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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Why all the ad hoc argument from many of those who are agaist Savory? The ideas are what it is proper to discuss, not the man presenting them. If it works it will proliferate, at least on private lands. But governments? Not unless they can control it. That is really all government is about – control. Professional, so called “environmentalists” are on the side of govenment, as are huge corporations. But, it is people who make the real decisions and fund their folly.
But that is the professional greens and the governments who use them to expand their power. You can’t get them to act against their pecuniary interests, but they rely on the low infomation voters to suport their agenda. That is why they pretend to support the environment – it taps into what people already believe. We are all environmentalists. None of us wants to destroy the planet on which we live. The professional greens? Not so much.
Hawks and men eat chicken; the more hawks the fewer chicken, the more men the more chicken, to paraphrase “Progress and Poverty” (George – 1879).
Also, perhaps the pastoral Swiss could add something here.
Hoffer and Wilde and some others, I resonate with your arrogance-aversion. But I am disappointed that you can’t see past what you characterize as arrogance to the value of what is being said. You hear, “I used to be conceited but now I’m perfect!” I hear, “My well-meaning but ignorant acceptance and propagation of errors led to horrific failures, so I opened my eyes and saw a vital truth that fills me with hope; and I want to share it in terms that win people over because it is a politically-incorrect paradigm and probably doomed to languish for tragic generations before it is adopted.” This is the guy’s shining moment; let him shine!
Scepticism is constructive. Cynicism is destructive (and often arrogant at heart) and, I admit, comes too easily to me. The perfect is the enemy of the good.
But for the sake of argument, let’s assume he is arrogant. So what? The bigger question is: in the main, is he right? Already being familiar with these concepts through Joel Salatin’s work and writings, I am of the opinion that he probably is. And I am very encouraged by the general response I see in the comments. Thank you for featuring this video, Anthony!
Allan Savory is a salesman. He has been peddling his Vision for a long time. This is just a recasting of it within a different framework. He likes to show pictures which purport to show what he is selling. He speaks convingly and uses his past “mistakes” as a testament to lower the audience’s critical thinking skills.
There are many things wrong with Savory’s ideas.
The facts themselves are wrong.
Catastrophic drought is a part of recent history prior to industrialization or even civilization. The Sandhills in Nebraska used to be nothing but dunes a few centuries ago. Prior to that drought was so bad in parts of Eastern TX and OK that blowing dirt formed dirt dune fields thousands of square miles in size. These Mima Mounds are evidence of conditions so dry that nothing would grow. And many formed within the last few thousand years.
There are desert succulents in these areas that usually grow in areas with less than 10 inches of rainfall which are still present today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mima_mounds
Fire is a part of the American landscape. From our forests to the grasslands. Plants have specific traits that evolved long before humans arrived on the scene in North America which are adapted to fire. Furthermore, fire was the way that parasites were removed, allowing wildlife to thrive, and how woody species were kept in check, allowing grassland to flourish.
It has been shown repeatedly shown that fire is good for the soil – causing bacterial growth that releases nutrients and removing old dead grass, allowing new growth. It has also been shown that grass and woody plants regrowing after a fire cause much higher growth rates in wild life both large and small.
In the past, when there were large grazers around, they were kept in check by drought. Not during the drought but the following winter when it was cold and wet they died off. In droves.
Saw Willis’ post on cattle drives. I can attest to this. My favorite position in moving livestock is the windward side in the summer and the lee side in winter. You stay cool in the summer and its MUCH warmer on the downside of the herd in the winter. A good lead cow is worth her weight in gold. On lead cow and one man can move an immense herd any where.
Jens Raunsø Jensen says:
March 9, 2013 at 2:24 am
Thanks, Jens. The paper you referred to is here (PDF). It lists underlying principles of grazing, viz:
I agree with your authors. those are indeed the facts about grazing.
Now, we have a choice in grazing. We can let the cows decide, or we can let the humans decide. When you advocate continuous grazing, in some sense you are letting the cows decide.
Now, to be sure, having the humans decide is absolutely no guarantee of a better outcome. Cows have been at it for a while. And as your authors point out, an analysis of the various studies shows that on average “there were no differences between rotational and continuous grazing.”
