, and regularity and certainty of payment.
6. Sociological changes … the younger generation with their different expectations of life are departing and not coming back: (loss of free labour and the incentive for continuity of ownership).
I believe it oversimplifies the issue to simply blame “climate change” and I’m not sure we have the data there to ascertain the significance or normality of recent changes, although I’d agree that ‘government reaction to fear of climate change’ has probably played a significant role.
mark ro says: March 11, 2013 at 7:17 pm
The most important thing to remember with grazers in Africa might be this…
http://www.dump.com/wildebeestcontemplate/
Ha ha… Love it Mark!… A friend of mine (a cattleman) sent it to me recently saying “Ya gotta really know bovines and their thinking to get just how funny and true to life this is!”
Climate Ace says:
March 11, 2013 at 6:34 pm
DB Stealey says
‘Ever hear of the Azteks?’
Frankly, no. Are they related to daleks?
———–
No, the Azteks, weren’t they an early Motown group from the late 50s?
cn
Over 500 posts and not one comment that Dr. Savory’s goal has as an end result the destruction of the world’s desert ecosystems and the massive extinction of desert species.
While I fear this may be off topic- this comment thread begs for an answer. How many comments would we expect to pass before the first concern raised for desert species if :
• Dr. Savory had not carefully framed deserts as the end result of destructive human action
• Dr. Savory clearly and openly stated to achieve his desired goal we must destroy desert ecosystems and countless desert species.
What would be the expected reaction if Dr. Savory postulated some great human benefit that was achieved by an “extractive process” rather than framed as a “green process”? Do these comments reveal we view desert and/or desert species as less valueable and worthy of protection?
The psychology and value judgments at play here are fascinating.
Heavens I’m late to this party – 529 comments. My little story – In a previous life I owned a deer farm in NZ and practised (as far as I can make out) some of the same techniques Allan S is advocating. It was an extremely low cost and efficient way of farming. In my case it was an intensive rotational grazing regime for 7 months of the year plus 1 month of open gate policy during spring across the whole whole farm while the delicate new grass shoots were emerging. The remaining months saw the roar (mating) and at the other end of the year the hinds were given space to give birth. One immediate benefit was that no supplementary feeding was necessary during the harsh winter months because pasture recovery was so efficient and fast. Also because the animals were continually moved onto fresh pasture they weren’t exposed to lung worms and other parasites meaning I didn’t need to drench – unlike neighbouring farmers. Savory mentions in one paper that the “golden” hooves trampled the standing straw which became water retaining mulch for the soil. Also that the intensive spread of urine and dung helped pasture recover. Meanwhile my neighbouring farmers appeared too busy burning up fuel in their large tractors pulling heavy implements to till and resow pasture and make hay/silage/bailage etc for winter feed to notice what was going on “over the fence”. The proof in the pudding were the top prices we got year after year at the annual yearling deer sale auctions.
This is very interesting. I remember reading an essay a few years back by a cattle rancher in Colorado about using the intensive rotational grazing technique. He used movable electric fences to create new paddocks and found the results provided better pasture even in dry years. I couldn’t find that particular piece, but I managed to find another from a cattle ranch in Arizona that has engaged in a very intensive rotation and review of their results. I don’t know if all ranchers, particularly Third World ranchers, would be so into the details, but this verifies that rotational grazing works in Arizona’s dry climate.
http://doublecircleranch.com/sustainable-ranching-at-the-double-circle-ranch/rotational-grazing/
I also worked on an outback cattle station up North West Queensland way – for anybody who knows the area the closest town was Cloncurry and closest drinking hole (1/2 way to Cloncurry) was a Pub called Quamby. These cattle stations predominately farmed a 2/3rds brahman and 1/3rd shorthorn cattle cross. Really wild buggers every one of em. My point is simply that this station and others like it may have benefited immensely by using Savory’s techniques. However it would have been problematic introducing intensive grazing regimes because, for example, on the station I worked on the house paddock where the brood mares were kept was 120 square miles. And it would take up to a week to muster a paddock both a helicopter and 4-5 stockmen including me.
If you watch the hour-long version of the presentation, not only will you get a much better feel for what this Savory guy is trying to say (and I think that at a minimum it merits a much closer look), but you’ll also be hard pressed not to conclude that the continuous flow of his climate change platitudes are driven at least as much by a marketing strategy as anything else. He’s convinced that confronting The Church head-on is biting off more than he can chew, so he attempts to soothe the beast by stroking its fragile paradigm (so to speak).
Now, maybe he swallows The Church’s teachings wholecloth, maybe he doesn’t (seems almost certain he did at some point in his life, but that’s another story…), but his platitudes come across more as lip service than true belief. Clearly he sees all the attention and funding that go to the church, and clearly he understands that its teachings (“Gazillions more CATTLE? So people can EAT MORE MEAT? AAHHHH!!!”) is the single greatest obstacle to convincing some meaningful chunk of the world that his cause is worthy. There is no way in hell this project does anything but tremendous harm to the The One True Cause: not only does it not help the cause in any way, it also says that Gaia IS AN OMNIVORE! Livestock is an integral piece of the fragile whole, says Mr. Savory, the plain implication being that Earth cannot properly function without meat — lots and lots and lots of it! For this and many other reasons, the church truly IS his greatest obstacle, and it would be little less than shocking if Mr. Savory were sufficiently obtuse not to know this and know it well.
If you see the church as the driving force that is keeping the world in the dark on an issue as important to said world as he believes his issue to be, you will soon swallow the kool-aid less automatically; you might even begin to look at the CGAW body of work somewhat — dare we say it? — skeptically! None of this is to say that Mr. Savory hasn’t willed himself to keep the CAGW faith, as surely he must know that it’s the less risky path to hold on to such faith in order to better blend and do business with the natives. But he knows his cause’s true enemy, and it’s highly unlikely he hasn’t yet realized that what he is dealing with in that enemy is Religion, first and foremost.
FWIW.