AS DISCUSSSED IN the previous blog post, ranchers who choose to use holistic land management techniques can significantly improve soil quality. This also provides downstream improvements to water resources, and air quality as well.
Today, I want to introduce you to some very interesting friends of mine, Tony and Andrea Malmberg.
Along with his wife Andrea, Tony is a hands-on owner of a cattle ranch in Northeast Oregon.
Tony is a real cowboy – Stetson hat, dusty boots and all – and even once broke his pelvis by getting bucked off a horse.
Tony is also a businessman, a holistic land management consultant, a writer and philosopher. A fervent protector of the environment, Tony has been awarded numerous prestigious land stewardship awards over the last twenty years.
Combine a bit of John Muir, Henry David Thoreau, and the Marlboro man (without the cigarettes), and you will get a rough approximation of my friend Tony Malmberg.
Andrea is also an ardent advocate of sustainable land practices. Equally comfortable in an evening gown or cowboy hat, she is one of those rare people who has the ability to float seamlessly from one role to another. Andrea was very instrumental in leadership roles with the Savory Institute and Oregon Rural Action. She remains an active partner in the ranch with Tony, and still finds time to do consulting work as a positive psychologist.
I recently asked them a few questions about holistic land management:
What first got you interested in holistic land management?
Andrea: I first heard about Holistic Management in the early eighties from my brother who was a range conservationist for the state of Montana as a way to better manage cattle. When I was completing my MS in Natural Resources the consensus building movement was starting to gain legitimacy. My emphasis was sociology and policy and I was introduced to Holistic Management as a decision- making tool.
Tony: I was a statistic of the mid 1980’s Farm Crisis. Jimmy Carter appointed Paul Volker as Chairman of the Federal Reserve and a pretty bold inflationary economy tipped over into deflation and ranchers, farmers, building contractors and anyone relying on debt were caught. As I was working through the bankruptcy estate I read an article about Allan Savory claiming that Holistic Management could help you double your stocking rate, or the number of animals you were grazing. I signed up, went to a seminar, leased our ranch back from the bank and started learning the Practice of Holistic Management.
Holistic ranching practices involve closely replicating the grazing patterns of wild herbivores (e.g. bison, elk, etc.) that previously grazed rangelands until more recent times. Specifically, how do you accomplish that?
Tony: Yes, the grasslands of the world evolved with migrating herbivores. Holistic Planned Grazing intends to mimic the way our grasslands evolved, with large herds, on the move. Depending on the species and levels of production, the timing between different regions varied but the theme remained- large herds, on the move.
We accomplish this by bunching our animals into fewer herds and moving them regularly. Of course this must be practical for the land manager and will vary depending on scale. The key is to think about desired outcome and not get trapped into the rote of “moving animals.” We need to think and observe disturbance-recovery. We need enough stock density to disturb the soil surface and plant structure so we hold moisture, recycle nutrients, and create germination sites. We need enough space, relative to the stocking rate, or how many animals we are running, so we don’t return to the site until the plants have recovered from the disturbance.
Since grasslands co-evolved with grazing animals, the grasses actually thrive best when grazed – as long as it is done properly; is that correct?
Tony: One way to think about this could be watching your Cottonwood, Alder or other deciduous tree in your back yard. Each fall the leaves fall to the ground so the branches are free to receive sunlight the following spring. Grass doesn’t have that option, as it has nowhere to go. It can fall on the ground but mats and builds up until it chokes the grass from receiving sunlight. If a herbivore comes along and grazes the plant, it has opened up the pathway for sunlight. However, if the plant gets grazed after regrowth, again, again, and again, it will die.
Here again, think of the tree in your back yard. If you prune it’s branches it will flourish. New growth comes from all over, reaching for the sky. If the tree is never pruned, it kind of gets lethargic and seems a little wilty. But what if you were to prune the tree twice a month, all summer long? There would not be enough leaves to support the trunk mass and it would die.
There is a story about a Navajo woman being interviewed by the Bureau of Indian (BIA) affairs in the desert southwest.
She said, “The BIA kept reducing the number of goats we could run on our pastures. It finally came down to just a few and the grass lost interest.”
Which soil quality factors do you monitor?
Andrea: When developing the Ecological Outcome Verification Protocol for the Savory Institute, the first thing we look at is the soil surface indicators. How much bare ground? What kind of plant diversity? Do we have age class diversity in the plants? What is the water infiltration? How does the decomposition look? What is growing, or not growing tells you a lot about what is going on underground. When we look underground, we primarily are looking at soil carbon and bulk density. Studying the soil food web is always interesting but it can be cost prohibitive at a large scale.
How is it that you are able to manage your land without having to add synthetic nitrogen fertilizers or spraying noxious weeds with pesticides?
Tony: The core of Holistic Management strives to achieve resiliency, which means diversity and complexity. The fundamental plank of this reality means asking, “What is missing?” Our illusion of control, springing from a reductionist mindset, kills intruders upon our perfect monoculture. Once we make this shift and appreciate complexity, we see annuals and perennial weeds as messengers of soil health, or lack thereof. The key is to focus on the goal of a diverse perennial grass, forb and shrub community rather than getting distracted by a weed. Any plant, cheat grass, Canada thistle, teasle, or Reeds Canary grass, are better than bare ground.
