The Power Of Holistic Management, In Pictures

This is a video put together by Sheldon Frith, full of great before and after pictures. Behold the regenerative power of Holistic Management:

Comparison Photos of Holistically Managed Land Versus Conventionally Managed Land

Grasslands LLC is the managing partner of The Savory Institute. Grasslands LLC is holistically managing a total of 160,000 acres in Montana, Hawaii, South Dakota, and New Zealand. Grasslands LLC is also providing support and consulting services to another 350,000 acres in the U.S.

Holistic Management is practiced on over 40 million acres around the world. The results are amazing. Check out the before and after photos of some of these sites on PlanetTech: Land Restoration with Holistic Management.

Here are some excerpts from some Allan Savory talks, showing some before and after pictures:

Getting Results on the Land with Holistic Management

This a quietly delivered Power Point presentation on Holistic Management. But some of the before-and-after pictures are great:

Applegate Farms Announces It's Joining The Regenerative Agriculture Movement

Applegate Farms recently unveiled a line of pork sausages made using regenerative ranching practices designed to strengthen soil (and by extension, extract carbon out of the atmosphere). It's called The New Food Collective.

"At Applegate, we want to change the meat we eat," John Ghingo, company president, said in a news release. "We're making a big bet on regenerative agriculture as one of the paths to show the world that raising animals and eating meat doesn't have to be a problem. Animals can and do play a vital role in a healthy food system."

More and more, shoppers, especially millennials and Gen-Z'ers, are buying with the environment in mind. Nielson named 2018 the "Year of the Sustainable Shopper," reporting that Americans spent $128.5 million on sustainable packaged goods—a 20 percent growth from the year before—and 48 percent of U.S. consumers now say they would be willing to change their consumption habits if it meant improving the environment.

The above is excerpted from an article on MGBPlanet. Read the whole thing here: Applegate Farms Announces It's Joining The Regenerative Ag Movement.

A New Choice For Consumers: Regenerative Organic

The USDA organic label has changed the way Americans eat, serving as a trusted seal for shoppers looking to avoid chemicals and synthetics. As of 2016, nearly 15,000 U.S. farms across 5 million acres had been certified organic. But as the market continues to grow, we're realizing that it isn't doing enough to protect the health of farmland. Regenerative agriculture takes the philosophy one step further, and it's about to be the next label to look out for in stores.

MegaFood, along with other major companies like Ben & Jerry's, Danone, and Annie's, are betting it's because there isn't enough credible information out there to help farmers change their ways. They're joining together with advocacy groups Carbon Underground and Green America to put a data-backed, industry-wide standard in place to help growers measure their impact, set new goals, and achieve real results quickly.

Though it's still a work in progress, this standard could eventually feed into a labeling scheme like the upcoming Regenerative Organic Certification (ROC) seal.

Jessica Evans, the director of standards at NSF International, the organization behind the seal, says that shoppers can expect to see it in stores as early as mid-2019. In many ways, it will serve as the next step beyond organic, and farms will need to carry the USDA-certified organic label before they can become certified regenerative. Twenty companies—including Justin's, Thrive Market, Patagonia, and Dr. Bronner—are already piloting the certification.

- The above is excerpted from an article entitled, "The New Food Label You're Going To Want On Your Radar." Read the whole thing here: https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/regenerative-agriculture-label


Suston Magazine has this to say about this new certification:

Following the success of the organics movement, and in response to several of its shortcomings, this month saw the launch of the Regenerative Organic Certification (ROC). Initiated by the Rodale Institute in partnership with Textile Exchange and Patagonia, among others, ROC seeks to take sustainable agriculture to the next level by combining three ambitious sets of benchmarks into one certification: proven organic agricultural practices that regenerate the soil, enhanced animal welfare and social fairness.

While most organic certification schemes focus on mitigating soil damage by preventing erosion and prohibiting synthetic pesticides and herbicides, the Rodale Institute believes we can, and should, aim to improve soil quality by adding nutrients and building up organic matter. This approach would also have positive climate implications as soil is an excellent carbon sink. Soil is so effective, in fact, that a 2014 study by the Institute calculated that if all current farmland and pasture shifted to regenerative organic practices, 100% of annual global CO₂ emissions could be sequestered.

ROC is not intended to supplant existing certification schemes, but instead to support them. A company can apply for certification once they’ve attained a recognized organic, animal welfare and fair trade certification, and additionally made the changes ROC requires under each category.

Banning Beef

Data for Progress co-founder Sean McElwee, whose liberal group has helped shape the Green New Deal, says he’d love to rein in the immense economic and cultural power of America’s “meatriarchy.” But his polling has found there’s literally nothing less popular than banning meat.

“It’s up there with giving VA benefits to ISIS,” McElwee says. “That’s the tension the left has to struggle with; Democrats eat meat, too. But even minor improvements could create massive gains for public health and the environment.”

The above was excerpted from an article in Politico. Read it here: Inside the Race to Build the Burger of the Future.

Later in the article...

The [beef] industry’s climate message is that it can be part of the solution—not only by increasing yields through more intensive production, but by storing more carbon in its pastures and cutting emissions from its operations. For example, one of Project Drawdown’s top 10 proposals for fixing the climate was “silvopasture,” planting more carbon-storing trees on grazing lands. Bill Gates recently touted the potential of “regenerative agriculture,” which uses cover crops and no-till farming to keep more carbon in the soil, to grow animal feed with fewer emissions. And some ranchers use climate-friendly “rotational grazing” to mimic the patterns of migratory buffalo herds; cattle are clustered in one area to devour the grass and fertilize the soil with their manure, then moved to another area so the grass can regrow. General Mills is encouraging its suppliers to embrace these practices; Jerry Lynch, the company’s chief sustainability officer, says one Georgia rancher who provides beef for its EPIC Meat Snacks is sequestering so much carbon his overall emissions are approaching zero.

Right now, there are huge tracts of grassland turning to desert because there are no grazing animals on those lands (grasslands without grazing animals become unhealthy). Meanwhile, in other places, huge tracts of land are used for growing soybeans and corn to feed cattle. Those lands turning to desert are releasing their CO2 into the atmosphere. It's tragic. The need for beef to eat and the need for returning those lands back into thriving ecosystems need to come together on a massive scale. This should be the central theme when discussing the ecological impact of eating beef.

Grasslands are the largest ecosystem on land. And 70 percent of it is desertifying. The issue is urgent.

Video: How to Green the World's Deserts

The largest ecosystem on land is grassland with seasonal rainfall (dry part of the year). For this kind of environment to thrive, it needs large numbers of grazing animals because the grasses have evolved to need the trampling, the clearing out, the urine and defecation. Without that animal impact, grasslands turn into deserts.

The huge wild herds with their accompanying deadly predators are gone from most grasslands now. The land has been divided up into separate ownership. So now what can we do to prevent widespread desertification and the resulting immense release of CO2 into the atmosphere?

Allan Savory has a solution, and the Savory Institute and Holistic Management International are putting it to work all over the world.

Watch Allan Savory's TED talk on how it works, and see his before and after pictures: