(The following is from my monthly newsletter. This series began in March 2022 and has continued for nearly a full year, with its final installment in February 2023. Below is the “better” edited version from what I originally emailed to my followers.)

In my quest to find topics for this monthly newsletter (and believe me, there are MANY to choose from!), I had a bit of a brainwave in creating a series on regenerative grazing that, at least for now, you’re only going to find here.

The idea came from a presentation I gave a few weeks ago up north in Savanna, Alberta, Canada (which is about 90 miles [150 km] from Grande Prairie, Alberta, Canada), where I talked for about an hour and a half on the principles behind regenerative grazing. The event was put on by the Peace Country Beef & Forage Association, and in partnership with my friend Steve Kenyon of Greener Pastures Ranching out of Busby, Alberta. I must say, I was representing Battle River Research Group more than Praise the Ruminant, but no matter!

So, I figured, why not discuss a bit here every month? I think (or at least hope) that you folks may find it both informative and maybe a little entertaining too!

For this particular newsletter, I’ll get into the “what is regenerative grazing” and only give mention to the grazing objectives as well as the grazing tools associated with it. Next month, and each month after that (until I run out of topics on this particular subject), I will discuss each objective, followed by each tool. There are five objectives and five tools to discuss, and lots of details in between!

(Aside: For this site, it’s more likely I’ll be posting each of these either once daily or once per week depending on my life schedule. Not per month!)

Let’s get into it, shall we?

What is “Regenerative Grazing?”

I’ve probably discussed this before in previous newsletters, but I don’t think I ever gave much of a sound definition. No doubt you’ve heard plenty about regenerative agriculture, or regenerative grazing, but have probably asked yourself, “okay, but what is it, really?”

Here’s my definition, and I have two of them.

1. Practice that, among other benefits, captures carbon and improves the water cycle by rebuilding soil organic matter and restoring degraded soil biodiversity.
2. Leverages the power of photosynthesis of plants to close the carbon cycle loop, and build soil health, crop resilience and nutrient cycling.

Why Regenerative Grazing, Then?

Here, I can’t just limit ourselves to grazing; regenerative also includes farming practices. Why regenerative agriculture is needed has much to do with what Darren Qualman discovered and wrote about back in 2017, regarding the amount of income that goes to farmers versus agribusinesses. The level of income that producers have been able to acquire over the years has declined, and a huge portion has gone toward agribusinesses. (Blue is the agribusiness portion, green is net positive farm income, and red is net negative farm income.)

The reasons aren’t that “farmers are fools and got themselves into this mess.” No, and as someone who grew up on a farm myself, I know that’s definitely not the case. My own dad wasn’t the kind of person to get fooled into some BS snake oil salesmen crap.

But, the “why” of this is how agribusinesses were (and still are) able to create this trap of making themselves the sole means of purchasing and using all sorts of farming inputs for farmers to buy–and use. These include farm machinery, fertilizers, pesticides, crop insurance, and so on.

The trap starts with creating a sense of expertise and knowledge in how to best grow crops that farmers needed to listen to; a bit of a top-down knowledge-is-power mentality that was held by agronomists. To make sure they weren’t just pissing in the wind so to speak, the use of demonstration crop plots to show farmers they actually knew what they were talking about was needed and kept up every year. Next, is the “agronomist” salesmen tactics to get producers to part with their hard-earned money and buy this special concoction of chemical or blend of fertilizer to grow their particular crop, formulated to meet the needs of the plants and to kill those pesky, yield-compromising weeds. Or, to switch to this best-performing high-tech seed to create greater profit.

To say that the information they sold was biased is an understatement.

How they literally seal the deal and give a money-back guarantee is the promise–and often delivery of that promise–that I just mentioned: to create greater profits. All for the sake of creating greater efficiency.

Basically, our obsession with higher efficiency is not creating the desired whole being greater than the sum of the parts. Instead, the sum is less than all the parts put together. Not only that, but it’s also a matter of the ends not justifying the means. By that I mean the most efficient machinery and the use of precision agriculture do not tell us anything about the efficiency of our food system as a whole, not when we’re throwing away almost half the food we’re supposed to be eating. In the case of grazing and raising animals for food and fibre, the best genetics for high gains and carcass quality and quality wool (means) don’t justify the ends of how we’re taking care of the land and not managing our pastures to their optimal capacity. I hope that makes sense!

As a result, all producers (not just crop farmers) are suffering from it. The graph above, which was taken from Stats Canada, tells the whole story.

So, how best to fix this problem?

The solution lies both under our feet. But, in my professional opinion, it’s actually right between our ears…

It will take what’s between our ears to see differently how what’s beneath our feet is going to help us!

Seeing Differently: Plants Build Soil

Nature has much to teach us! As do plants!