Our job is to harvest sunlight energy and build soil with plant material, dung and urine. One can’t do that with bare ground. The first step past bare ground is an annual weed>annual grass>perennial weed>perennial grass> etc. Weed spray provides a tool for consideration. However, too often, we only see our world through the spray nozzle and miss the community dynamics self-organizing diversity and complexity.
Nitrogen fertilizers are an addictive expense that hit a point of diminishing returns and kills the soil, specifically nematodes. This promotes a downward spiral of dirt and dust simply holding up the plant, while the plant depends on our inputs to grow. Better to build the soil, through life, to become a resilient and healthy foundation to our existence.
Andrea: The ecosystem processes (Energy Flow, Nutrient Cycle, Water Cycle, Community Dynamics) have been functioning long before we developed synthetic nitrogen fertilizers or spraying biocides. It is our job as regenerative land managers to tend to the function of these fundamental processes. In general, the short-term need for fertilizer is a sign that you are not paying attention to the nutrient cycle. Applying biocides ignores the role of community dynamics. The idea of “noxious” weeds, or weeds in general is really a lack of prospection. The holistic manager asks herself – where do I want this landscape and all it must support (people, domestic animals, wildness) to be now and in the far-off future.
Here are a couple of slides that illustrate prospection:
Why don’t more ranchers follow holistic management practices?
Tony: Change is slow and traditions die hard. At best, we are seeing the beginning of the 3rd generation of Holistic Management Practitioners emerge. As a 1st generation Practitioner, I still need to interpret linear thinking to holism. The 2nd and 3rd generation Practioners think holistically. It will continue to grow because it makes sense. The proper practice of Holistic Management builds soil capital, financial capital and social capital. Too many conventional agricultural practices rely on controlling and killing, which has no future.
Andrea: Globally, there are a lot of people practicing Holistic Management.
I understand that all of the beef you raise is grass-fed and grass-finished. Does this make a healthier herd of cattle than if they were fattened with corn on a feedlot?
Tony: Yes. “The main ingredients (of corn fed, feedlot cattle) are genetically modified grain and soy that are kept at artificially low prices by government subsidies. To further cut costs, the feed may also contain “by-product feedstuff” such as municipal garbage, stale pastry, chicken feathers, and candy. Until 1997, U.S. cattle were also being fed meat that had been trimmed from other cattle, in effect turning herbivores into carnivores. This unnatural practice is believed to be the underlying cause of BSE or “mad cow disease.”” from Eatwild.com
Now think about that in the context of what Michael Pollen said, “You are what you eat, eats.”
Corn fed beef increased greatly following WWII when there became a surplus of nitrogen as bomb manufacturing stopped. That product was redirected to corn fields and the massive supplies of corn spawned the feedlot industry and corn fed beef. In addition to transporting waste from rangelands to manure lagoons and cattle were fed medication as part of their diet.
The first and most obvious difference being the absence of sub-therapeutic antibiotics in grass fed/finished beef. Grass fed cattle are higher in Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA) and Omega 3 fat.
“Meat, eggs, and dairy products from pastured animals are ideal for your health. Compared with commercial products, they offer you more "good" fats, and fewer "bad" fats. They are richer in antioxidants; including vitamins E, beta-carotene, and vitamin C. Furthermore, they do not contain traces of added hormones, antibiotics or other drugs.” Eatwild.com
Isn’t it also true that corn used in feedlots is most typically genetically modified, and grown on fields sprayed with glyphosate (Roundup)?
Andrea: 99% of the corn is Genetically modified and are herbicide and pest resistant so they can be sprayed with glyphosate..
What are the health benefits to the consumer who eats grass-finished beef produced with holistic management techniques vs. beef produced using traditional feedlot methods?
Andrea: Grass-fed beef is better for human health than grain-fed beef in ten different ways, according to the most comprehensive analysis to date. The 2009 study was a joint effort between the USDA and researchers at Clemson University in South Carolina. Compared with grain-fed beef, grass-fed beef was:
1. Lower in total fat
2. Higher in beta-carotene
3. Higher in vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol)
4. Higher in the B-vitamins thiamin and riboflavin
5. Higher in the minerals calcium, magnesium, and potassium
6. Higher in total omega-3s
7. A healthier ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids (1.65 vs 4.84)
8. Higher in CLA (cis-9 trans-11), a potential cancer fighter
9. Higher in vaccenic acid (which can be transformed into CLA)
10. Lower in the saturated fats linked with heart disease
Eating moderate amounts of grass-fed meat for only 4 weeks will give you healthier levels of essential fats, according to a 2011 study in the British Journal of Nutrition.
The British research showed that healthy volunteers who ate grass-fed meat increased their blood levels of omega-3 fatty acids and decreased their level of pro-inflammatory omega-6 fatty acids. These changes are linked with a lower risk of a host of disorders, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, depression, and inflammatory disease.
Interestingly, volunteers who consumed conventional, grain-fed meat ended up with lower levels of omega-3s and higher levels of omega-6s than they had at the beginning of the study, suggesting that eating conventional meat had been detrimental to their health.
Tony and Andrea Malmberg find sustainable solutions to current land management challenges. Learn more about their work at holisticmanagement.guide and lifeenergy.guide.
Next time: All Creatures Great and Small.