But, as your authors also point out, a well managed rotational system will outperform a poorly managed continuous grazing system … and vice versa.
Given all of that, I’d certainly opt for the humans making the decisions about principles one through four above.
For example, the Polyface farm people use moveable fences to rotationally graze a mixed herd over their farmland. What’s in the mixed herd? Well … cattle, pigs, and chickens. Here’s the Wikipedia description, good a starting point as any:
Call me crazy, but as a man who grew up on a cattle ranch, I’ll lay long odds that that system would beat continuous grazing …
All the best,
w.
I looked him up at Wikipedia and found some interesting background on the man and then this under the heading “Criticism”
” Land management researchers have heavily criticized the concepts of holistic management because experiments conducted on grazed land in many different places in the last few decades have failed to find any scientific support for their validity.[5] Virtually no active academic rangeland ecology researchers have come forward to espouse holistic management principles.[citation needed]”
Hmmmmm…..now where have I heard something like that before? Not 97%, but a 99.999% consensus. Wow! He must be a wacko.
Oh, my. Jens Jensen hit the nail on the head when he summarized the bureacrat’s worst fear in one pithy phrase “ideas like this without proper documentation”. The free range idea of no proper pedigree is anathema to the bureacrat and to our self anointed elites. This is why so many Americans worry about creeping Europeanism on our shores, by the way.
Allow me to translate Jens’ comment:
“I spent decades contributing to the desertification problem (likely for the UN or an NGO) by applying the common wisdom of my annointed class, and how dare this fellow come along and suggest something different. And he did not present the proper documents with the proper stamps from the proper bureacrats before he spoke. We cannot have this!”
*******************************************
Jens Raunsø Jensen says:
March 9, 2013 at 2:24 am
Hi Anthony,
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 – especially on this site – when people promote ideas like this without proper documentation.
Several statements may be challenged i the presentation, but let’s just recall what a team of scientists have concluded on the subject in a Synthesis Paper on the issue (Briske et al., 2008, Rangeland Ecol Manage 61: 3-17) with reference also to Savory: “Continued advocacy for rotational grazing as a superior strategy of grazing on rangelands is founded on perception and anecdotal interpretations, rather than an objective assessment of the vast experimental evidence.”
Further:
“The rangeland profession has become mired in confusion,
misinterpretation, and uncertainty with respect to the evaluation
of grazing systems and the development of grazing
recommendations and policy decisions. We contend that this
has occurred because recommendations have traditionally been
based on perception, personal experience, and anecdotal
interpretations of management practices, rather than evidence-
based assessments of ecosystem responses, which is
a common phenomenon in ecosystem management (Pullin et
al. 2003; Sutherland et al. 2004). This has seriously impeded
the development of more robust, consistent, and unified grazing
management recommendations and policy decisions to govern
this predominant land use on rangelands.”
Finally, recall that the socalled Sahel crisis of the 1970-80 with widespread “desertification” has later been found to be driven by decadal changes in rainfall pattern. The vegetation has largely recovered in recent years with more “normal” rainfall.
regards .. jens
Fascinating. As biologists have long known, you needed to either burn or graze grassland to keep it healthy. Since all the buffalo are long gone, burning is what’s left. Much of what we know about grasslands was learned in North America, and since our great grasslands mostly receive summer rains, desertification was never a threat. (plus, what hasn’t been plowed up for farming, is grazed by livestock, so…..)
This is really an important find. Good luck implementing it though. The Greenpeace Vegans will hate it, and dismiss it, and attack it endlessly.
James Sexton says:
March 9, 2013 at 1:03 pm
People, this has been a common practice among farmers for a very long time now
======
yep, and they even have a name for it…..
http://www.farmcollector.com/uploadedImages/FCM/articles/issues/2010-10-01/newlcm-spreader-01600.jpg
I can’t see this idea becoming popular, this is actually a solution to a problem, you can’t tax the worlds population if you’re offering solutions now.
