#176, In Practice, November/December 2017

Healthy Land. Healthy Food. Healthy Lives.

NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2017

HMI 2016 Annual Report Dear HMI Community, 2016 was a whirlwind of activity as more people are learning about Holistic Management and all the attendant benefits it brings to the land, animals, and people. We responded to that need by collaborating with over 150 organizations around the globe to deliver 125 days of programming in six countries. We held 19 Open Gates and 11 Whole Farm/Ranch Business Planning or Land Management Series or Beginning Farmer/Ranching Training Programs. With the help of our Certified Educators we trained 9,547 people, influencing 20.5 million acres. We also had 178 farmers and ranchers enroll in our Getting Started Courses from 11 countries.

Thanks to the support of our generous donors, HMI was able to increase the total amount of scholarships we offer to beginning and transitioning farmers and ranchers needing financial assistance to over $20,000 in 2016.

On the outreach front we continue to expand our reach and educate more people about Holistic Management and HMI. By the end of the year we had a 20% increase in most of our outreach goals including over 17,000 Facebook fans and 11,000+ Twitter followers. Almost 15,000 people subscribe to our e-letter and almost 120,000 visitors visited our website.

While HMI finished 2016 with a net loss of $231,969, we have made significant investments in increased programming and fundraising capacity using profits from 2014. With those investments we have been able to increase programming by 62% over programming levels in 2012 and keep our administrative percentage to 15%.

Of course, 2016 was also our 32nd anniversary and we held our biennial Holistic Management Gathering in Paicines, California in October. Almost 250 people from around the world attended this event during which we had some of the biggest names of regenerative agriculture and Holistic Management presenting.

In addition to all that programming, we were

In Practice a publication of Holistic Management International

NUMBER 176

W W W. H O L I S T I C M A N A G E M E N T. O R G

also able to translate both the Introduction to Holistic Management and Holistic Financial Planning curriculum to make it available to those Spanish-speaking Holistic Management producers around the globe. We also developed the Holistic Cropping Planning Manual as the companion production planning tool for crop producers and those adding cover crops into their grazing operations. This manual has been long requested as a companion to our Holistic Grazing Planning Manual.

In 2018 we will be partnering with the Quivira Coalition for our 2018 Gathering in a not-to-bemissed regenerative agriculture conference to be held at the Hotel Albuquerque in Albuquerque, New Mexico on October 31st – November 2nd, 2018. Save the date and we’ll be sending information to everyone in 2018. In the meantime, you should also know that HMI will be having a series of Holistic Management round tables at this year’s Quivira Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico on November 15 –17, 2017. There will be an HMI Open Gate on November 14th as well. Come visit old friends and make new ones.

We look forward to reporting about all our 2017 programming next year in our 2017 annual report. We feel blessed to have such a committed team of Board, staff, Advisory Council, Certified Educators and our passionate network of practitioners who together are spreading the practice of Holistic Management and creating healthy land and thriving communities.

Sincerely,

Ann Adams - Executive Director

INSIDE THIS ISSUE Many people’s lives have been changed for the better because of Holistic Management training.

Learn more about how Holistic Management has influenced people by reading the results of HMI’s survey on page 5 or what one scholarship recipient learned through the training she received on page 6.

Danny Nuckols - Board Chair

Changing Lives

Annual Report Financials Summarized Statement of Activities

Healthy Land. Healthy Food. Healthy Lives.

In Practice a publication of Hollistic Management International

HMI educates people in regenerative agriculture for healthy land and thriving communities.

STAFF Ann Adams. . . . . . . . . . . . Executive Director Kelly Curtis. . . . . . . . . . . . Finance and Operations Director Jennifer Klass . . . . . . . . . Development Director Kathy Harris. . . . . . . . . . . Program Director Peggy Cole. . . . . . . . . . . . Program Manager Mary Girsch-Bock. . . . . . Development Manager Carrie Stearns . . . . . . . . . Communications &

Outreach Manager Valerie Grubbs. . . . . . . . . Accounting Manager Julie Fierro. . . . . . . . . . . . Education Manager Stephanie Von Ancken . . Programs / Office

Assistant

HOLISTIC MANAGEMENT In Practice

505/842-5252, fax: 505/843-7900; email: hmi@holisticmanagement.org.; website: www.holisticmanagement.org Copyright © 2017 Holistic Management® is a registered trademark of Holistic Management International

86,672 232,717 31,504 707,535 116,268 35,661 134,216 2,630 23,218 -6,638 1,363,783

Expenses Educational programs Publications Outreach Mineral interests Fundraising Administration Total Expenses

771,373 42,469 239,423 223,782 98,929 203,916 1,579,892

850,520 55,660 150,398 246,978 105,850 256,371 1,665,777

Change in net assets

-231,969

-301,994

453,090 1,734,134 152,284 7,179 0 13,628 539,271 0 3,000 535,923 1,011,230 4,452,263

701,555 1,919,739 121,548 21,396 775 11,542 25,079 1,000 3,000 534,287 1,112,342 4,452,263

17,999 50,978 23,376 9,826 267,333 369,512

53,092 22,317 0 64,658 0 140,067

Net Assets Unrestricted Temporarily restricted Total net assets

3,911,974 168,253 4,080,227

2,499,926 1,812,270 4,312,196

Total liabilities and net assets

4,449,739

4,452,263

Restoring Faith Hollow Ranch

Annual Report Financials..................................................... 2 Donors & Supporters............................................................. 3 Holistic Management Training Pays Dividends in First Year.......................................................... 5 How Scholarships Change Lives

JOHANNA GREENBERG.............................................................. 6

Hickory Lake Beef— Focusing on Cattle and Human Health

TRACY LITLE..............................................................................10

LAND & LIVESTOCK Addison Ranch—

Where is the money going?

GRAEME HAND..........................................................................16

NEWS & NETWORK

HEATHER SMITH THOMAS....................................................... 11

Program Round Up.................................................. 18

Carney Family Farms— Holistic On-Farm Research

Certified Educators.................................................. 20

HEATHER SMITH THOMAS.......................................................13

HEATHER SMITH THOMAS......................................................... 7

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159,834 202,240 25,825 592,804 189,863 31,461 87,147 1,743 -8,909 65,915 1,347,923

Liabilities Accounts payable Accrued liabilities Curent portion of long term debt Deferred revenue Long term debt payable, less current maturities Total Liabilities

(ISSN: 1098-8157) is published six times a year by: Holistic Management International 5941 Jefferson St. NE, Suite B Albuquerque, NM 87109

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Assets Cash and cash equivalents Investments Accounts receivable Prepaid expenses Unconditional promises to give Inventory Property and equipment, net Unconditional promises to give - long term Other Stock in closely held companies Mineral interest, net Total Assets

Daniel Nuckols, Chair Walter Lynn, Vice-Chair Kelly Sidoryk, Past Board Chair Gerardo Bezanilla Kirrily Blomfield Kevin Boyer Guy Glosson Wayne Knight Robert Potts Jim Shelton Sarah Williford

FEATURE STORIES

2016

Summarized Statement of Financial Position

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Revenues Educational Programs Grants Publications Mineral interests Contributions Investment income Partnership and trust income Miscellaneous income Net realized gains on sales of investments Unrealized gain on investments Total Revenues

November / December 2017

Marketplace............................................................. 21 Development Corner............................................... 24

Donors & Supporters HMI would like to thank all of our donors whose generous contributions help make our work possible.

Stewards ($50,000+) The Christiano Family Charitable Foundation Thornburg Foundation Guardians ($10,000+) 11th Hour Project Dixon Water Foundation Regenerative Agriculture Foundation Utah State University Protectors (5,000+) McCune Charitable Foundation TomKat Ranch Educational Foundation Keepers (2,500+) Christopher and Laura Gill Clif Bar Family Foundation Joy Law Patrons (1,000+) Alison Worcester Amy Morel Ann Adams Armando J. Flocchini Ben and Denise Bartlett Bert Glover Clint & Betty Josey Danny and Martha Nuckols Doug McDaniel & Gail Hammack

Genevieve Duncan Henrietta and Clay County COC Jim and Carol Parker Joan Bybee Judith McBean Foundation Kathy Harris Kelly Curtis Lee Dueringer Leigh & Charlie Merinoff Martha Records PastureMap Peter Earnshaw Pulis Ron Chapman The Community Foundation Walter Lynn Sustainers ($500+) Catherine Semrod Dr. Temple Grandin G Rodes Gail Kursel Greg & Jan Judy Jim and Sara Shelton Martha Holdridge Mary Adams Mayette Johnston Pono & Angela Von Holt Rob & Martie Rutherford Rocky Mountain Farmers Union Ryan Jarvis Southwest Quay SWCD Texas Range Minerals

Educa&onal programs Publica&ons Outreach Mineral interests Fundraising Administra&on

2016 Funding Expenditures

Supporters (250+) Abraham de Alba Avila Ann Beeghly Byron & Wayne Eatinger Carl Hathcock Jaye Henneke Joe and Peggy Maddox Kelly Jo Designs Ken Riddle Lowell and Mary Forman Nancy Levi Nicholas Trainor Peter Schulze Ph.D Sebastian Stadler Shalley Carrell Shannon Dils Williams Land Company Friends (<$250) Al Blackmon Jr. Albert Lowry Alysia Cain Ann Marie Fata Anne Prestvik Barbara Scaife Bill & Kay Burrows Bill & Kelli Parker Bobby Pounds Brad Wind Brian Russ Butch Tindell Cameron Duncan Candace Jagel Carmel Neylon Carrie Stearns Catherine Fitts CD Pounds Charles D Schmidt Christian Sweningsen Christina Laurikaine Christine Moses Claire Anderson Cynthia Villa Daniel & Erin Dietrich Daniel Hemesath Danil Pavel Dave Maxwell Dee Henneke Dennis and Mona Morrison Dennis Demmel Derek and Kirrily Blomfield Don & Jane Schreiber Don Faulkner Donald E Whitten Doug & Clare Barnett Douglas Dockter Dr. & Mrs. Watt M. Casey Duane Sand Edwin Waters

Elizabeth Wheeler Emery Mitchamore Flying M Land & Cattle Co, LLC Gabriel Jenkins Gary Gilbert Gerardo Bezanilla Harry Keally Harry Kemp Jack & Zera Varian James E. McCollum James F. & Colleen Reeves James Matthews Jennifer Klass Jennifer Munster Jennifer Peotter Jessie Westcamp Jill Kitty Newburn Jim Cecil Jim Rackley Jimmy Garner John C & Rosalyn G Phillips John G. Wernette John Parker Justin Jessop Kathy and Clyde Lynn Ken Gallard Kent Burnett Larry Madge Leonard Moore Linus J. Meyer Lois Hagener Lowry McAllen Margy Rogers Mary Girsch-Bock Mary Gonzales Mary Libby Campbell Maurine Renville Melissa Washington MK Campbell Molly Baldrige Myrna Huber Patrick Jackson Pete Ferrell Peter Wizinowich Philip Bancroft Rachel Pascoe Rebekah Perry Richard E. Rominger Rita Talbot Robert Childress Robert Parker Russell Chamberlin Sara Grusky Sarah Smith Scott Mackinnon Stacey Sullivan Stanley Reeves Stephanie Brock Steve & Leslie Dorrance N um ber 176

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Donors & Supporters Steve Moore Sue Stropes Susan Bunnell Susie Hagemeister Terry Hall Tim Baumgartner Todd Staats Tom and Irene Frantzen Tom Benzen Trish Sharry Valerie Grubbs William Edmunds William Mutch A special thanks to the following organizations and individuals who have graciously supported our programs.

