(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.)

The final grazing objective we look at in this regenerative grazing series is community dynamics. We use community dynamics to build biology, influence the presence of desirable and undesirable biological organisms, and better understand how ecology functions.

In a word, living organisms make up a larger community as they are a part of a community. Living organisms are a part of a greater whole and are made up of a lesser whole themselves. Think about the trillions of bacteria and fungi that live on your body that make up you as a human. It’s mind-boggling to think that we humans are just a mess of bacterial cells and fewer of cells that we can call our own!

Think too, about just one tablespoon of soil contains.

That’s a lot of living organisms. And that’s a lot of living organisms that are eating each other, and dying and being replaced.

With respect to community dynamics, the “dynamics” part of the phrase tells us that their populations are forever in flux. Never do their populations remain the same. Every species is always changing and evolving as it adapts to its ever-changing surroundings.

Some species are great at adapting quickly, others not so much. This adaptation is often in the form of learned behaviours that are passed on from generation to generation. Coyotes, rats, mice, pigeons and raccoons, for example, have learned (and therefore adapted) to live in urban landscapes.

Every species also changes its environment in some way, shape, or form to suit itself. We, humans, are an excellent and painfully obvious example of that! We’ve changed so much of the landscape we’ve lived in with roads, houses, farms, dams, mines, fences, concrete and pavement to help us to better live and survive on this planet. Beavers are also good examples: they’ve cut down trees to build dams and lodges to provide ample food and safety from predators. Most other species might be a bit more subtle in how they’ve influenced the environment to suit their needs.

Then there’s the fact that all living organisms will die someday. Nothing ever lives forever. And what happens after they die? They are replaced by others of their species (usually, though, sometimes not).

Finally, there are external forces at play that influences the dynamics of a community, whether it be the weather, the environment, or competition between species or amongst individuals of a species. Disease also plays a big role in shifting community dynamics. Drought will favour the proliferation of certain species over others that prefer wetter years. Environmental [largely man-made] disturbances like clear-cutting forests or breaking up virgin prairie to seed a crop of wheat will positively and negatively influence the community dynamics of many species.

Plants that grow tall and shade out other plants are a form of competition, whether it be trees or a sudden crop of tall weeds. My favourite example of competition is how old alfalfa plants will produce allelopathic toxins that prevent the germination of new alfalfa seedlings. Why that happens, we don’t know; but we know it happens.

All of these factors play a major role in encouraging the proliferation of certain species while diminishing that of other species. The fun thing about community dynamics is that we can also be that major influence.

Stability vs. Instability

All of the aforementioned factors play a role in how stable a community might be. What’s fascinating about that is that a stable community is one that is highly diverse with many different species interacting with one another and is in its climax state of succession. An unstable community is one where few species dominate or, the community is at its early stages of succession.

We can see this example in domesticated annual crops we use for vegetable oil, ethanol, bread, beer, corn syrup, and animal feed. Annual monoculture crops like wheat or canola (rapeseed) are a highly unstable community. They are extremely sensitive to environmental changes such as temperature fluctuations and drought versus wet weather, and can’t withstand much in the way of competition from other species we like to call “weeds.”

Too many of the same types of plants (i.e., annuals) in that field impact that crop’s growth because they are competing with each other for the same nutrients, sunlight and water, all for the sake of propagating their version of the next generation. This is how weeds can negatively impact crop yield, as I’m sure all of you are too aware!

But, keeping to the annual crops example, they’re all emerging at the same time, growing at the same time, and maturing at the same time. They all die at the same time. This doesn’t make for the most resilient community because they’re all equally prone to being negatively (or positively) impacted by outside influences from hail to drought to “too much rain.” They also have fairly specific growing conditions to do well in, and won’t grow in certain parts of the field for that reason.

Since they’re annuals, their primary focus is growing as fast as possible and producing as many seeds as possible. Our crops have been selectively bred to produce larger quality-focused seeds (i.e., size, oil quality, germ quality, etc.) as opposed to (or in addition to) many seeds, depending on the species.

Annual “weeds” (mostly forbs or broad-leafed plants) are very similar. However, their focus is on quantity, not necessarily quality. These plants are natural early successional species; the ones responsible for covering exposed soil by germinating and growing as quickly as possible.

Like our domesticated annuals, they too produce as much seed as possible to make sure as many of their offspring will germinate. The offspring may have that opportunity in a few days, or next year, or maybe not until 100 years from now. We don’t know, and neither do they. But what they do know is that it’s important to contribute to the soil seed bank in the only way they know how.

