Seth Itzkhan discusses Holistic Management at Tufts University

Seth Itzkan, president of Planet-TECH Associates, recently spent six weeks at the Savory Institute’s sister organization, the Africa Centre for Holistic Management.  In January of this year, he gave a presentation at the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy at Tufts’ Fletcher School titled  “Reversing Global Warming and Desertification with Livestock” where he shared some of his personal experiences in Africa and insights about the impact of Holistic Management.

What exactly is desertification? Why is Holistic Management the best approach for controlling it? Learn about these topics on our web site pages “The Desertification Crisis” and “What is Holistic Management?”

 Click here to learn more about Grasslands, LLC’s work  to heal the land using Holistic Management. 

In its second year of operations, Grasslands LLC, the Savory Institute’s land management arm, has been blessed with notable achievements, exciting opportunities, and abundant learning. Four amazing properties have been added to Grasslands, LLC portfolio of ranches under management, beginning with closure on the 39,000 acre Cinch Buckle Ranch, near Broadus, MT.

Cinch Buckle Ranch
Ron Goddard and family are spearheading the Cinch Buckle on-the-ground operations. At the peak of summer, the ranch carried a thousand yearling replacement heifers, and over a thousand cow/calf pairs, ending the season with abundant residual forage, money in the bank, and a deeper appreciation for this vast landscape. Currently a large herd of 670 visitors that have come north from Texas, fleeing the southwestern drought, are being wintered at the ranch. Soon the ranch will be stocked back up to full numbers with the onset of spring.

Belle Fourche, South Dakota
On our South Dakota properties near Belle Fourche, we had a fantastic year. Brandon Dalton and his young family, with the aid of just one full time intern (Colin Boggess), did a miraculous job of carefully stewarding 3,600 yearling cattle, plus 430 cow/calf pairs, moving them continuously according to plan to recovered forage and fresh water. These cattle numbers represent a doubling of the ranch’s 2010 stocking rate. We entered the winter with healthy standing residual forage and soil-covering litter, ready to trap the moisture of winter storms.

Eastern Montana
In December, another eastern Montana ranch was successfully negotiated and entered the Grasslands LLC portfolio taking acreage under management to over 100,000 acres, and lending scale and resilience to our Grasslands initiative.  Full spectrum monitoring is being conducted in all properties (including soil carbon and social wellbeing) and coordinated by Savory Institute‘s Research and Knowledge Management Initiative.

Spencer Beebe, Allan Savory and Brent Staplekamp

The Savory Institute and Portland, Oregon-based Ecotrust have been exploring and identifying ways to collaborate and further their missions. Ecotrust (www.ecotrust.org) is an organization with a mission “to inspire fresh thinking that creates economic opportunity, social equity and environmental well-being.” A promising space for collaboration lies within our respective research and knowledge management initiatives. This inspiring dialogue has already yielded fruits. Spencer Beebe, president of Ecotrust, visited Allan Savory and Jody Butterfield at Dimbangombe Ranch this month to see the results of Holistic Management first-hand. Look for his upcoming blog about his experience at our sister organization, the Africa Centre for Holistic Management on the Ecotrust website.

Dr. Dennis Garrity, former Director General of the World Agroforestry Centre in Nairobi also paid a visit to Dimbangombe with Constance Neely,

Dr Dennis Garrity, Allan Savory and colleague. Photo credit Patrick Worms

Savory Institute’s Associate Consultant and Educator and senior consultant to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, and Patrick Worms, publisher of Souciant magazine (www.souciant.com), to see the results on the land following Holistic Planned Grazing ©. The group was impressed with the results of using properly managed livestock on the ranch, and with the establishment of thousands of Faidherbia seedlings sprouting richly from cattle, goat and elephant dung. This information could help further the integration of Holistic Planned Grazing © and evergreen agriculture, especially in the western Sahel which has large numbers of livestock.

How can Holistic Management be implemented? Learn more on the “What Is Holistic Management?” page of our web site.

Ashoka’s hypothesis for this working group, as indicated by emerging innovations from social entrepreneurs around the world, is that the intersection of public health, agriculture, economic development and nature/wildlife conservation fields is rich for unleashing innovation and helping to shift much deeper paradigms in society. The group explored the complexity and related opportunities surrounding issues of soil, water, nutrient cycles in the food chain, community governance and decision-making and social behavior among others.

Ashoka’s 30-year focus on “systemic change” worldwide seems to intersect with the methodologies represented in Holistic Management, and this connection is a topic of ongoing discussion between the Savory Institute and Ashoka. Ashoka is renowned for their work with leading social entrepreneurs to search for and advance innovations and systems-changes in society. Their work has produced increasing evidence that a key area of opportunity for a potential, powerful paradigm shift lies at the intersection of economy, rural agriculture and the natural environment.

What exactly does the Savory Institute do? Learn about our mission here on our web site.

Photo credit Busani Bafana/IPS

In a January 10 article titled “Brown Revolution Brings New Hope” IPS News reported how the Savory Institute and its partner organisation, the Africa Centre for Holistic Management (ACHM), successfully used holistic management practices to reverse the effects of desertification on areas of their 2,900-hectare ranch in the Dimbangombe area of Zimbabwe – areas that had seen a 400 percent increase in livestock.

Read the full article on the IPS News web site at http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=106395.

What is Desertification?
Interested in desertification and it’s dangerous effects on the environment? Learn more on our Web site.

What is Holistic Management exactly?
Click here to learn more about the principles and goals behind this practice.

As Jim Howell,  co-founder of Savory Institute and CEO of Grasslands LLC , says, “I’ve felt that thawing permafrost was a potential major time bomb, and, similar to the melting polar ice, it seems it is starting to happen faster than any models predicted. This is really scary, but it may be the sort of additional evidence needed to jolt the world out its climate-denial mode.”

He also comments, “As Allan (Savory)  has been saying for many years now, once the world collectively realizes we need to tackle this on a war footing, we’ll figure out how to get it done, including channeling the needed funds to the right sectors.”

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The Savory Institute is among a dozen remaining groups that emerged from an extensive review process of over 2,600 submissions for the Virgin Earth Challenge 2011.

For more information on the program and award, go to the Virgin Earth Challenge blog page.

What is the Savory Institute’s Mission?
Find out what the Savory Institute is doing to gain this type of global recognition.

Download the 24 min mp3 of the interview here.

How does the Savory Institute implement Holistic Management?
Learn more about the Savory Institute’s ongoing projects.