Cindy Dvergston (Whole New Concepts) 11 Online 11th Hour Project 9 Mile Farm AA Events Agri-Cultura Network Alameda County Conservation Partnership Alice and Billy Bob Strunk Althouse & Meade Inc. Andrea Liberstein Ann Adams Anne Ravenstone Arapahoe County Fairgrounds Art Roane Assiniboine Watershed

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Stewardship Association Ausplow Australian National Landcare Programme Baca Family Connection Bamberger Ranch Ben and Denise Bartlett Betsy Ross Bio Ag Birdwell & Clark Ranch Block and Concrete Inc. Blue Dasher Farm Bob Steger BOS Rural Supplies CA SIP California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF) California Rangeland Trust Canadian Forage and Grassland Association Carrie Stearns CD Pounds Centralia Livestock LLC Certified Naturally Grown CFGA Chef Cooperative Chris & Laura Gill Circle Ranch ClifBar Colorado Farm Colorado State Land Board Co-Op Development Center Council for Healthy Food Systems Country Noosa Cows n Fish

Croome Court CT-NOFA D & G Hicks Ranch Danny and Martha Nuckols Dave and Lauri Celella Deborah Clark (Birdwell-Clark Ranch) Devils River Conservancy Dianne Doan Double T Ranch Doug & Melissa Havemann Downtown Growers Market Dr. Richard Teague Dry Creek Livestock Ducks Unlimited-Canada Eastbrook Farm Ecdysis Evergreen Acres Farm & Ranch Freedom Alliance Fat Toad Farm Fibershed Free Choice Enterprises Ltd. Gaia Bees Garden Variety Cheese Brand Gerardo Bezanilla Gery Rachley Government of Saskatchewan Green Cover Seed Green Fields Farm Green Pastures Farm GRS Ltd. Guernsey Goats Guy Glosson Hand ‘n Hand Livestock Solutions Hannah Crum Hartwick College Hawkes Bay Regional Council Heather Ridge Farm

Educa&onal Programs Grants Publica&ons Mineral interests Contribu&ons Investment income Partnership and trust income Miscellaneous income Net realized gains on sale of investments

2016 Income Sources 4 IN PRACTICE

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November / December 2017

Hickory Farms Hickory Lake Beef Hope Curtis Hudspeth River Ranch Humo of San Antonio Indian Ridge Farm & Bakery Jackson Soil & Water Conservation District James Buratti Jennifer Klass Jessica Lee Jim & Gerry Rackley Jim and Sara Shelton Joe David Ross, DVM Joel Ham Joel Salatin (Polyface Farm) John E, Kirkpatrick Horticulture Center Jorge Tristani Joy Law Joyce Farms Julie Fierro JX Ranch Tucumcari Convention Center Kandanga Farm Katherine Ottmers Kathy Harris Kelly Curtis Kelly Sidoryk Kennedy Hunting Kerr Wildlife Management Kevin Boyer King James Catering Kirk Gadzia Kirrily Blomfield Lee Dueringer Mark Bader Mary Girsch-Bock Mary Schultz Montesino Ranch NRA Whittington Center Paicines Ranch Peggy Cole Ray Darnell Rebecca King Red Corral Ranch Red Tractor Farm Rob Rutherford Robert Potts Roy Taylor Sara Williford Selah Bamberger Ranch Stephanie Von Ancken Tom and Mimi Sidwell (JX Ranch) Tomas Wolff TomKat Ranch Walter Lynn Wana Beth Fox Wayne Knight

Holistic Management Training Pays Dividends in First Year

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n 2017 HMI developed a comprehensive survey on Holistic Management training and developed an outreach campaign to engage the international Holistic Management community. The survey was open for respondents to complete for over two months.

When the survey closed 447 people had responded. This is the largest qualitative online survey of Holistic Management practitioners to date and we are pleased to share the results of the 2017 Holistic Management Practitioner Survey.(Full report at: http://sforce. co/2hmRBoX).

Key findings from this research include that a large percentage of these respondents did implement some practices from what they learned (95%), got results (92%), and are still practicing Holistic Management (92%).

However, there is significant difference in the results achieved and how quickly practitioners see results depending on the amount of training. The survey results suggested that at least 3 days of training is critical to increase efficacy of practice for improved results within the first year of practice. Those receiving 3+ days of training are 200–327% more likely to experience significant results within the first year of implementation. Such a difference in results suggests that increased investment in length of training is critical for sustained desired behavior change and attendant results.

Location of Respondents

The respondents resided in 32 countries with the top countries responding being U.S., Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.

Instructors/Resources

When questioned who had been the instructor for training, 64% responded that it was done by Holistic Management educators.

25% had learned through self-study (Holistic Management educational materials) and 7% learned from a non-profit educator.

Implementation

An astounding 95% of those trained implemented what they learned. When asked if they had experienced some type of positive result from that implementation, 92% of the respondents said they had experienced results.

Furthermore, 92% of the respondents also said they are still practicing Holistic Management.

Date of Training

When questioned as to when they had

completed their first training, the majority of respondents had been trained in the last seven years (303 respondents).

Moreover, the timing of those results was significantly different between those two groups. Those within the 3+day group achieved significant results within one-year post training Topics including: Improved decision-making at 54%, The largest percentage of respondents were better communication and relationships at 47%, trained in Holistic Grazing Planning, Holistic quality of life at 46%, decreased bare ground Goal Setting/Decision-Making, Holistic Financial at 34%, increase soil cover at 33%, improved Planning, and Holistic Land Planning. net profit at 24%. In contrast, those within the 2-day group Topics Trained In % of respondents achieved these percentage Holistic Grazing Planning 81% increases Holistic Goal setting/Decision Testing 78% during that Holistic Financial Planning 63% same time period: Holistic Land Planning 61% Improved Holistic Biological Monitoring/Ecosystem Process Health 57% decisionHolistic Marketing/Business Planning 45% making at Time Management/Leadership & Communication 34% 12%, better communication Length of Training and and relationships at 11%, quality of life at 11%, Implementation decreased bare ground at 9%, increase soil 76% of respondents had 3 or more days of cover at 10%, and improved net profit at 8%. training or were mentored or self-studied. When The most obvious reason for this significant compared to the 24% of the respondents who difference is the extended time allows for had 2 or less days of training, there is clear coverage of more topics and repetition of key evidence that the level of results and timing components of the Holistic Management® of implementation was significantly different framework such as making decisions toward between these two groups. These results the holistic goal regardless of which planning indicate that extended training is well worth process you are currently engaged in. While the additional investment of time and money shorter courses may be good introductions, if working to engage in new farm and ranch they must be followed up with other courses to management practices. reinforce learning and provide more opportunity For example, within the 3+day group for learning ways to change behavior. Given 81% implemented a holistic goal and 73% that the 3+day group was getting results 200implemented holistic decision-making in the 327% more than the 2-day group, the additional first year. However, within the 2-day group, investment in days and time are critical for only 72% implemented a holistic goal and 55% sustained behavior changes that lead to longimplemented holistic decision-making within the term results. first year. That implementation then had serious HMI would like to thank all our collaborators ramifications on whether those groups achieved who shared this survey with their networks and results and the timing of those results. all the Holistic Management practitioners who 96% of respondents in the 3+ day group took the time to complete the survey and share have implemented practices they learned while their results. We’d also like to thank all our 91% in the 2-day group have implemented donors whose generosity has allowed us to practices. Those within the 3+day group who offer scholarships to farmers and ranchers who achieved significant (26% or more) improvement want to learn more about regenerative in various results included: Improved decisionagriculture. Through their generous donations, making at 54%, Improved quality of life at 47%, we were able to offer over $20,000 worth of Improved forage and biodiversity at 42% and scholarships for Holistic Management training Improved net profit at 28%. In contrast, those in 2016. As the survey results show, these within the 2-day group who achieved 26% or investments have paid dividends in the form of more of improvement in various results included: more effective farmers and ranchers improving Improved decision-making at 11%, improved more land and soil health, providing more quality of life at 10%, and improved forage and ecosystem benefits and growing more nutrient biodiversity at 9%, and Improved net profit at 5%. dense food.

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How Scholarships Change Lives

BY JOHANNA GREENBERG

I

came in to HMI’s Holistic Grazing Planning class and 2016 Gathering with some knowledge of Planned Grazing, (having done lots of online research, taken a class on conventional range management, learned all of the Native and non-Native species of plants and animals in my area, and applied all this stuff to my land and animals—including making a grazing plan and existing plant survey), but I was pretty unsure of many aspects of the Holistic Planned Grazing principles.

I was also unsure of myself and my actions thus far, despite having a TON of belief in this process and a real desire to ameliorate my land, animals, and cycles of Nature on my property.

I was afraid I would “do wrong by my land/ nature/animals” if I hadn’t gotten it right yet.

Despite being an animal trainer with a lot of veterinary experience, I’m new to livestock, so I was unsure there too.

But, I came out of this training program with a really firm grasp of, at minimum, about 12 points: 1) Nature is super resilient and can heal very quickly with the appropriate actions—i.e., it will go right, almost immediately, when I plan right. Knowing that kind of strength and depth exists in the natural processes is really a boon and gives me the confidence to experiment a bit.

I love and respect Nature even more.

2) There is no right way or wrong way to do Holistic Planned Grazing. There are several ways that will work for my situation, on my land, not just one “best” way. It all depends on what works with my social/physical/emotional life, how I work the plan I’ve made and the parameters in my agricultural life, and how well I analyze the results of my actions; and then subsequently adjust my actions in the future.

This also gave me confidence, and, relief really!

3) Soil: It’s amazing!!! It’s the life force along with sun and water—even more than I knew!!

Wow!! So complex and incredibly malleable/ changeable, for such huge results! It’s the key to everything for us humans, because it’s the one permanent part of our land that we can change!!

Easily, Now! 4) On a related point: Bare ground=Not good. It’s worse than I had imagined. Now that I understand some of the complex soil processes, I can see why it especially needs protection and humus.

5) I need to add participants to my farm.

In my mind I have a small acreage and I was doubting whether I could add poultry and still 6 IN PRACTICE

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keep my land healthy—something I really wanted and needed to do, both for my budget and my health.

I am now surer that my soil will be resilient enough to have chickens and turkeys as well as sheep. This knowledge will be a huge boon to our food bottom line as well as our soil and pasture. I’ve got a better idea of what to look for in this endeavor, regarding soil and pasture health, and the steps to change outcomes, if necessary.

6) Animal Emotional Health: This was a big, unexpected, great, surprise to me.

I’ve been a dog trainer all my life and (unknowingly) have used similar Stockmanship principles to what I learned at the conference, on my dogs (except it’s handled a little differently physically). But I had not thought of applying these same emotional health principles to my livestock/sheep!!!

I thought I was “doing right by them” when I would give them great rotating pasture, good minerals, clean water, hands-on attention, physical inspection, and good scratches daily. No. Like with dogs, that is not enough. A giant ‘’DUH’’ for me!!!! Of course they need more!!!

I’ve always remarked on how smart my sheep are, how interactive and insightful they are, etc., but I never made the connection that it might mean they also need what my dogs all need: structured, calm, honest, unemotional leadership, with rules, limits, and consequences, in order to feel safe, secure, calm, and cared for.

These kinds of training principles have given my dogs happy, calm, coherent, and secure lives for decades. Now it’s time to learn to do this for my sheep. Very cool.

I also learned as part of animal health that emotional calmness and well-being can really ameliorate the health and immune systems of livestock. This is another important reason to regularly work with one’s livestock in a coherent way. My sheep have on and off snotty noses— not a big issue (they tested negative for major pathogens), but it’s a healthy issue I’d love to see go away. I’m going to see if learning how to work with them/handle them correctly will have a positive effect on this problem.

7) There are a lot of really great people and professionals doing Holistic Planned Grazing!!! I’m so glad to know some of these

November / December 2017

Johanna Greenberg people now, and I feel a lot more supported in my endeavor. (Most people in my area are Organic or use Organic or even Permaculture Principles, but not so much with animals— it’s mostly regular set pasture grazing and supplemental grain feeding. Most think I’m ‘’nuts’’ not to grain feed.) It is so gratifying to know how large and experienced this community is. I feel I have resources to turn to if I have questions or need help or support.

8) To Hay or not to Hay: I was under the impression that haying wasn’t a Planned Grazing Principle, that it was wrong for the land and unnecessary. This was a problem for me, because a large section of my pasture was wasted and I wasn’t sure how I could best resolve this except to spend far more time moving animals than I could sanely and physically do. No. I learned, again, the flexibility of this system: as long as the energy in the form of hay from my ungrazed section of pasture doesn’t leave my land, and it is subsequently returned to the pasture in the form of manure, it’s fine. Further, it would be a good thing to go ahead and graze it after it recovers, for even more benefit to soil and grasses. Yes!!

And, I could feed this hay, on pasture, to my animals and not have the residual stalks suppress next season’s grass growth too much (something I was concerned about). In fact, it would in the long run only ameliorate my soil, even if I got slightly less grass in the short run.

This emphasized to me, again, the great flexibility and saneness of Holistic Planned Grazing.

9) I have long dreamed of using both Permaculture and Planned Grazing simultaneously to create the best of all

possible situations for my welfare as well as for the welfare of my land, gardens, animals, and for the planet. In the past, I’ve kept the two fairly separate on my land. But after this HMI experience, I have a better idea of how to combine these principles and intertwine them more thoroughly. Food crops can also be animal crops and tree and soil health crops, depending on how I plant and graze. It does add a more complex variable to my planning, but I think it will become second nature before long. I also learned better gardening from Singing Frogs Farm. That’s quite a veggie farm!

10) I didn’t know the value of wild bees (vs feral bees). They are really beneficial for the entire ecosystem and I want to work with these bees and increase their numbers on my meadow and gardens.

11) I learned that it could be helpful and

valuable for me to take a course with hands-on planning from the start—i.e. including life goals, etc,—rigorously. I hope I may have the chance to do this in the future.

12) Maybe one of the most important things I learned about Holistic Planned Grazing was to focus on what I want on my pasture, what I want more of, not what I don’t want. For example, I could focus on that patch of great perennial grasses that’s starting up, and how to plan to grow more of it, not on how to get rid of the super invasive and unpalatable foxtail grass growing right next to it. All good things will come of this kind of simple focus, and the not-needed will fall by the wayside.

This is a super valuable principle that I think can be applied better to all aspects of my life, not just grazing and farming.

Every one of the speakers at the HMI

Gathering, in a roundabout way, were talking about this; but I hadn’t fully gotten this into the forefront of my head yet. I hadn’t realized that focusing on what I wanted to get rid of was one of the big mistakes I was making in my thinking and planning up until now. Kirrily Blomfield was the one who crystallized this clearly for me in her one small, insightful sentence to me as we were lunching.

Basically, I’m overjoyed at having learned all of this information! It really has been so valuable and it has absolutely motivated me to do some really great things on my California woodland meadow that I hadn’t thought of before! What an amazing, transformative, learning experience!

And I thank you all so very much for this scholarship I received to do this five-day training, without which I could not have attended.

Hickory Lake Beef—

Focusing on Cattle and Human Health

BY HEATHER SMITH THOMAS

J

im and Gerry Rackley raise and market grassfed beef on their farm at La Vernia, Texas, near San Antonio, while practicing Holistic Management. This is something they entered into within the past 10 years, after long careers in teaching.

Jim has always had an interest in farming

and cattle. He was raised on a small ranch in south Texas. “My family farmed and had chickens and cattle. After I went to college I became a teacher and a coach. My wife was also a schoolteacher. Even though we were busy teaching and coaching, we had 10 acres of land and had a few cattle, to keep our hand in it. We didn’t have much time to really get into raising cattle, however,” says Jim. They started leasing a little more land and got a few more cattle. “I taught and coached sports for 42 years. Coaching is a stressful business, and I had a heart attack in 2008, and a quintuple bypass. My cardiologist told me I should think about getting out of coaching, and also that I would have to change my diet, and stop eating red meat.

But I told him that my wife and I love meat and have eaten it all our lives. He told us that if it was finished on grass it would be healthier for us. This got me to looking into this.”

He began studying the Gerry and Jim Rackley are excited about the increase of problems with red meat and forage production that has occurred as they have worked learned that unlike corn-fed beef, on improving soil health through spraying compost tea and grass fed and finished beef was holistic planned grazing.

recommended by cardiologists. “It seems that cattle, which are herbivores, produce a very healthy beef product when raised and finished on grass. We decided to pursue this, so when I retired from coaching and teaching in 2012, my wife and I entered into a new business— ranching and raising grass-finished beef,” he says.

“At that time we began to study and implement holistic methods of growing grass and producing healthy grass-finished beef for ourselves, our children and grandkids. We have three children and 13 grandchildren. This has now evolved into a business where we sell meat, as well, and try to serve people a tasty, healthy beef product,” says Jim. They named their enterprise Hickory Lake Beef. He and his wife are continually studying Holistic Management methods to produce healthy cattle and be good stewards of the land. “We met a rancher up here named Betsy Ross, a soil biologist who runs Ross Farms in Granger, Texas. She became one of our mentors, and she taught us about soil biology.

She is very knowledgeable, and taught us how to use compost tea. As a result, we do not use chemical fertilizers. We realized that the foundation of healthy beef is healthy soil. We spray our pastures with compost tea to build up and improve the soil biology,” he says.

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Hickory Lake Beef

the mob grazing practices, really improved our grass. We’ve gone from a stocking rate of about one cow per 10 acres to about one cow per A Holistic Approach to Cattle six acres.”

Management That increased carrying capacity then means Jim and his wife became very interested in more animals to do more work to improve land Holistic Management after they started farming health with laying down plant matter on the fulltime. “We went to Joel Salatin’s school in ground. “When it rains, the mulch left on the Virginia, and then I went to Greg Judy’s 3-day ground by mob grazing holds the water there school in Missouri and listened to Ian Mitchell and it doesn’t run off,” says Jim. “You want Innes talk about mob grazing. We just kept every drop to go into the soil, and that mulch trying to learn as we went. It made sense to on top of the soil also reduces the heat and put our cattle into one herd and mob graze,” evaporation loss. says Jim. “In south Texas we average “We bought four Devon cows about 30 inches per year, but to get started in our venture for we might get 15 inches one grass-finished beef. We had year and 45 the next. When it a few cows already, but they does rain, we want to conserve were Angus and Brangus. I and utilize it, and keep it right started phasing out the Brangus here on the land. The herd and began building a herd that effect has improved our soil and was more Devon, by using a has allowed us to raise more Devon bull and keeping those grass and have more cattle daughters. We now have 30 per acre.” mama cows, and for the last four Besides drought another years we’ve had a closed herd. big challenge in this region is This will be our fifth year of not mesquite—a prickly invasive buying any outside cattle. We shrub that takes over a pasture are raising our own replacement unless it is controlled. “This heifers,” says Jim. brush has nasty thorns and Hickory Lake Beef uses cattle won’t eat it. If you let it get planned and mob grazing out of hand it just takes over, techniques to help enrich the and the thorns will result in flat pasture soil and grow grass tires—in anything you drive naturally. “Years ago, Mother around the place. Most people Nature grew strong, healthy down here just spray their grass by using the buffalo pastures with herbicides to try to herds that roamed the prairies. control it the conventional way, The buffalo would eat, stomp using a spray rig to spray the Here the herd has been released into the fresh paddock. Hickory Lake (creating a mulch which held the whole field,” he says.

Beef used to have a stocking rate of one cow to 10 acres. They now have moisture), fertilize the grass, and “I have used herbicides increased production so the stocking rate is one cow to six acres, a 65% then move on. The grass would to try to control it, with just a increase in forage production. then have a chance to rest and spot application—after cutting grow back before the buffalo came back again, When the cattle are moved into a new the brush off at ground level. Then I take a producing beautiful, lush pastures. This process pasture they only stay a short time, to eat off paintbrush and paint the top of that cut-off base produced organic matter in the soils that the top third of the plants. “They stomp down with a little bit of herbicide mixed with diesel. I would help feed the soil microbes, encourage the rest of it, and that litter—along with their use very little herbicide that way, compared to earthworm activity, and grow beautiful healthy manure—feeds and fertilizes the soil,” Jim says. the conventional way. I am trying to get away grass,” explains Jim. The ranch is 240 acres utilizing two different from even this little bit of herbicide so we are “We mimic the buffalo herd grazing method parcels while keeping one herd together moving now looking at using goats. We’ve talked to by using electric poly wire fences to move our them between parcels. The herd totals 70 several people who have goats, and folks who cattle and control where and how long the cattle head right now, which includes 30 mama cows, have used goats to eat the mesquite. Right graze each area. The result has been a gradual this year’s calves and some yearlings to be now I am in the process of getting a few goats improvement of soil health, which leads to processed later. “With the mob grazing we’ve and using electric netting to put them where I healthier grasses and, in turn, healthier cattle. been able to greatly improve our pastures,” want them. Goats will eat the mesquite leaves. I Nature, given a chance to work, will produce says Jim. “We were in a severe drought for could move the little herd of goats around to eat microbes and earthworms in the soil, and dung about seven or eight years, but started coming the mesquite and within a few years we might beetles working on the soil surface, creating a out of that drought about three years ago when be able to kill off those plants. This would be a rich and healthy environment,” he says. we had some rain. The moisture, along with better, healthier, holistic approach to control this CONTINUED FROM PAGE 7

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“We don’t plow or cultivate any of our land; we don’t want any bare soil. We do everything we can to improve the soil. Using Betsy Ross’s approach, our first goal is to improve the health of the soil and the microbes living in the soil. We feed the microbes first, to feed the soil. We don’t use any chemical fertilizer that might upset that balance. Our compost tea enhances the natural process whereas chemical fertilizers inhibit or destroy it. We believe nature has a better way.

We don’t use herbicides or pesticides. With mob grazing the grass gets plenty of rest before it is grazed again,” he says.

November / December 2017

nuisance,” says Jim. of puny and doesn’t look good so I am just going buy some round bales as insurance to get Most people don’t want to try this, however. to sell that one. We are selecting and culling through the winter. Each year we are feeding “In our area, the biggest influence on farming and each year our herd gets a little better, with fewer round bales. Our calves are never fed methods is Texas A&M, the main agricultural more resistance to parasites, and more adapted corn or any other grains. They are ready to be university in Texas. It’s like a lot of the other to eating just grass. The only supplement our processed when they are about 24 months old big agricultural colleges; they have a lot of cattle get is minerals. They have access to freeand by that time they weigh from 800 to 1000 influence from agribusiness and companies that choice minerals that we get from a company in pounds,” he says. sell herbicides. The conventional farmer and Wisconsin and they deliver it to us down here The meat business is a family project. “Our rancher here believes in whatever advice comes in Texas. I have a feeder with 16 compartments daughter Tracy is in charge of the promoting from Texas A&M, and the research that is done so the cattle always have access to mineral,” and marketing the beef. We don’t go to farmers there—that says there is nothing wrong with he says. markets; we just sell direct to our customers—by using herbicides as long as you use them in the “I used to use range cubes just to attract the the quarters, halves, three quarters or whole. right way.” cows and call them from the pasture, but not Our website has all the information about our It’s hard to go against product, and the prices that kind of general (www.hickorylakebeef. “wisdom” and the farmers/ com) and we provide ranchers who don’t free delivery to anyone use herbicides are a within 50 miles of San minority. “Some of us are Antonio,” says Jim. concerned, hoping that the The customers can state legislature doesn’t select various options pass laws/rules that might for their meat. “If they hurt our type of business. want it vacuum packed Grass-fed, holistic beef and labeled, the meat production is a tiny part of is $8.50 per pound by the market, compared to the quarter. If they want conventional production it wrapped in freezer and feedlots, but our paper, rather than market is slowly growing. vacuum packed, its More and more consumers $8.20 per pound. If they are becoming interested want to buy it wholesale in healthier meat. Those and freezer wrapped of us who can provide that without being labeled it healthier choice are cutting is $7.90 per pound. We into the general market a also give a $50 discount little bit more today, but if they buy a half, and we need to be diligent a $100 discount if they and keep aware of what’s buy three quarters, and The herd is waiting for a move to fresh paddock. You can see the amount of residue that is happening with our state a $200 discount if they incorporated into the soil from the higher stock density the Rackleys are now using. legislature,” he says. buy a whole carcass, to encourage people to Producing Healthy Food anymore. Since we started planned grazing they buy more,” he says.

The grass-finished cattle produce very come whenever they see me, ready to go to the Being close to San Antonio (only 30 miles healthy meat. “Our product is improving every next paddock. When they see me coming down away) means a good market base within easy year because our soil is getting healthier, the the road they know something good is going to driving distance and Tracy lives in a suburb of grass is healthier, and this means the cattle are happen!” he says.

San Antonio, about 25 minutes away. “She talks healthier. Our grass fed cattle are never given “Our low stress methods of working with to customers and does our website. From time any hormones, growth steroids, or antibiotics. our cows helps them thrive naturally. We truly to time she sends out information on Facebook We do not use pesticides or wormers. We have contented cows,” says Jim. Cows with promoting the product,” says Jim. don’t even spray for flies. Our cattle do not mellow disposition are never wild or excited, The direct marketing that Tracy performs for need these treatments because of the healthy and this also makes for better meat when they Hickory Lake Beef means more opportunity for environment in which they are raised. We use are harvested. consumer education on the health benefits for our management practices to take care of the “We wean our calves when they are about the forage, the animals, and the humans that problems. If a cow starts looking wormy or eight or nine months old, using a fence line happens when Holistic Management producers unhealthy, I just sell her,” says Jim. With this method of weaning which creates very little take care of the soil and the organisms that live kind of selection, keeping only the cattle that can stress—with cows on one side and calves on in the soil. In turn, those educated consumers stay healthy without the aid of unnatural inputs, the other. We rest some of our paddocks long drive market demand that encourages other the herd improves. enough to have standing hay for winter feed. producers to practice these methods and heal “Right now I have a yearling that seems kind We do not cut any hay off our pastures. I do the planet one steak at a time.

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Restoring Faith Hollow Ranch

BY TRACY LITLE

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s our children left home to live their lives apart from ours we began to look forward to the next part of our journey in life. We knew that we wanted to live in the country, have the life we’d always dreamed about, one of ranching and caring for the land. We began to search for the ranch of our dreams. In 2009, we found it; only it wasn’t in dream condition. It was worn out, trashed out and overgrazed. Most fence lines were broken and brushed up with every thorned bush and cactus South Texas has to offer. We became the fence clearing/repairing maestros.

Our vacation that year was a holistic grazing workshop by Ian Mitchell-Innes and Greg Judy. And so, began our journey with Holistic Management—discovering how to work with nature to make our dream a reality. In 2012

know that this undertaking would begin a new journey of self-discovery, land management, soil studies, and grass studies, as well livestock management.

When we bought the ranch it consisted of 149 acres of which two pastures (32 acres total) were cleared. There was nothing but a few clumps of grass amidst a moonscape of bare, capped soil. The rest was brush. The ecological climax community for this area was a mid- to short-grass prairie. That’s not what was there.

Years of overgrazing, then being left fallow without management input, had degraded to what NRCS considers Go Back Land—nothing but bare soil, cactus and thorned brush.

With a whole farm goal in place we went to work partnering with our animals to bring back the native grassland, improve the soil health,

subdividing the pastures, thinning out some of the brush/trees and cutting lanes to run electric wires. We would minimize the use of herbicide to just the stumps of the brush in the hotwire lanes and follow up with compost tea. This decision met the “triple bottom line” toward our holistic goal. Searching out the root cause and addressing that, rather than a symptom, is the mantra in our decision-making process.

Improvement is noted and celebrated.

Despite three years of exceptional drought conditions, followed by unusual rains and the short time of ownership, implementing the principles and practices we’ve learned through Holistic Management has improved our land in ground cover, diversity and water retention.

We are now seeing the diversity of the prairie coming back. Our soil is coming alive. We have

Using goats and cattle the Litles worked to increase stock density and reduce overgrazing with holistic planned grazing to transform a moonscape of capped soil with a few clumps of grass to a verdant forage stand filled with a variety of grasses including windmills, bristle grasses, side oats, little bluestems, Rhodes grass, and drop seeds. More wildlife (birds, reptiles, and small mammals) also were sighted enjoying this more hospital habitat.

I was accepted into the Beginning Women’s Farmers and Ranchers Program, and learned how to apply the principles and practices of Holistic Management to our piece of paradise.

As we fleshed out a holistic goal for our ranch, we made a huge discovery… we had alienated our children with our “work ‘till we dropped” mentality and our weekend warrior approach to the land. We were so focused on the land that we failed to include ourselves— providing time to relax, enjoy ourselves and others, as well as the land—into the mix of our endeavors. Back to the drawing board we went to include ourselves in the whole we manage. Simplified, our holistic goal became, “Restoring the land and ourselves using regenerative agricultural practices.” Little did we 10 IN PRACTICE

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using the positive grazing practices we learned through Holistic Management. We run cattle and goats with a few horses thrown in. As we progress through the practices, implementing the planning processes, and monitoring for success, the holistic goal remains the guiding light in the decision-making process for the ranch. While exploring how to regenerate our land, the testing framework became invaluable.

We first looked at bulldozing, spraying herbicide and combining the two which were the methods recommended for our area. However, these actions created long term consequences that were in opposition to our vision in our Holistic Goal.

We chose to continue using animal impact, increasing the stocking density by further

November / December 2017

seen an increase in soil organic matter from 1.6% to 2.9%. We are building diversity both above and below the ground moving our land ecologically to restoration, providing food for all.

New grasses are peaking through: windmills, bristle grasses, side oats, little bluestems, Rhodes grass, drop seeds, and wildflowers!

More diversity is noted in the wildlife present from birds, mammals & reptiles.

With Holistic Management, we are moving it from the “Go Back Land” to “Come Back Land” —the Native Mixed Prairie.

Tracy Litle is a Holistic Management Certified Educator living in Orange Grove, Texas. She can be reached at tjlitle@hotmail.com

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Addison Ranch

BY HEATHER SMITH THOMAS

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rett Addison grew up on a wheat farm in Canadian County, Oklahoma. “I always enjoyed farming, even at a very early age.

By the time I was 14 years old I could do most of the farming except the planting,” he says. “I guess my dad didn’t trust my skills that much and probably justifiably so.”

Then he went to college and graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a degree in Electrical Engineering/Computer Engineering Option. “My wife Lisa grew up in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. She was 100% city girl and never dreamed she would live anywhere else but in the city. After graduating from high school, she attended Rose State and was accepted into the Dental Hygiene program. We met on a blind date while we were in college and married a year and a half later,” says Brett.

“Upon graduation, I got my first job working for a Department of Energy contractor out by Amarillo, Texas. After two years of this I decided I wanted to get back into farming and ranching. My parents had a need for help on their ranch so, with a 50% cut in pay we moved to Bowie, Texas. Lisa worked as a Dental Hygienist for almost 10 years but she retired from that job when we had our son. From that point on she has worked from home and cared for the family as well as working on the ranch with me when I need help,” he says.

Lisa enjoys raising chickens and gardening. “She makes everything we eat from scratch--using clean, whole foods. Her goal is to grow as much as she can in her garden and on the ranch to feed us naturally and organically,” says Brett. He and Lisa have been married for 27 years and have one son, Blake who is now 19 and attending college at Murray State.

The Evolution of A Ranch

In 2010 Brett and Lisa purchased a 5,000-acre ranch near the Red River, just west of Marietta, Oklahoma. This ranch had been in the same family for more than 50 years but was generally leased out. It had often been leased by whoever would pay the most money for the lease, without consideration for how the land would be used. “When we bought the ranch, it was over stocked, over grazed, and the wildlife on it was being poached by most of the ‘hunters’ in the area,” says Brett.

“I remember the first time I met our State Representative and he wanted to know what place we bought. After I told him, he commented on all the great hunts he’d had on this place. Almost everybody that hunted on the west side of Love County hunted here, with or without permission!

We had to do a lot of fencing, and during the construction of the perimeter fence, 26 deer stands were found in trees along the fence line or just inside our property. This gives you a small idea of how hard it was poached. The individual who had it leased for the previous four years said nobody had permission to hunt.” Yet obviously it was heavily hunted.

Currently Brett and Lisa operate a commercial cow/calf operation. The cow herd is usually around 400 cows. “We raise crossbred cattle with a heavy Angus influence, utilizing several breeds (black, red and white) and select our bulls from within our own herd. Heifers are retained to replace culled cows,” says Brett.

These cattle have grass-based genetics. “When Ian Mitchell Innes first started helping me in cattle selection, he always made the comment that form follows function. Therefore, we want a cow that raises a calf every year and is an easy keeper on grass and easy to handle. The cows on our ranch need to be able to do this on their own, with no supplementation, and within my management style, and the environment on our place,” explains Brett.

Lisa and Brett Addison Yearling retention serves as a drought plan. On good years with lots of pasture, calves can be held over and grazed as yearlings. On dry years the calves can be sold sooner, or the yearlings can be sold at whatever point is necessary to save more forage for the cow herd.

There are many whitetail deer, turkeys, wild hogs and ducks on the ranch, so in 2001 the Addison family started a commercial hunting enterprise. “The hunting takes place from September through April. We have no permanent employees, so I guess the buck stops with us in terms of keeping everything running smoothly. There are lots of times I sure wish there was someone else to blame!” says Brett.

“In 2001 we started this enterprise with one hunter, one blind and no facilities. Lisa did the cooking. I did the guiding. Our hunting program has expanded since then, and now we normally take 20 buck hunters, eight doe hunters and anywhere from 20 to 45 pig and turkey hunters each year,” he says.

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located on one of the highest points on the ranch. This makes for some breathtaking views of the lower creek bottoms. The hunting lodge can accommodate up to six hunters comfortably, and the open floor plan allows hunters to enjoy the conversation from the kitchen to the living area.

“Lisa has now turned the cooking over to a number of local cooks who enjoy doing it. I have recruited friends and hunters to help with guiding,” says Brett. Multiple enterprises (livestock, hunting, wildlife watching, agritourism, etc.) have evolved on this ranch to make it a viable, sustainable family ranching operation.

Prioritizing with Holistic Management

“Holistic Management was introduced to me by my dad in the mid1990s. Its biggest influence in our lives was how it has enabled us to think about things differently, specifically looking at the whole,” says Brett.

Holistic Management has become a part of their decision-making in every aspect of their lives. “We try to make all of our decisions using five simple criteria. These are in the order of priority: Faith, Family, Financial, Fun and Friends. We always try to consider how our decisions will affect these things in our lives,” he explains.

On the ranching side, new ideas helped improve their land and cattle management. “We started utilizing a grazing plan and electric fencing.

Over the years this has changed more towards temporary electric fencing and a dramatic increase in the number of pastures fenced,” Brett says.

The cattle management, grazing management (and utilization of mob grazing) has improved the land and the forage for both the cattle and wildlife. “Our ranch has approximately 5,000 acres with the perimeter high-fenced for wildlife. We feed no supplement of any kind to the wildlife, other than corn during the hunting season to increase hunter encounters.

We also don’t purchase deer and release them into the ranch; our deer are native here,” he says.

“We don’t have any breeder pens. We don’t plant any food plots. We don’t use fertilizer, weed spray, magic beans, pixy dust or any of the other things that are marketed today to grow big deer! We simply manage the

Because forage quality is so high on the ranch, the deer are very healthy, resulting in a number of trophy bucks. This quality of hunting increases ranch profitability and sustainability.

deer by growing them bigger with age and natural nutrition. We improve the natural nutrition with our mob grazing by the cattle. After being high fenced and utilizing commercial hunting for 12 years, we finally broke the 200 BC threshold (Boone & Crockett antler score for trophy bucks) after the first growing season of mob grazing and we’ve done it six times since!

