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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davidmhoffer says:
March 9, 2013 at 7:55 am
But the part of this video that p*ssed me of the most is this guy’s certainty that this solution of his is our only choice.
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I didn’t get the message that it was the only solution. Rather that it works, and is contrary to what we have been taught.
A lot of the world is too poor to afford the equipment for mechanized dry-land agriculture. For these people livestock provide a self-manufacturing and self-repairing alternative, that still provides an edible byproduct (meat/milk) for the people that manage the land.
As has been shown in Canada and the US, you can replace the livestock with mechanical “livestock” and harvest the seeds of the grass (grain) as food in place of using livestock as food. However, to do this requires that you first create the industrialized infrastructure to produce and repair the “mechanical cattle”.
I found the talk an eye opener and it directly contradicts Packy and the IPCC’s claim that vegetarianism is the solution to reducing climate change. What has been shown is that reducing cattle numbers does not work to restore the land. You need to mimic nature. Grazing animals and grass evolved together. You cannot remove one without destroying the other. Either the grazing must be done by herds of animals, or by herds of machines.
Some ranchers in Southern Arizona are doing something very similar to this and their ranches now look very lush. Interesting…
Stephen Wilde says:
March 9, 2013 at 8:20 am
davdmhoffer:
Spot on. The guy is just another blinkered knowall who thinks that whatever he says must be true just because he said it.
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You are reading between the lines to reach a conclusion that isn’t in the talk. Clearly “mechanized cattle” works as an alternative in countries that have the industrialized base to support if.
What I took from the talk is that:
1. Our education system has largely ignored the simple fact that gazing animals and grass co-evolved. You cannot remove one without destroying the other.
2. Fencing in animals and limiting their ability to herd and move is turning the grass lands of the planet into deserts. This is a significant problem that can be solved by changing farm management practices.
2. 1 hectare of desert = 6,000 cars. 1 billion hectare = 1/2 the desert of the word = 6 trillion cars. By reclaiming 1/2 the deserts we would remove enough CO2 for everyone on earth to drive 1000 cars.
Before we go overboard on this, I suspect we need to be careful extrapolating this to all the entire planet. What is happening here is that we have a “solution” to one cause of desertification in specific areas. I will agree that savannah areas are going to be attractive option, but much of the planet either does not have this problem because it is high humidity for the entire year, or has such variable rainfall that this kind of ground cover will lead to salinity problems of a raising water table.
As an example, many people are talking about Australia, but most of the central areas of Australia have such variable rainfall that to calculate an “average annual” figure is completely useless. In this case, what is needed are deeper-rooted trees to keep the water table low as when there is no vegetation (or grasses and other crops) the water table rises and evaporates leaving high levels of salt. Admittedly, Australia is different in that it pretty much never had large herds of grazing animals with big predators and maybe this is why!
The best thing about this approach is that Savoury was prepared to go against the “less is more” mantra of the “sustainability” set and not just advocate for but actually show that intensification is the solution in this case. It might not be applicable everywhere, but it is clearly a better option than keeping people and domestic animals out of savannahs.
Scientist invents farming. Planet saved.
Do we need any further evidence why ecologists, environmentalists and climatologists should be locked away and not allowed to tinker with things they do not understand?
And rather delivers a blow to vegetarianism being the way to save the World.
Brilliant insight and marvelous pragmatic holistic stewardship.
See further resources see: The Savory Institute
Papers
Video library
Research and Case Studies
By reclaiming 1/2 the deserts we would remove enough CO2 for everyone on earth to drive 1000 cars. each.
Very impressive.
Somebody said
The vegetation has largely recovered in recent years with more “normal” rainfall.
Henry says
I knew that. I have been able to correlate the flooding of the Nile with the warming / cooling periods.
In a cooling period the cloud formation/condensation shifts a bit more towards the equator: :more flooding of the Nile.
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
ferd berple;
I didn’t get the message that it was the only solution.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
There is a part of the video where he says this emphatically and leaves no room for discussion of the matter. Watch it again. I can imagine he was just as fervent when advocating for 40,000 elephants to be slaughtered.
ferd berple;
However, to do this requires that you first create the industrialized infrastructure to produce and repair the “mechanical cattle”.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Excuse the saying in this context but bullsh*t. Farmers in Europe and North America have had methods of collecting and re-distributing animal dung that predate the industrial revolution by decades, centuries even.
This guy is nothing but a self promoting idiot claiming the work of others as his own.
It will be another eureka day for Mr Savory when he figures out yet another “common knowledge” consensus came out of the southern end of a northwards traveling buffalo. May he live to enjoy it.
I note some say anti-science, etc, etc. If his examples are truly representative of how it works, then this is very much true science. Hypothesis, experimentation, results. Savoury has presented results to illustrate the idea – what more do you want? It certainly surpasses the standard for “proof” of hockey sticks and carbon dioxide where they have to cull and twist the data to make it work.
Jens Raunsø Jensen says:
March 9, 2013 at 2:24 am
“…sorry but I do not see the light here, on the contrary. Having worked as a scientist, development aid administrator and consultant to major international developing agencies on land and water management for about 30 years in Africa and Asia, I am sad to see the lack of skepticism…”
There will be a lot of this kind of blowback by well-meaning fellows who have done their version of shooting 40k elephants over their lifetimes. NGOs who have been essentially on safari in Africa for a living won’t take kindly to this. Jens naturally didn’t illustrate the effectiveness of his science in the dry lands.
I worked in the Sahel for three years (Geological Survey of Nigeria) and I can attest to the torrential rains of the rainy season. I used the dry river beds as roads and take- off points for two day compass traverses mapping the geology on a 30,000sq mi area to the southwest of Maiduguri on Lake Chad. You had to be out of the area before the rains came as one’s dry season roads became raging rivers that could strand you on the wrong side of the river for weeks if it didn’t pluck you and your Landrover up. You could easily be taken by surprise by a sudden filling of the river from rains a hundred miles away. You kept an eye on the distant sky as the time approached. Hail storms on occasion made the landscape temporarily look like a Manitoba winter scene. I can certainly see that established soil horizons and vegetation would allow this water to be retained and prolong a more modest and usable river flow for at least a few additional months. When Savoury’s work gets better known, we will see who the honest concerned citizens are and who are the people-haters at heart.
Sometimes you have to couch an argument in terms of what people might listen to to get your underlying point across. I pray that Savory was using the co2/climate change talk to keep his brainwashed audience open to his ideas. In fact, the lecture might never have happened had it not included the climate change part.
A friend sent this story to me, so I looked on the web and sent back this note between the ~~~~lines below. Note, this is not a new story. I have 6 horses and live near ranchers. Grazing is a big issue. Also, if you have an interest– investigate the wild horses on public lands in the western USA. My guess is that after an initial ‘round-the-world headline this topic will go the way of planting gazillions of trees in the US mid-West. It will fade back to the murmur it has been for the last 50 years.
~~~~~~~
The following site provides a short statement and then 6 links to critiques of Holisitic Resource Management – also known as the “Savory grazing method.” Bottom line: They say it is crap!
http://www.publiclandsranching.org/htmlres/myth_grazing_solution.htm
The 2nd link to a George Wuerthner article called “The Donut Diet …” seems well-reasoned.
The Jeff Burgess written material has been removed.
~~~~~~~
Imagine Michael Mann standing up to do a speech 20 years from now about climate. He could say he made some terrible mistakes that weigh heavily on him. He could say that the decisions were too important for him to make alone, so very important committees of highly qualified people looked in detail at his research and agreed with him. Then he could explain why he was wrong, and present a whole bunch of articles from WUWT as his own “new” research. He could emphatically state that his new point of view was the right one, that there are no other possibilities. He could even talk about how people once believed the earth to be flat, but they were wrong. Then an audience with no background in the subject matter who have no way of judging his past work or his current work could applaud and rise to their feet in a standing ovation.
That’s what this absolute self serving bag of ********* has accomplished.
This video is getting a lot of play on the web, or so it seems from where I view the web.
The ideas of grazing and rotation of the grazers has been promoted before, with the proviso that the grazers also need to be diverse; nothing but grass-eaters will promote other kinds of woody shrubs.