That may partly answer your question as to why weeds even come about; be it in a garden, in a field, or in a newly-established pasture. Their seeds have been sitting dormant for years and years, waiting for the perfect opportunity to take off. We, humans, have a tendency to unknowingly give them that opportunity…

The other answer to the “why weeds” question is answered below!

What about more stable communities? These are forests, native grasslands, or even deserts where a moderate to high diversity of plant species work closely together so that they thrive under almost any environmental condition that testa]s their resolve. Where one species may fall, another quickly takes its place, keeping the ecology going, and the population stable.

These natural climax communities are an example of what you can strive for in your pastures. But, how do you go about it? How do you measure just where your pastures are in terms of biodiversity? I can help answer that question.

Gauging Community Health

This takes me back to when I was a research assistant helping out with doing range health assessments on the University of Alberta’s two ranches. We would put a quadrat–a 1-foot by 1-foot square–in a random spot, and identify the various species in that little area. We would also estimate the number of individuals of that species by what percent area they cover. Several of these at a defined location–usually an established transect–told us what shape the plant community is currently in.

That’s two ways to gauge community health. The third way is to judge the age structure of the community. Have a look at and see if there are lots of young, adults, or mature (senior) of each of the different species identified. Lots of young plants (or animals) mean that their population is expanding. Lots of mature or senior plants or animals mean that the population is on the decline.

To us, we may see this as either desirable or undesirable depending on the species and our holistic context for our operation. If this is undesirable, we may need to find ways in making the environment better suited for that declining species. This may involve seeding, bringing in new animals into the herd, or changing our management to encourage more of that species to proliferate.

If this is desirable as with certain nasty and noxious weeds, then obviously we’re doing something right!

What About Weeds??

I hate to break it to you, but in nature, there’s no such thing as a “weed.” There is only a natural polycultural ecosystem. What we see as “weeds” or noxious invasive species may be naturalized plants that have established themselves because the conditions were perfect for their establishment.

And yet, to all of us, weeds are a thing. Despite their being in the wrong place at the wrong time for the wrong reasons, they’re weeds.

All too commonly we think, “How in the world do I get rid of [insert weed name here]?” By “get rid of” I mean by doing anything we can to kill, kill kill. It doesn’t matter if it’s Round-Up (glyphosate) or hand-pulling or mowing or bringing out the big guns and using a rototiller… or on a large farming operation, tillage or the spray tank with one hell of a chemical concoction to knock those suckers back and smoke ’em good!!

But they’re all Band-Aid, quick-fix solutions that only *temporarily* get rid of those pesky weeds. They still will come back with a vengeance. Very, very rarely do we ask why until we’ve tried everything we can think of to kill them off and nothing works. Enter: weed resistance to herbicides.

It becomes obvious that we need to be asking a different question, not the same one over and over again hoping for different results each time. (Isn’t that the definition of stupidity?) No, it actually becomes clear that “how do I get rid of or kill [insert weed name here]” is the wrong question to ask, bar none. So, what should we be asking instead?

How about: “How do I make the environment less favourable for [insert weed species here]?” Or, “What conditions make [insert weed species here] less favourable to want to grow in?“

These questions make us think holistically. It makes us see the world in a new way: that maybe we shouldn’t be worrying and focusing so much on that nasty weed and we should, instead, turn out attention to the conditions we need to get our more desirable species thriving in.

As such, we start seeing things in wholes, rather than separated, reductionist, individualized perspectives.

Then we can start asking follow-up questions, like:

• What/when/where/how are its weaknesses?
• What doesn’t it like?
• Why is it here??

From there, we can start planning ways to “get rid of” that (or those) undesirable weed species by making conditions undesirable for it to exist in. This may be changing up how, where, and when to graze our animals, and/or strategically figuring when is the best time to mow and/or spray a herbicide. Or to hand-weed.

They’re all tools in the toolbox. You would never catch me saying that pesticides are bad and should forever be banned. That’s reductionist thinking for you. Pesticides, like that bush hogger, or cattle, or a hammer, or a monkey wrench, are all tools we use and may need to manage the land. It’s how we choose to use them that matters the most.

See, when we start asking more “why” questions, we see how–and why–things are the way they are. It eliminates assumptions that such-and-such will or won’t work and makes us more sure about what we’re doing and how to best manage the land, ourselves, and our businesses.

Go management!

Conclusions

This ends our series of regenerative grazing objectives! Next post we get to pull everything together to examine the variety of grazing tools we have at our disposal, starting with Time.