There has been no other change in our whitetail management except to improve their natural feed,” explains Brett.

Brett and Lisa are delighted that their ranch can grow so many trophy whitetail bucks. “For a buck to be entered into the record book it must have a net score of 170 or more in Boone and Crockett measurements.

This is simply a way to score antlers and the amount of antler inches they grew,” says Brett.

“One way to look at this is if you use a bell curve with a normal distribution looking at antlers on a lot of deer, 140 BC or less would be in the middle. A score of 170 would be on the far right, and 200 would be way to the right, in terms of size. As a guess, I would say less than .01% of whitetail deer with all natural food sources will score over 200. It’s like hitting the Powerball in the lottery for hunters,” he explains.

After utilizing Holistic Management for a number of years, the Addison family has tried to help other people learn more about it. They host a workshop at their ranch (the most recent one was last May with Ian Mitchell Innes) as a great way to highlight the ongoing improvements on the ranch.

“In the late 1990s my dad and I had the privilege of attending a Dick Diven school, but it wasn’t until Ian Mitchell Innes pushed us gently that we actually started using the things we learned. We then moved our calving time to coincide more with the natural utilization of forage and its ability to enable our cows to achieve proper Body Condition Score, with no inputs at critical times in a cow’s life,” says Brett.

“We also started fencing our cows tighter for better utilization of the pasture which could involve grazing or treading. The smaller pastures for Mob Grazing and Ian’s guidance have allowed us to improve our pasture at a much faster rate than we could have accomplished with conventional rotational grazing. This is why we feel the need to share these methods with others,” he explains.

Addison cattle are managed to increase forage selection and are monitored for “In May we normally sponsor an Ian Mitchell Innes school various indicators like dung consistency, animal fill, urine pH to determine grazing either here on our ranch in southern Oklahoma or in North periods and paddock moves.

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November / December 2017

Carney Family Farms—

Holistic On-Farm Research

BY HEATHER SMITH THOMAS

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ruce Carney and his family practice Holistic Management on their farm near Maxwell, Iowa (central Iowa, just northeast of Des Moines) where he grew up. He came back to the farm in 1996, after being away for 20 years, when his father died of a heart attack. He had to juggle his full-time job with a commercial construction company with the farm responsibilities until he retired from that job in 2013. It was during that interim period that he began to experiment with alternative agriculture practices and learn the value of on-farm research to determine appropriate production practices.

From Corn to Grass

Carney Family Farms is 300 acres, and his father was renting an additional 20 acres of pasture just down the road. Of the 300 acres, about 200 acres was conventional crop ground, and 100 acres was permanent pasture. His father had 70 cows, with half of them in a fall calving herd and half in a spring calving herd.

When Bruce first came back to the farm, he planted 200 acres of corn and beans just like everyone else around him was doing—with conventional farming. “After a while I realized I didn’t like using all those chemicals and I didn’t like the high inputs required. I realized that conventional agriculture didn’t fit me,” he says.

“I had a conversation with my mother and told her I’d like to seed the whole farm to grass and get out of the crop business. She told me that’s what my dad wanted to do with it, too, and she was okay with it. The ownership of the farm changed when Dad died. His half of the farm went to me and my four siblings (three sisters and a brother) and mom owns the other half. Our entire family is still involved in making the decisions needed to transfer the farm to the next generation and many generations in the future,” says Bruce.

“The last year that I planted corn was 2008. From that point on, it has been all in grass or some kind of perennial or annual forages. I was also transitioning from a conventional cattle operation to more of a grassfinishing operation, and now we direct-market almost all the beef from the farm in quarters or halves. We sell a few individual cuts but not many. We also sell a few stockers, and once in a while someone comes looking for some grass-type genetics, wanting to buy cows or heifers. I’ve been doing

Many members of the Carney family are involved in Carney Family Farms with the focus being to create a healthy land base and business to pass on to the next generation of Carneys. this long enough that people hear about me and know that I have cattle that will finish on grass,” he says.

A Whole Farm Community

Bruce also notes that much of his success in improving the land and cattle can be attributed to Holistic Management. Some of the people he has become acquainted with through the Practical Farmers of Iowa (PFI) organization are advocates of Holistic Management.

“I have also taken a few Holistic Management schools over the years.

The first and second classes I attended were at Greg Judy’s farm in Missouri, and the instructor was Ian Mitchell-Innes. I have also taken a three-day course in Elkhart, Iowa where the instructors were Ralph Tate, Terry Gompert, along with Torray and Erin Wilson from northeast Iowa who are Practical Farmers of Iowa members,” he says.

“I also know Margaret Smith who is a Holistic Management educator at Iowa State University, and I was in some Holistic Management courses in Red Oak, Iowa last year that were sponsored by PFI,” says Bruce.

“Terry Gompert brought a bus tour to our farm a few years back, before he passed away. Terry was always a great person to be around, and a great inspiration; he is missed by many. He was in attendance on one of the field days I went to that was held at Chad Petersen’s farm in Nebraska. I went there a couple of different times,” says Bruce. These were learning experiences that helped open up the possibility of new ideas and innovations to try on his own farm.

Farming for the Birds

While much of the farm income comes for direct marketed beef, the Carneys also have some of the younger generation helping out with the poultry and pork enterprises as well.

Since turning the whole farm into forage production rather than annual row crops, the soil and plant health have improved, along with the wildlife habitat. Many species thrive here on the farm, including whitetail deer, raccoon, fox, coyotes, rabbits, ring-neck pheasants, partridge and multiple song birds. “We participated in bird counts and bird research here, in conjunction with Practical Farmers of Iowa, Polk County Conservation and Drake University—comparing the number of birds on my farm (a wellmanaged pasture operation) with the Chichaqua Bottoms Greenbelt, a conservation area which is 10,000 acres about half a mile away. We were excited to see what the population of birds might be, because I’ve seen a lot of birds here and I don’t know what a lot of them are,” says Bruce.

“Polk County Conservation thought this would be a great thing to measure. Drake University had a grant for a student to come out and count birds. Regarding the various birds we were looking for, we found CONTINUED ON PAGE 14

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about twice as many on my farm as they found in the conservation area. I think managed grazing works very well for birds,” he says. [See the Practical Farmers of Iowa report http://practicalfarmers.org/farmerknowledge/research-reports/2016/monitoring-birds-rotationally-grazedpasture/ The research project showed that grazing disturbance improves bird habitat for such species as bobolink, dickcissel, grasshopper sparrow, Henslow’s sparrow, and the eastern bluebird. The research showed that Bruce’s pastures had 27% more species and 94% more birds than in the conservation area, with the perennial pastures having slightly more birds overall than the perennial and annual pastures. In total, 285 birds were counted in the restored prairie (Greenbelt conservation area), 553 birds in Carney’s perennial pasture, and 524 birds in Carney’s perennial and annual pasture.

130 to 150 head for a while, but as we forage-finish more beef and they are here for two years we’ve dropped the number of mother cows down to about 125—plus the two calf crops.”

There are a lot of water quality issues in Iowa, partly due to intensive crop farming. “I’ve been testing our water for a couple of years. I have a tile that drains from my perennial grasslands and I’ve never got above 1 point per million of nitrates when testing it. I’ve also measured samples that my neighbors give me from other tiles and surface runoff from 100% crop ground and those are seldom below 15 parts per million for nitrates.

I know that what I am doing is a lot different than what they are doing and I get frustrated when I hear everyone saying we need help and funding to clean up the water,” he says.

“Maybe they could use the money they receive in the crop commodity program to help with their water quality issues. I have a difficult time accepting 5 ton per acre erosion (thinking it’s ok). We need to tie conservation on the farm to soil erosion and water quality issues, and the money received from the government. Maybe the government should send a bill for soil erosion/poor water quality, and then farmers wouldn’t put marginal land into crop production. Perhaps conservation practices would become more important to them,” says Bruce.

Cattle Genetics for the Environment

The Carneys have been working on cattle genetics to improve animal performance on a forage-based system, including winter grazing.

“Now we all want to do the count again this year, and expand it a bit more,” says Bruce. “We want to see how many birds are actually hatching here on the farm. So we will continue the bird research and compare nesting as well, to see if we are getting some birds hatched here on the farm.”

Bruce is very conservation-minded and concentrates on perennial forages, and has also planted a lot of trees and windbreaks over the years. “Here in corn and soybean country there are not enough windbreaks, so any kind of trees we plant will help with that, and help our cattle in the wintertime, giving a bit of shelter, as well as shade during the summer heat.” With the trees, his family is adding additional enterprises that include nuts, fruit, and logs.

“We are right in the middle of a lot of farm country, so my neighbors wonder what this crazy guy is doing planting pasture and trees. But I just keep doing what I think is right,” says Bruce.

Bruce works with Practical Farmers of Iowa because they help farmers conduct on-farm research. In fact, he is currently involved in four different trials.

“Here on our place, my focus is on soil health, using our animals to graze holistically, rotating the animal impact around all the pastures. I’ve probably doubled our production from what it was earlier. Things have changed a lot since my dad had 70 head of cows grazing here. We had 14

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When Carney came back to the farm, his father had a Limousin bull and an Angus bull with the cows. “They were crossbred cows, and Dad always kept his own replacement heifers. At that point I started using Gelbvieh bulls because of that breed’s mothering ability and more milk.

The beef herd was still a conventional operation, thinking in terms of production (pounds of beef weaned), but those Gelbvieh-cross cows gave too much milk. It got to the point where we were blowing out too many udders,” he says.

“The last few commercial bulls I bought couldn’t seem to make it through a breeding season (due to weight loss and bad feet) so I started looking for grass type genetics and began using Pharo Cattle Company genetics. Then I eventually transitioned to where I am now raising my own bulls and all my own heifers. We are doing a little bit of linebreeding, and using linear measurements and ultrasounding carcass data to find the right animals to use in our breeding program. This is a good way to know that we are producing quality beef for our family and our customers,” he explains. There are advantages to raising your own seedstock, using the best of your own genetics, knowing your cattle, and knowing what works in your own environment.

“If you have the right type of cattle that fit your environment and thrive, they can do well—so why haul in other cattle from somewhere else? Why go through all that, and spend the time it takes for those cattle to adjust from one environment to another, when we can do it all right here. I used some Lowline Angus genetics, as well, to help downsize the frame a little from where my cattle were,” says Bruce.

It takes time to transition a cow herd from conventional type to grassfed genetics, but that’s what his herd has done. “I have cows now that range from 900 pounds to probably 1,300 pounds. Some are still on the big side, but they still seem to get bred and do what they are supposed to do, year after year, so they are still here,” he says.

“When we started here, I probably fed hay for six months of the year, and grazed for six months. Now we probably graze for 10 or 11 months and have minimal feeding. This year I only fed hay through the month of February. We had stockpiled grass to go back out on after that, and then transitioned into spring green growth. I choose to do this because the cattle tear up the pasture a lot less when the ground is frozen during feeding. Normally it’s frozen here in February, but this year we had 70

degrees for the last 10 days of February and it wasn’t very frozen,” he says.

“I have also used annuals for grazing, and you could probably call it pasture cropping. I just put a diverse mix out there in my pastures. We primarily have cool season perennials, and about mid-June I usually try to no-till drill some warm season annuals in those pastures. Then when the perennial grasses are shutting down, the warm season annuals take over, and provide a higher level of nutrition—which is a lot better for foragefinished grass-fed beef,” says Bruce.

“I feel that diversity is important. The more species in my pastures (perennials or annuals) the better, because the grazing animals can choose what they need. This includes weeds, forbs, small trees, grasses, legumes, and broad-leaf plants. All of this diversity helps create healthier animals. I don’t consider any plant a weed unless it’s been on the farm for a whole year and the livestock haven’t utilized it, or it becomes a monoculture—in which case I need to control it,” he explains. “We just try to tweak the system a little bit wherever we can, to make it better for us— to improve our soil, water, and our overall system.”