In response to noloctd, I’m surprised that skeptics here can’t understand Jens Jensen’s caution. I’ve been following Savory’s work for a couple of decades, and have worked with the grazing leaseholder on private range land in the dry inland northwest. While there is much of interest in Savory’s approach, local conditions can be surprisingly difficult to manage this way. The range land biospheres have been radically altered by past practices in ways that make a simple prescription unlikely to fit well.
There is no reason to assume that a grazing management specialist who argues for a scientific assessment of Savory’s techniques is somehow disingenuous or corrupt.
Stephen Wilde says:
March 9, 2013 at 5:26 am
In the end though that which is achievable is limited by the amount of rainfall.
===========
Or the reverse. By turning pasture into desert through well intended but misguided farming practices WE reduce the rainfall.
I think the most important part of the talk was the first bit where he looked at the “first principles” aspects of how nature works. After that, as many people have said it is not new. What you call your systems in different parts of the world does not matter ( rotational grazing , cell grazing etc ) –it is adapting your farming methods to suit the soils and climate of the area you farm using those basic principles that matters.
Also the fact that it not new is not important — opening peoples eyes to a differnt line of thought is what matters. Clearly a number of the readers of this post are not rural or farming people and it is great they have found this fasinating ,giving them more information to argue with the Greenies .
PS . I read somewhere a few years back about guy using this sort of system in the USA on a smaller farm . He had a mobile chicken “shed” that he moved from feild to feild after the animals had been in it. The chickens got to work on the dung left behind , broke it down and scattered it evrywhere.
(plus he got the eggs etc) .
davidmhoffer says:
March 9, 2013 at 9:00 am
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.
===============
the technique was called farm animals. As the animals moved about the farm they collect dung in their bowels and later deposit this out in the fields.
What you overlooked is urine, which is nitrogen rich and a critical nutrient for plants. Also collected by farm animals, this time in their bladders, and also later deposited out in the fields.
davidmhoffer says:
March 9, 2013 at 9:00 am
There is a part of the video where he says this emphatically and leaves no room for discussion of the matter.
==========
if you are so certain, why did you not supply the timestamp for that part of the video? Much more likely you have taken one piece of the presentation out of context to support your own narrow agenda.
Unlike most of the posters in this thread I find a lot more to criticize in Dr. Savory’s presentation than to support. I won’t go to the extreme that davidmhoffer does, but I agree with the direction he has taken – this is basically a presentation by a Malthusian who doesn’t agree with one particular aspect of the general Malthusian opinion, that being that livestock contributes to desertification.
First, I would like to say that I support his general premise that livestock does not contribute to desertification and that desertification can be stopped and potentially reversed through the proper management of livestock on lands vulnerable to desertification. That is where my support ends.
He starts out saying that man, being the common denominator, is responsible for desertification. FAIL – desertification existed before man came along and will exist long after we are gone. It is true that the actions of man can extend or retard desertification but in the end mankind cannot stop its’ growth or start its’ reversal except in very limited way. Why? Because deserts are caused by a lack of precipitation and are located mainly along the earth’s surface at the ‘Horse Latitudes’, where cold dry air descends after dropping all of its’ water in the tropics, or on the lee side of mountains, where cold dry air descends after dropping its’ water on the windward side of mountains. Regardless of whether you follow the line of the AGW crowd or not, real desertification only grows or shrinks if area of the ‘Horse Latitudes’ grow or shrink. What Dr. Savory is describing as desertification is actually the transformation of sub-desert areas into deserts because of the suppression of the symbiotic relationship between herds and grasslands/savannah/prairie. There is none of this effect in real deserts because there is not enough water to support the grasslands or the herds that he describes.
Next, he talks about how the arrival of man in the Australia and the Americas resulted in the extinction of large amounts of the fauna in those locales. FAIL – this is a theory supported by a one group of paleontologists which has little to no evidence to support it. There is a correlation of the extinction of those species with the arrival of man, but as any first year statistics course will teach you, correlation does not mean causation. Also correlated with the arrival of man was climate change which resulted in the retreat of the glaciers in North America and Europe, as well as the migration of numerous animal species across the land bridges, along with numerous unknown diseases, (Bovine Tuberculosis among them). The theory that man caused the extinction of such mega fauna like the mammoth and mastodon is also not supported by facts such as the fact that those animals survived extinction in Eurasia, with much larger population of humans, for much longer than they did in North America or that a related species, Elephants, still survive today.