Common is the prevailing belief that soil grows plants. Add a certain amount of these types of nutrients (usually nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), and sulphur (S)) when sowing your seeds, add water (H2O), and guaranteed your plants will grow!

Well, hang on a minute. What’s the elemental makeup of plants themselves?

The answer is that it’s not mostly a combination of N, P, K, S, H, and O. No, it’s Carbon (C).

I even looked it up myself. The diagram below is directly from The Nature & Properties of Soil (15th ed.) by Weil & Brady.

Plants are made up of 42% Carbon, then 42% Oxygen, and only 8% Hydrogen. The rest (N, P, K, S) and other minerals are nearly insignificant.

Where do plants get carbon from?

The air, of course. Same with O (oxygen) and H (hydrogen).

Water, of course, is pulled up from the roots.

But carbon!! Wowzers!!

Plainly, this means that what plants capture via photosynthesis and merely existing, they put back in the soil when they die and decompose.

But why doesn’t modern agriculture acknowledge this?

Nature vs. Nurture

Because agribusinesses don’t want producers securing a life of financial, social, and ecological security from nature, or using soil microbes as their primary employees. The narrative that soil is nothing more than a growing medium used to grow plants is continuously pushed because it means inputs must be purchased and then put down in order for plants to grow. Doing so replaces the soil microbes as employees, and makes the seed/chemical/fertilizer company agronomist the primary hired “employee” to provide nutrients for your plants instead.

The other reason is that we’ve ignored nature for so long! Nature has never needed synthetic inputs to grow plants. And yet, we’ve been taught that “plants need nutrients from the soil to grow.” (Yes, I was taught this same thing when I was in school.) When we start asking, well, how do plants grow without human-made inputs then, the old school of thought can’t exactly answer it.

The reality is that we’re only telling a small part of the story. A big chunk is missing, and that is how soil microbes are the primary drivers of how plants get nutrients from the soil. This literally has been happening for EONS, long before humans even thought about the concept of agriculture, learned about the Law of the Minimum, or figured out how to turn ammonium nitrate from a weapon of war to fertilizer for wheat.

I like to call it BUBBA or the Biological Underground Bartering Biomass Association. (I do hope that quip catches on…)

How does this translate toward regenerative grazing?

In my professional career so far, I’ve seen (and will admit, have given advice) folks that believe that their pastures will perform better if they apply fertilizers, or use chemicals to kill off these weeds. Often the results are satisfactory, but only in the short term. The long-term is more costly, and concerning from multiple standpoints. Weeds always come back again, the fertility of the pasture declines over the year, and inputs must be purchased and applied yet again to feel some level of satisfaction that something was done to get more productivity.

And yet, the management of those pastures remains unchanged.

Regenerative grazing, then, is not only a plea and a message to change the way we view how plants get their nutrients, or how the soil is a living, breathing, the skin of the Earth. It’s also a call for a change in how we manage our landscapes using livestock. Without changing the management, we won’t be healing the earth or ourselves. We won’t be more resilient in the face of an ever-changing climate; we won’t be able to capture carbon; we won’t be increasing biodiversity, or building soil, or putting more money in our pockets versus the agribusinesses.

Instead, we’ll be doing the same thing we’ve always done, year after year, always hoping for a different result each time.

The solution isn’t to eliminate the animals entirely, as some “special interest” groups try to tell us to do to be more “green” and “help save the planet.” Sorry; we actually need these animals and a lot more of them. Not less and less.

We need these animals to help us manage the plants to help us build more soil.

Just how are animals going to help us? I’ll give you a hint. It’s not just their mouths. Or hooves.

It’s also by this, and a very important tool, indeed:

The Grazing Objectives & Tools I Will Discuss:

As I eluded to above, there are five grazing objectives that I will cover each month for the next five months, so stay tuned!

These are:

1. Know Your Context: Your Triple Bottom Line (April 2022)
2. Effective vs. Noneffective Water Cycle: The Soil Needs Armour (May 2022)
3. Capturing Solar Energy: Flow from Sun to Earth (June 2022)
4. Nutrient Cycling: More than Just Capturing Carbon (July 2022)
5. Building Biology with Community Dynamics: Polyculture is Your Friend (August 2022)

In the next months, we will talk about the five grazing tools that you have at hand. These are:

1. TIME is Everything: Recovery Periods & How Long to Graze (September 2022)
2. Your Organism Employees: Stocking Rates, Stock Densities & Animal Impact (October 2022)
3. Human Creativity: Not Just Child’s Play! (November 2022)
4. Money & Labour: How Much are You Willing to Use? (December 2022)
5. Technology: Fun with Toys Tools, Please Use Responsibly (January 2023)

I look forward to writing these as much as I hope you look forward to reading them!