To learn more about a PFI report on this practice go to: http:// practicalfarmers.org/farmer-knowledge/research-reports/2016/improvingcool-season-pastures-interseeding-annuals-grazing-update-2016/

The Family Farm Hub

Bruce is pleased to have the opportunity to make Carney Family Farms a real family farm with multiple generations involved in a number of enterprises—in stark contrast to the conventional agriculture that surrounds them. “I am very frustrated to see where conventional agriculture is today, and I live right in the middle of it,” says Bruce.

“I have three kids—two sons and a daughter—and they are all interested in agriculture and we are trying to figure out how we can bring them back to the farm. My daughter Amber is 35 and I have two sons, Jered (32) and Derek (26). We have five grandkids and another one on the way. We’d like to see some of them continue in agriculture. We will soon have six grandchildren under the age of four and they are having fun together on the farm. My wife Connie and I babysit them, so they are often here on the farm together,” he says.

“We are all very close, and we have kind of a unique family in that way.

My mother Karen lives right next door to us here on the farm, and all of my sisters and brothers live within seven miles of the farm. I am not sure what keeps us all together, but perhaps this family farm is a hub that keeps us together; there is something here that we all enjoy.”

Bruce’s daughter Amber has taken over the most of the marketing for the farm and has been doing that for about five years. “She does the website, the internet, and sells most of the beef,” says Bruce. “She and her husband Kendel raise pork on their farm. We sell pork, beef and poultry through our Carney Family Farms. Kendel and Amber are trying heritage breeds with their pork and have tried Herefords, and are considering Large Blacks and Mule-foot pigs. They want to use more of the heritage breeds and raise them outside.

“Our youngest son, Derek, raised all the poultry when he was growing up and sold about 300 broilers annually. Then Amber and Kendel moved the poultry production to their farm and started raising Freedom Ranger chickens and sold 200 to 300 a year. Last year my oldest son Jered raised Freedom Ranger chickens and sold 300. This year he is going to raise the same chickens and also try his luck at turkeys.” The poultry is all freerange, out in the pasture, with planned grazing, which helps with soil and animal health as well as creating a more nutritious product.

“With the poultry, the Freedom Ranger chickens are not conventional six-week broilers; they are a 12– to 14–week broiler and more of a

heritage freerange breed.

He also has 75 Novogen Brown Egg laying hens. They run all over the pasture. We market eggs along with the broilers. Jered With improved forage and grazing planning, the also started Carneys have been able to shift their grazing some bee hives from six months a year to 10 or 11 months for an last year. These 83% increase in grazing production. are just a few of our many enterprises,” Bruce explains.

“I want to make this farm better for my kids and grandkids—better than it was when I came back to it. I think we have accomplished that by just putting it in grass. I have a lot of soil biology working out there, and I know I am growing a lot more grass and beef than I ever grew before. We have more animals here and I am sure that healthy soil equals healthy plants equals healthy animals and healthy food for us and our customers,” he explains.

“Our health is tied a lot more to our food than most people give it credit for. I think our health system in this country is broken and it’s because of the food system we have. I think we need to get back to growing our own food. Our family grows a garden, and we preserve and freeze as much food as possible. We still go to the grocery store and we still buy some of the things we shouldn’t buy, but this is all part of our journey for a healthier life.

“We are trying now to raise a little seedstock (by raising the right type of cow that finishes well on forage) as another enterprise. We are trying to figure out how we can involve our kids in the farm and help develop new opportunities for income on the farm if they want to come back. We want to be able to set them up for success,” he says.

“We are also concerned about water management on the farm. I am very interested in permaculture and how swales could distribute some of the water (that comes to us from neighbors) out across our farm a little more and try to keep it on our land—and maybe use the nutrients they are giving us in the water—through using water farming/keyline design. This would clean the water up through our grass and our pastures. At the same time we are planning to plant some nut and fruit trees, and possibly some medicinal plants along with many others. We want to do whatever we can, in terms of permaculture that will grow back every year—so we don’t have to continually reseed and plant. The more diversity, and the more enterprises on the farm, the better the farm will be, and the better able it will be to support more of the family,” says Bruce.

Like the diversity that Bruce and his family have developed through more species of plants and animals, so too they bring more diversity of people, each involved in various aspects of the farm. In this way, the farm flourishes, feeding the web of life and providing additional research on how holistic farming practices create better soil health and habitat for many species while also improving water and food quality for all.

For more information about Carney Family Farms visit their website at: www.carneyfamilyfarms.com. To learn more about the research projects that the Carneys have been involved in with Practical Farmers of Iowa, visit their website at: http://practicalfarmers.org/farmer-knowledge/research-reports/ Num ber 176

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Addison Ranch

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 12

Texas. Ian is very good about introducing Holistic Management ideas and the tools that farmers and ranchers can utilize while maintaining profitability—all while utilizing common sense management.” he says.

Educational Opportunities

The Addison ranch also offers internships to young people who want to learn more about farming and ranching. “The Noble Foundation brought the idea of interns to me about 7 years ago. They thought there was a need for some hands-on experience for agriculture majors who had little to no experience on farms and ranches. At the same time, I felt the need for a break from the constant moving of cattle and was excited about sharing what I had learned from Ian and others along my journey,” Brett says.

Interns arrive when they finish school in May and leave at the end of summer, usually in August. “I teach them how to set up a pasture to be

Where Is the Money Going?

BY GRAEME HAND

Note: This article was first printed in Stipa Native Grass Associations newsletter and was reprinted with permission. For full article with references go to: http://bit.ly/2hlrVZP for the June 2017 issue.

grazed based on the terrain, livestock, pasture and time. Interns learn how to operate and manage mob grazing techniques in order to improve soil productivity and increase animal performance of both cattle and wildlife,” he says.

“They learn how to increase forage/grazing selection by moving faster through the pastures or by providing larger paddocks. They learn when they need to increase selection by watching for various indicators like dung consistency, animal fill, urine pH, etc. They learn how to shape the paddock for maximum treading, maximum utilization, or a nice balance. All of this is done within the desired cattle condition criteria. The interns learn how to handle the cattle using low stress livestock handling. On the years when we retain our calves and have a group of yearlings on the ranch they also learn how to work with a dog,” explains Brett.

The Addison Ranch understands the importance of educating future generations in the skills necessary for management of land and animals in the agriculture and wildlife industries. “Our goal is to share the knowledge and experience we have acquired over many years on the ranch, to help facilitate the intern’s success in his/her field. If the interns are here

from this graph, is that in the “32-year period from 1985 to 2016, inclusive, agribusiness corporations captured 98% of farmer’s revenues – $C1.3 trillion out of $C1.35 trillion in revenues.”

Canadian Net Farm Income

I

keep pushing the line that grazing management, based on native perennial grasslands, is lower risk and more profitable, over time, than contemporary management based on inputs.

Key Points: • Contemporary agriculture, based on inputs, results in low net farm income • Many farms, in the high rainfall zone, may need to be deintensified • New practices need to be selected based on lowering costs and risk • Current farm economics results in farm designs that do not work in practice • Financial planning to make sure that profit is planned before expenses is required to overcome the tendency to allow expenses to rise to anticipated income

Low Net Farm Income

Contemporary, ‘industrial’ agriculture based on inputs and focused on increasing production has had some unintended consequences. These unintended consequences are reducing biodiversity, soil health and water quality while emitting large amounts of soil organic carbon and producing a lot of low quality food5. Apart from these unintended consequences production driven agriculture has done a fantastic job of increasing production and gross farm income. The only problem is that farmers continue to receive an ever-declining fraction of this increasing gross income while debt is high and putting farms at risk.

A recent graph of Canadian net farm income (at right) highlights that many countries are doing worse than Australia. The startling information,

16

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November / December 2017

Canadian net farm income and gross revenue, inflation adjusted, net of government payments, 1926–2016. (Blue area – gross revenue Green area - net farm income) The really clever bit that agribusiness has pulled off is “they have left Canadian taxpayers to backfill farm incomes (approximately $100 billion have been transferred to farmers since 1985). And they have left farmers to borrow the rest (farm debt is at a record high—just under $100 billion)”.

By any measure, the ability to convince governments and farmers to borrow to fund agribusiness profits is excellent business management.

The following is an attempt to work out how this can be happening.

I have looked at three different areas to explain the drivers of this illogical behaviour.

The areas are: • Economics - Barrie Ridler, Tim Hutchings • Marketing - Doug McKenzie-Mohr • Holistic Management - Allan Savory

during the fall and winter months, they also learn the ins and outs of a commercial hunting business while maintaining their first priority of cattle management and evaluation. The work on a ranch can be long and hard, but when they are finished with their program here the interns have been given the knowledge and skills to help them be sustainable in present and future agriculture and wildlife industries,” he says.

Interns are required to have completed a minimum of one semester of their college junior year. Each intern is expected to be physically fit and at least 18 years of age. When they come to the ranch, interns start their work under direct supervision with the goal of slowly progressing toward independent, responsible decision making.

There is some reimbursement for their work while they are at the ranch. The pay is $1,000 per month. Living quarters are provided, including all utilities, but the interns are responsible for their own meals.

Since the number of internships are limited, selection is made by application. “If anyone is interested in an internship, they can contact us for an application at info@addisonranch.com and we will send the necessary information,” says Brett.

He and Lisa also use other means to help educate people about good land management and stewardship. “Once a year The Noble Foundation brings a group of NRCS people to the ranch to look and listen and see how I do things here. I simply tell them how I do things and then they can judge for themselves whether it makes sense for some of their cooperators or not,” he says.

The Addison Ranch hunting enterprise is another opportunity to educate the public about good land management and stewardship. “The hunters are always asking questions about how we grow such big deer. I tell them we build and freshen 5,000 acres of food plots every year. This always leads to more questions and probably more answers than they really want, but it helps educate them about good land and forage management.” They learn how cattle can be utilized to improve wildlife habitat.

Economics— Barrie Ridler

has overcome not only convincing farmers that they need these products but that it is socially unacceptable not to use them. This is no mean feat when you realise that many of these products are poisonous to people and the environment while at the same time reducing biodiversity and depleting soil health.

Barrie Ridler is one of the economists that I have studied. His expertise is the NZ dairy industry but applies equally to grazing and cropping. Barrie explains in several papers and conference presentations that dairy is in a permanent state of disequilibrium. This disequilibrium is evident in systemic overstocking1.

Research at the Lincoln University dairy farm confirmed that most dairy farms are overstocked. Even though this farm was in the top 5% of NZ dairy farms for profit lowering the stocking rate by 5.2% increased production by 12.5% and profit by 15%1.

Barrie argues that this illogical position can be partly explained by the following: 1. Systemic misinformation because dairy uses non-economic farming models and performance measures 2. Dairy farmers are more interested in building long-term assets rather than profit.

Economics— Tim Hutchings

Tim Hutchings who has written his PhD on risk in agriculture has shown that underestimating risk and adopting practices that increased costs and intensify the farm business results in farm businesses losing money over time frames such as 10 years2. In a paper that he co-authored the abstract states—“This analysis shows that innovations need to be assessed more on their ability to reduce costs rather than to increase income.” The paper goes on to state—“Further analysis shows that the current static measures of financial performance (Gross margins, profit and cash margins) do not characterise the risk-adjusted performance of the various farming systems and almost certainly result in a flawed specification of best practice farm management in south-eastern Australia.”

Doug McKenzie-Mohr—Marketing

The behavioural change expert, Doug McKenzie Mohr provides an insight into the marketing ability of agribusiness. Agribusiness has developed a complete marketing package that has governments, researchers, farmers and the community believing that their products are necessary to produce food.

The table below is an attempt to show the barriers that agribusiness

To learn more about the annual schools put on by Ian Mitchell Innes, check for more details at http://addisonranch.blogspot.com/ or call Brett Addison at 580-276-2439.