This presenter does present a much more thorough and systematic case than I have ever seen before. The resilience of previously degraded land is extremely encouraging.
Interesting, but be cautious of a one-solution ‘solution’. Here is another view and another ‘solution’ that may be just as valid:
Only goes to show that these problems are multidimensional and may requires unique combinations of solutions to reverse desertification dependent on geography and underlying causes in a specific area.
Also recommend reading about the research on the Konza Prairie in Kansas where fire and bison are used to ensure the continuation of the tall grass prairie system.
http://www.konza.ksu.edu/knz/
The author mixes up “carbon” and “carbon dioxide” but not always inappropriately. For example, he talks of removing “carbon” from the atmosphere (meaning CO2) and storing “carbon” in the soil (meaning mostly carbohydrates and cellulose.)
Fine presentation, thanks Anthony.
Thought provoking, common sense and a workable method at local levels, that does not need foreign interventionists involved.
If it works as well as his demonstration plots, there is hope for subsaharan Africa.
Makes sense when I think of the migrating herds our forefathers described when they took over the plains.
You don’t.
You walk them from grassy area A to grassy area B, and they urinate, defecate, as well as somewhat turn up the soil on their passage. They drop some seed along the way, especially in their feces and to a degree from their bodies; and other than that, wind and birds distributes other seed.
Thus the soil is quasinaturally fertilised, tilled, and planted, and new grasslands emerge.
Savory gets global warming and carbon dioxide wrong as well as current global population trends, but he doesn’t really claim to be an expert in these areas. Rather, he’s nodding to prevailing opinion. His recommendations for land management are quite revolutionary. They would require a change in customary practice and probably changes in the treatment of property in land. To get an idea of these changes watch some of the classic American western movies, Shane, for example. Many of them presented a clash between an older herding culture (ranchers or American Indians) and farmers who fenced off the land and called it their own. After bitter, war-like encounters, the farmers eventually won out and usually came out as the good guys in these movies. But if Savory is right all this “progress” needs to be undone since the farmers were an ecological scourge, we now learn. If it took war to establish property rights suitable for the farmers, it may well take something almost as severe to institute property rights suitable for growing free-ranging cattle.
I googled “cattle overgrazing myth” and found many pages by people in the cattle and sheep industry raging against government “experts” who think they know better than the people making a living off their practical knowledge of range management. I especially liked the article at http://ranchmanagers.wix.com/ranch-management-consultants/apps/blog/the-myth-that-is-conventional-range-management
This is break through thinking and doing. I watched this right after listening to the John Lovelock discussion on the GAIA Theory (liked on Climate Debate Daily) – the scientific GAIA. The interconnections are interesting. I also loved what Lovelock had to say about peer reviewed science – Savory is a prime example of countering the consensus.
This sounds very promising and certainly deserves some more attention. Yet my skeptical senses are buzzing somewhat.
We see radical claims with very high frequency. A cure for cancer (or a new cause of cancer), weight loss without pain, cheap clean energy (cold fusion, perpetual motion). Approximately 100% are later retracted or disappear without a trace.
I hope this proves correct, bur pardon me if I postpone the champaign for just a little while.
We used rotational grazing on our farm, and it worked. We took classes from Ranch Management Consultants by Stan Parsons, who early on, was associated with Alan Savory. I know that there was also a group in Australia with an incredible group of guys. The classes teach not only grazing techniques, but also business and ranch management fundamentals. They also hold workshops in various parts of the country, and you might be able to attend some of them, just to get an idea of how the system works. http://ranchmanagement.com/about/about.html
There is also an emphasis on working with natural cycles and less machinery. Most ranchers calve in the dead of winter, so they need calving sheds and lots of hay to feed the new Mama cows. RMC would advocate pushing back the calving time to late spring, so that the cows could then graze on the new grass growth without the need for hay. If you don’t need hay, you don’t need the tractors and tilling machines and balers etc. I have seen Riparian areas regenerated with the use of rotational grazing, because the cows aren’t constantly trampling the stream banks, instead, the
stream banks are only disturbed occasionally.
This is the type of ecology and “Green” that truly makes a difference in the lives of people and the land we live on. I am glad that Anthony is giving it the attention it needs.