At the next point, he talks about man, using his tool, fire, to destroy large swaths of grassland and contribute to desertification and loss of herds. FAIL again – fire occurs naturally on such a regular basis that plants and animals have evolved to take advantage of the fact. Plants like the Eucalyptus in Australia, Chaparral in the southwest United States, and Lodgepole pines in northern areas of Canada evolved to the point that they produce volatile resins and oils which promote the starting and spreading of fires so that those plants can reproduce. Fires in grasslands actually contribute to returning the nutrients from those plants to the soil through rapid oxidation – anybody who has deliberately burned his lawn in order to promote new growth is aware of this, and the agricultural practice of ‘Slash and Burn’ developed from this principle. Evidence actually demonstrates that it is man’s interference, through suppression, with the natural progression of fire, and the fact that we populate areas which used to experience a regular fire season, which actually contributes to the devastating fires that we experience today.
I will sum this now up with the fact that he comes to this common-sense conclusion: Grasslands, which developed as a symbiotic relationship with herding animals in order to reproduce and survive, require herding animals to reproduce and survive or else they will succumb to the effects of desertification.
His absolute belief he is right is not comforting given his track record. He is wrong again. Hopefully there will be no mass carnage to prove him wrong.
There are alternatives like the one above on trees (thanks to Bruce Foutch March 9, 2013 at 9:19 am) for that one. Very good
Here is one about doing it in Jordan with high salt content soil and common “swales”. No critters in this one.
Have you ever wondered why God called the Shepherds to see Christ before everyone else in Bethlehem? Perhaps there is a Divine Wisdom in having flocks/herds of livestock roaming across the lands.
davidgmills says:
March 9, 2013 at 7:57 am
For a similar idea you might want to research terra preta, the pre-Columbian South American manner of charcoaling the soil
Yep.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Os-ujelkgw?rel=0&w=480&h=360%5D
And video of another guy trying to control the life of others… making the same noises of warmists. Yeah putting this crap sticky will be very helpful…
Dogma KILLS.
It takes a strong and great person to confront his own beliefs.
+1
No, I’ll keep my empathy, thanks.
Christoph Dollis says:
March 9, 2013 at 9:56 am
You might not hear them, being American,
================
I’m not American. I was fortunate enough to be inoculated against political correctness before the disease spread throughout the general population.
Like Willis I spent many years sailing around the world and living in many different cultures. In my early years I made a pack with the devil, so that I could sail around the world with an all girl crew. Add the devil kept his side of the bargain. Little did I realize at the time that my crew would turn out to be my wife and daughters.
How does this relate? One of the great insults Ozzie’s sailors would hurl at other sailors was to accuse them of being Yanks. In reply we would tell the Ozzies, “You Kiwi’s can never tell the different between a Yank and a ______”.
If they dared protest that they were Ozzies, then we’d ask them; S’truth mate, do you know how they separate the men from the boys in the outback? Or another favorite; how did the Ozzie find the sheep in the tall grass? And from these jovial insults grew many friendships.
Although it makes sense that the environment has developed a symbiotic relationship between plants and animals, it does not mean that it fits today’s world. As the man himself puts it – the world will soon have to support 10 billion people.
People like him think small – it’s time to see how much humans can really effect climate. Geoengineering that stimulates rain in desertified areas in near future is a possibility when one considers great leaps in technology over the past century. However when we believe something is impossible it will never be possible.
Unlike many here I am not willing to put fate of humanity in nature’s hands. We outgrew “mother earth” a few millennia ago yet something keeps holding us back – the belief that potential waiting to be unlocked within us is weaker than a climatic system that is effectivly impermanent.
We have been to the moon, build bases in space, and are about to master the power of stars. I’ll be damned if we then become slaves to a system that has developed along with dumb animals and even dumber plants.
We may have evolved out of animals but we are animals no longer. It’s time to start acting like it.