BARRIERS

TOOLS

Lack of Motivation

Commitment Norms Incentives

Forget to Act

Prompts

Lack of Social Pressure

Norms

Lack of Knowledge

Communication & Social Diffusion

Structural Barriers

Convenience

Source: McKenzie-Mohr, Doug. Fostering Sustainable Behavior: An Introduction to Community-Based Social Marketing (Kindle Locations 2095-2103). New Society Publishers. Kindle Edition.

This table shows some of the barriers people face when adopting new behaviours. When you analyse agribusiness through the lens of making sure people adopt and maintain new behaviours, then it is clear to me, that agribusiness has spent large amounts of time and effort addressing each of these barriers.

If I use this table to think of just one practice—spreading fertilizer: • Motivation—agribusiness provides incentives, contacts people to obtain commitment and has made it a social norm to spread fertilizer.

• Forget to act—agribusiness provides reminders through advertising in rural papers, television etc. as well as direct contact to individuals to “plan your upcoming needs for the season to make sure that you don’t miss out”.

• Lack of social pressure—agribusiness has convinced many farmers that if you are not putting on fertilizer then you are mining the soil and you are a bad farmer even though there is a great deal of research showing that most cropping and grazing soils are being over fertilized.

• Lack of knowledge—agribusiness provides experts to read CONTINUED ON PAGE 19 CONTINUED ON PAGE 19

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PROGRAM ROUNDUP Gabe Brown Workshop On August 28th nearly 100 people, including a participant from Belize, attended HMI’s sponsored Gabe Brown workshop and field day at the Kaesebier Farm near Elkhart, Illinois that focused on soil fertility.

To start the day off, participants were greeted with a “soil your undies” display where the Kaesebiers were airing their dirty laundry next to the registration table! The partially decomposed cotton underwear hanging on the line had been previously buried in different Rick Kaesebier performs a slake test areas of the farm, during the field day. and the amount of decomposition showed differing levels of biological activity in the soil from those areas.

The day started off with an introduction to Holistic Management from HMI Board member Walter Lynn of Springfield, Illinois. Gabe Brown then talked about the value of Holistic Management and Rick Kaesebier briefly shared what they have been doing on their 800-acre farm to improve soil health. Participants spent the rest of the morning rotating between four learning stations on the farm to view a cover crop test plot, a slake test demonstration, a soil pit, and a water infiltration demo, as everyone learned more about soil health and soil Walter Lynn demonstrates the importance of fertility management soil tilth using flour and bread to show how practices. much more absorption happens with the right Gabe then soil structure. spent the rest of the afternoon presenting results experienced on his farm and practices that have improved both profitability and soil health. There was a lot of great conversation and Q&A as people had the opportunity to ask Gabe a lot of questions, while also sharing their own experiences, and learning from other event participants.

HMI would like to extend their thanks to the Kaesebiers for opening their farm for this event and to the Herd Quitters Management Group for their help. We’d also like to thank our event sponsors; Soil Health Partnership and ProHarvest Seeds for supporting this program.

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Open Gate Update Monte Prieto Ranch Day

Forty-six people came from Texas, Colorado and New Mexico to join HMI at Monte Prieto Ranch in Claunch, New Mexico on July 21st. The day began with an introduction to the ranch from ranch owner Molly Baldrige, who has had the property in her family since the early 1960s.

Having always been interested in sustainable practices and techniques that improve the health of the ecosystem of the ranch, Molly partnered with Duke Phillips and Ranchlands who specialize in managing large-scale ranches in an economically self-sufficient manner; emphasizing a holistic approach to landscape-scale conservation and ecology. Ranchlands mission is to train the next generation of sustainable ranchers.

HMI Certified Educator Kirk Gadzia facilitated the day and brought Monte Prieto ranch managers Amy and Nick up to give a brief introduction to holistic planned grazing. Next up was Nancy Ranney of Ranney Ranch and the president of the Southwest Grassfed Livestock Alliance Certified Educator Kirk Gadzia explaining (SWGLA) with SWGLA how to determine soil health and vice president, Sam inventory forage.

Ryerson. Nancy and Sam provided participants with an overview of the benefits of Grassfed beef production, and stressed the important of holistic management practices in their operations.

After lunch Farm Service Agency (FSA) representatives Josh Sanchez and Clover Chacon talked about the various micro loans and financial assistance programs currently being offered by the FSA. They also presented on FSA’s rangeland and drought programs and answered questions.

The rest of the afternoon was spent out on the land. Participants loaded into various pickup trucks and headed fifteen minutes down the main ranch road to a biological monitoring landmark where Kirk Gadzia lead the group in a lesson on Bullseye Monitoring and how to calculate forage and Animal Days per Acre. Kirk answered questions and identified different plants before turning it over to Ken Lujan of NRCS who presented briefly on the various programs they offer.

HMI would like to thank FSA for providing funding for this event.

We’d also like to thank Ranchlands, Claunch-Pinto SWCD, SWGLA, and New Mexico NRCS for being part of this program.

Bunchgrass Flat Open Gate

On June 17th, 2017, 39 people gathered on the rolling plains at Bunchgrass Flat in Waukomis, Oklahoma to hear how grazing can help soil health. Bunchgrass Flat owners Sara and Jesse Bullis began by telling their story of how they improved their land health with grazing management. Since 2010, they’ve consistently increased their herd and stocking rate, decreased hay consumption to almost zero, and have improved the overall diversity and health of their pastures using the grazing practices they learned. “Using the grazing practices we

Where Is the Money Going?

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 17

soil tests as well as using departments of agriculture and NRM organizations to provide the same service and training.

• Structural barriers—agribusiness provides services to the level of spreading fertilizer on your farm. This service is incredibly convenient when compared to the work and skills required to increase perennial grass density and diversity with decomposing litter in the inter tussock space to increase nutrient cycling through grazing management.

Allan Savory – Managing Holistically

These paragraphs from Allan Savory’s textbook4 have always made sense to me “After years of consulting in many countries for clients of great variety in sophistication, enterprises, and economic circumstances, I was struck by what they all shared in common. Each of them finished the year in the same nail-biting suspense over their bottom line. No matter what state, country, or currency, no matter what size of business, what product, market, or price conditions, the same picture emerged consistently. Planned income: $200,000; expenses $ 195,000. Planned income: $10,350,000; expenses, $10,340,000. Like the unanimous elections in totalitarian countries, this defied logic. Profit margins simply could not be so uniform and proportionately small across so many widely differing situations.

Eventually it dawned on me that the problem must lie in the only

Program Roundup

common factor: human nature. Like most people, my clients were allowing their expenses to rise to meet the income they anticipated receiving. I suffered from the same weakness.”

What can we do to keep money?

To summarize, agribusiness and banks capture most farm income due to: • Poor economic information, research and advice • Excellent marketing • Tapping into human nature that allows expenses to rise to meet income If these are the causes, then the following should allow farmers to keep more money in their bank.

1. Do not use gross margins, research and advice but confirm which enterprises are profitable under your management on your land.

If you have a rainfall risk only trial new enterprises or practice changes that lower costs and reduce risk.

2. Ignore salesman / agronomists who have the answer to your problem, and do your own research that addresses the cause.

3. Only adopt practices that lower costs and risk. See article on three ways to improve profit in this newsletter.

4. Use the Holistic Management financial planning process that makes sure that profit is planned before expenses.

Graeme Hand is a Holistic Management Certified Educator and CEO of STIPA who lives in Branxholme, Victoria. He can be reached at: graemehand9@gmail.com.

THE MARKETPLACE CONTINUED FROM PAGE 18

learned from Holistic Management has been a game changer for us,” said Sara.

Next up was a resource panel representing different agencies and organizations including Keith Whiteneck from the Farm Service Agency (FSA), Brandon Reavis from NRCS, Julie Gahn and Nick Lorax from OFRA, and HMI Certified Educator Tracy Litle.

Pasture walks during the day included Gregory Scott from Oklahoma Conservation Commission talking about land health, Tracy Litle teaching Bullseye Monitoring, Blane Stacey from Oklahoma Conservation Commission teaching plant identification, and Chuck Grimes from Grasslander speaking about the principles of how to plant native grass seeds.

HMI would like to thank FSA for funding Blane Stacy helped participants this program, as well learn plant identification skills. as Oklahoma NRCS, OFRA, Grasslander, and Oklahoma Conservation Commission for participating in this event.

P.O. Box 2300 Ridgeland, MS 39158-2300

FREE SAMPLE COPY! The hottest thing since electric fence!

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1-800-748-9808 • www.stockmangrassfarmer.com

N um ber 176

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Certified

Educators

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COLORADO Cindy Dvergsten 17702 County Rd. 23, Dolores, CO 81323 970/882-4222 • 970/739-2445 (c) wnc@gobrainstorm.net Katie Miller 22755 E Garrett Rd, Calhan, CO 80808 970/310-0852 • heritagebellefarms@gmail.com

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KANSAS Bill Casey 13835 Udall Road, Erie, KS 66733 620/423-2842 • bill.caseyag@gmail.com MICHIGAN Larry Dyer 1113 Klondike Ave, Petoskey, MI 49770 231/347-7162 (h) • 231/881-2784 (c) ldyer3913@gmail.com MISSISSIPPI Preston Sullivan 610 Ed Sullivan Lane NE, Meadville, MS 39653 prestons@telepak.net 601/384-5310 (h) • 601/835-6124 (c)

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MONTANA Amy Driggs 1551 Burma Road, Eureka, MT 59917 208/310-6664 • adriggs@ldagmachinery.com Roland Kroos 4926 Itana Circle, Bozeman, MT 59715 406/522-3862 • 406/581-3038 (c) kroosing@msn.com Cliff Montagne Montana State University 1105 S. Tracy, Bozeman, MT 59715 406/599-7755 (c) • montagne@montana.edu

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NEBRASKA Paul Swanson 5155 West 12th St., Hastings, NE 68901 402/463-8507 • 402/705-1241 (c) pswanson3@unl.edu

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NORTH DAKOTA Joshua Dukart 2539 Clover Place, Bismarck, ND 58503 701/870-1184 • Joshua_dukart@yahoo.com

WISCONSIN Heather Flashinski 16294 250th Street, Cadott, WI 54727 715/289-4896 (w) • 715/379-3742 (c) grassheather@hotmail.com Larry Johnson 453 Woodside Terrace, Madison, WI 53711 608/957-2935 • larrystillpointfarm@gmail.com Laura Paine N893 Kranz Rd., Columbus, WI 53925 920/623-4407 (h) • 608/338-9039 (c) lkpaine@gmail.com

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U N I T E D S TAT E S Tim McGaffic P.O. Box 1903, Cave Creek, AZ 85327 808/936-5749 • tim@timmcgaffic.com CALIFORNIA Lee Altier College of Agriculture, CSU 400 West First St., Chico, CA 95929-0310 laltier@csuchico.edu • 530/636-2525 Owen Hablutzel 4235 W. 63rd St., Los Angeles, CA 90043 310/567-6862 • go2owen@gmail.com Richard King 1675 Adobe Rd., Petaluma, CA 94954 rking1675@gmail.com • 707/217-2308 (c) 707/769-1490 (h) Kelly Mulville P.O. Box 23, Paicines, CA 95043 707/431-8060 • kmulville@gmail.com Donald D. Nelson 11728 Shafer Ave., Red Bluff, CA 96080-8994 208/301-5066 • nelson-don1@hotmail.com Rob Rutherford 4757 Bridgecreek Rd., San Luis Obispo, CA 93401 805/544-5781 (h) • 805/550-4858 (c) robtrutherford@gmail.com

806/237-2554 • glosson@caprock-spur.com Tracy Litle 1277 S CR 305, Orange Grove, TX 78372 361/537-3417 (c) • tjlitle@hotmail.com Peggy Maddox 9460 East FM 1606, Hermleigh, TX 79526 325/226-3042 (c) • westgift@hughes.net Katherine Napper Ottmers 313 Lytle Street, Kerrville, TX 78028 830/896-1474 • katherineottmers@icloud.com CD Pounds 753 VZ CR 1114, Fruitvale, TX 75127 214/568-3377 • cdpounds@live.com Peggy Sechrist 106 Thunderbird Ranch Road Fredericksburg, TX 78624 830/456-5587 (c) • peggysechrist@gmail.com

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The following Certified Educators listed have been trained to teach and coach individuals in Holistic Management. On a yearly basis, Certified Educators renew their agreement to be affiliated with HMI. This agreement requires their commitment to practice Holistic Management in their own lives and to seek out opportunities for staying current with the latest developments in Holistic Management.

ARIZONA

NEW YORK Craig Leggett 6143 SR 9, Chestertown, NY 12817 518/494-2324 (h) • 970/946-1771 (c) craigrleggett@gmail.com Erica Frenay Shelterbelt Farm 200 Creamery Rd., Brooktondale, NY 14817 607/539-6512 (h) • 607/342-3771 (c) info@shelterbeltfarm.com Elizabeth Marks 1024 State Rt. 66, Ghent, NY 12075 518/828-4385 x107 (w) • 518/567-9476 (c) Elizabeth.marks@ny.usda.gov Phillip Metzger 120 Thompson Creek Rd., Norwich, NY 13815 607/334-2407 (h) • pmetzger17@gmail.com

Ralph Tate 1109 Timber Dr., Papillion, NE 68046 402/932-3405 • 402/250-8981 (c) Tater2d2@cox.net NEW HAMPSHIRE Seth Wilner 24 Main Street, Newport, NH 03773 603/863-4497 (h) • 603/863-9200 (w) 603/543-7169 (c) • seth.wilner@unh.edu NEW MEXICO Ann Adams Holistic Management International 5941 Jefferson St. NE, Suite B Albuquerque, NM 87109 505/842-5252 • anna@holisticmanagement.org Kelly Boney 4865 Quay Road L, San Jon, NM 88434 575/268-1162 • kellyboney_79@yahoo.com Kirk Gadzia P.O. Box 1100, Bernalillo, NM 87004 505/263-8677 (c) • kirk@rmsgadzia.com Jeff Goebel 1033 N. Gabaldon Rd., Belen, NM 87002 541/610-7084 • goebel@aboutlistening.com Kathy Harris Holistic Management International 5941 Jefferson St. NE, Suite B Albuquerque, NM 87109 505/842-5252 • kathyh@holisticmanagement.org

OREGON Angela Boudro PO Box 3444, Central Point, OR 97502 541/ 890-4014 • angelaboudro@gmail.com SOUTH DAKOTA Randal Holmquist 4870 Cliff Drive, Rapid City, SD 57702 605/730-0550, randy@zhvalley.com

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TEXAS

Bellows *NorthLisaCentral Texas College

1525 W. California St., Gainesville, TX 76240-4636 940/736-3996 (c) • 940/668-7731 ext. 4346 (o) lbellows@nctc.edu Deborah Clark PO Box 90, Henrietta, TX 76365-0090 940/328-5542 • deborahclark90@sbcglobal.net Guy Glosson 6717 Hwy. 380, Snyder, TX 79549

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For more information about or application forms for the HMI’s Certified Educator Training Programs, contact Ann Adams or visit our website: www.holisticmanagement.org. associate educators provide * These educational services to their communities and peer groups.

I N T E R N AT I O N A L AUSTRALIA Judi Earl “Glen Orton” 3843 Warialda Rd. Coolatai, NSW 2402 61-409-151-969 (c) • judi_earl@bigpond.com Paul Griffiths PO Box 186, Mudgee, NSW 2850 612-6373-3078 paul@holisticmudgee.com Graeme Hand 150 Caroona Lane, Branxholme, VIC 3302 61-3-5578-6272 (h) • 61-4-1853-2130 (c) graemehand9@gmail.com Dick Richardson PO Box 341 Balhannah SA 5242 61-0-42906900 (c) dick@dickrichardson.com.au Jason Virtue P.O. Box 75 Cooran QLD 4569 61-0-754851997 • jason@spiderweb.com.au Brian Wehlburg Pine Scrub Creek, Kindee, NSW 2446 61-2-6587-4353 (h) • 61 04087 404 431 (c) brian@insideoutsidemgt.com.au

Blain Hjertaas Box 760, Redvers, Saskatchewan SOC 2HO 306/452-3882 • bhjer@sasktel.net Brian Luce RR #4, Ponoka, AB T4J 1R4 403/783-6518 • lucends@cciwireless.ca Noel McNaughton 5704-144 St NW, Edmonton, AB T6H 4H4 780/432-5492; noel@mcnaughton.ca Tony McQuail 86016 Creek Line, RR#1, Lucknow, ON N0G 2H0 519/528-2493 • mcqufarm@hurontel.on.ca Len Pigott Box 222, Dysart, SK, SOH 1HO 306/432-4583 • JLPigott@sasktel.net Kelly Sidoryk Box 72, Blackroot, A B TOB OLO 780/872-9761 (h) • 780/875-4418 (w) 780/872-2585 (c) • sidorykk@yahoo.ca

CANADA Don Campbell Box 817 Meadow Lake, SK S0X 1Y6 306/236-6088 • 320/240-7660 (c) doncampbell@sasktel.net Ralph Corcoran Box 36, Langbank, SK S0G 2X0 306/532-4778 rlcorcoran@sasktel.net

NAMIBIA Usiel Seuakouje Kandjii P O Box 24102, Windhoek 9000 264-812840426 (c) • 264-61-244028 (h) kandjiiu@gmail.com Colin Nott PO Box 11977, Windhoek 9000 264-81-2418778 (c) • 264-61-225085 (h) canott@iafrica.com.na

November / December 2017

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KENYA Christine C. Jost Box 30677, Nairobi 00100 773/706-2705 (c) • 703/981-1224 (w) cjost@usaid.gov

Wiebke Volkmann P. O . Box 9285, Windhoek 264-61-225183 or 264-81-127-0081 wiebke@afol.com.na NEW ZEALAND John King P. O. Box 12011, Beckenha Christchurch 8242 64-276-737-885 john@succession.co.nz

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SOUTH AFRICA Wayne Knight Solar Addicts, P.O. Box 537, Mokopane, 0600 South Africa 27-0-15-491-5286 +27-87-550-0255 (h) +27-82-805-3274 (c) wayne@theknights.za.net Jozua Lambrechts PO Box 5070, Helderberg, Somerset West, 7135 +27-0-21 -851 5669 +27-0-08-310-1940 Ian Mitchell-Innes 14 Chevril Road, Ladysmith, 3370 +27-83-262-9030 ian@mitchell-innes.co.za UNITED KINGDOM Philip Bubb 32 Dart Close, St. Ives, Cambridge, PE27 3JB 44-1480-496-2925 (h) +44 7837 405483 (w) pjbubb99@gmail.com

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THE MARKETPLACE

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2018 DATES!!!!

Holistic Management Trainings

CORRAL DESIGNS

with Richard McConnell & Tina Williams

February 5-10, 2018 Albuquerque, New Mexico with instructor Kirk Gadzia

Introduction to Holistic Management February 5-7: $495 Advanced Training Session (Requires prior attendance at intro session.)

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Pasture Scene Investigation

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By World Famous Dr. Grandin Originator of Curved Ranch Corrals The wide curved Lane makes filling the crowding tub easy.

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Low Stress Cattle Handling Video $59.

Send checks/money order to:

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Kirk L. Gadzia, Certified Educator Resource Management Services, LLC Bernalillo, NM ~ 505.263.8677 kirk@rmsgadzia.com

22 IN PRACTICE

h

“Bud Williams” Livestock Marketing & Proper Stockmanship

2918 Silver Plume Dr., Unit C-3 Fort Collins, CO 80526

970/229-0703 • www.grandin.com

November / December 2017

Learn how good stockmanship can make your livestock handling experiences enjoyable, easier, and more profitable and how livestock marketing based on today’s price (no crystal ball) can help you realize your profit goals.

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— Ben www.handnhandlivestocksolutions.com info@handnhandlivestocksolutions.com 417-327-6500

THE MARKETPLACE

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Tony McQuail HMI Certified Educator Contact now for upcoming courses in the fall of 2017 and winter 2018

Wayne has experienced firsthand how the principles of Holistic Management have huge impacts on ecosystem productivity as well as economic health of his own operation—saving his family ranch.

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TO LEARN MORE or TO ORDER:

Canadian Holistic Management for Non-Brittle Environments Ontario, Quebec and Maritimes

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E? R U T S A P E S N E D NUTRIENT

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For consulting or educational services contact:

Soil test as soon as conditions permit to add lime or other needed nutrients for pasture and hay crops.

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N um ber 176

h IN PRACTICE 23

Nonprofit U.S POSTAGE

PAID Jefferson City, MO PERMIT 210

Healthy Land. Healthy Food. Healthy Lives.

a publication of Holistic Management International 5941 Jefferson St. NE, Suite B Albuquerque, NM 87109 USA

RETURN SERVICE REQUESTED

please send address corrections before moving so that we do not incur unnecessary postal fees

DEVELOPMENT CORNER To Our Holistic Management Community

BY ANN ADAMS

As the holiday season approaches, my thoughts turn toward all the gifts HMI has been blessed with this year. Through the hard work of our Board, staff, Advisory Council, Certified Educators, passionate Holistic Management practitioners and generous supporters, we are on track to reach our 20/20 vision of 20 million more acres of healthy land by 2020 through training 20,000 more farmers and ranchers in Holistic Management.

Healthy land is the result of the healthy relationships between people, animals, and plants—the joyous symbiotic give and take of nature working together. Through Holistic Management, more people are enjoying partnering with nature rather than working against it— creating extraordinary results.

Our 2017 Holistic Management survey demonstrated once again that when people are trained in Holistic Management, they are given the tools to turn their values into action—giving back to the land and their community through their work to create more productive soil, healthier wildlife habitat, and nutritious food. Whether they talk about increasing carbon in the soil, seeing more birds on their land, or enjoying the gratitude of their loyal customers raving about the food they sell, each of these producers takes pleasure in sharing their gifts with their communities.

At HMI we have seen the Holistic Management community grow each year as more people recognize that regenerative agriculture and sustainable local food systems requires both consumers and producers to co-produce the healthy lands that will, in turn, produce healthy food to feed our communities and our planet. We each have a role to play and it is our concern for the environment and the health of the land, as well as our desire to bequeath a healthy planet and the tools to continue to steward it to future generations, that prompts us to determine our unique role.

Each season of the year brings its own gift—gifts as distinct as the

land influenced by those seasons. Whether it comes in the form of winter or summer rains, abundant warmth and sunshine for plant growth, the end of a growing season to allow for the decomposition of plants to feed the soil, each season has its own lessons, opportunities, and challenges. I have seen the Holistic Management community explore and engage with those seasons with creativity Rachael Shenyo and generosity.

HMI has experienced your generosity in many ways—whether it’s providing a farm or ranch to use for training purposes, a generous monetary donation from a supporter, or a grant from a foundation to support one of our programs, we appreciate it all. We are especially proud of the fact that since 2014 we have been able to give over $50,000 in scholarships to people requesting Holistic Management training from all over the world. We have been able to not only train new beginning farmers and ranchers but also provide additional support for the young farmers and ranchers working to become the next generation of land stewards.

Rachael Shenyo a scholarship recipient working in Guatemala had this to say after completing her course: “My team works to bring innovative solutions to pressing problems of watershed degradation, food insecurity, poverty, and crop loss related to a combination of human and climate factors. We have determined that holistic practices have great potential application for five key problem areas related to water, soil, terrain, agriculture, and forest management in fragile, stressed environments.”

Exciting news.

Through all our efforts we are creating healthy land and thriving communities. May the coming year offer you continued opportunities for stewardship and the rewards from lives well-lived.

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