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Vrubel

Holistic planned grazing - Holistic conservation

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This is a great example of how conservation and combating global warming can be highly counter-intuitive. Allan Savory is an ecologist born in Rhodesia who discovered through lots of trial and error that cattle in semi-arid regions can actually hold the key for regenerating grasslands thus allowing the land to store more carbon and serve as a rich habitat for wildlife. His method is called 'holistic planned grazing'. It's holistic because it considers and benefits all the players involved: The people, the wildlife, cattle, and the planet. Very rarely I hear of people that have such holistic solutions and a real impact on environmental change like Allan Savory has, we need more people like him. Wanna know more about his work and method, check out this video.

 

Edited by Vrubel

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@Vrubel

There’s tons of healing methods out there for agricultural. Biodynamic farming, permaculture, one-straw etc.

The issue up to this point has largely been one of economics and labor. Real holistic solutions, while extremely productive, tend to require more labor and don’t scale like industrial agriculture.

While it is possible, we are talking a significant portion of the population which would have to return to working directly in agriculture. And most people do not have those skills because they’ve never been taught.

These jobs are also not highly incentivized by society. You are incentivized via economics and social status to chase jobs in things like finance, engineering, being a CEO, etc. Essentially, “knowledge workers” are at the top. And in an economic system where your financial situation is literally life or death, this is no joke.

Thus, we still see a lot of monocultures and cash farms.

There’s also the issue of acquiring land for these kind of things, which can be very challenging given the high start up costs.

I don’t mean to shit on the video you posted, I love that these ideas are being shared. I’m just pointing out the systemic blocks to actualizing something like this.


 

 

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19 minutes ago, aurum said:

@Vrubel

There’s tons of healing methods out there for agricultural. Biodynamic farming, permaculture, one-straw etc.

The issue up to this point has largely been one of economics and labor. Real holistic solutions, while extremely productive, tend to require more labor and don’t scale like industrial agriculture.

While it is possible, we are talking a significant portion of the population which would have to return to working directly in agriculture. And most people do not have those skills because they’ve never been taught.

 

That's the beauty of his method, it is fully grounded in the reality on the ground. Mainly the reality of African herders who live in semi-arid regions and are mostly in the business of herding livestock. All he really does is educating these farmers with the intelligent grazing method where cattle or sheep strategically graze pieces of land ensuring grassland regeneration and combating desertification. I am not getting your point about needing more people in agriculture, this method does not require this. While it's true that holistic systems like permaculture and food forests are not scalable, Allen Savory has proved that his method works fine, even on an industrial scale (in Argentina). He already implemented his method on 15 million square hectares if I am not mistaken. 

 

37 minutes ago, aurum said:

These jobs are also not highly incentivized by society. You are incentivized via economics and social status to chase jobs in things like finance, engineering, being a CEO, etc. Essentially, “knowledge workers” are at the top. And in an economic system where your financial situation is literally life or death, this is no joke.

First of all, you are talking here about the western world I assume, while Allan Savory is talking about places like Africa. Second, farming is not necessarily a low-status profession. Modern farming in the west has a lot of high-tech involved and usually, the profits are very decent. In Africa people farm mostly for subsistence and they care more about feeding themself than about the social status of their profession.

 

44 minutes ago, aurum said:

Thus, we still see a lot of monocultures and cash farms.

There’s also the issue of acquiring land for these kind of things, which can be very challenging given the high start up costs.

Again his holistic method is grounded in the reality on the ground, the points here are irrelevant to what he is talking about. He already more than proved the effectivity of his concept. Of course, there are limits to his concept and it only works in specific area's given specific socio-economic factors. But then again I even heard cattle rangers in Australia embracing his method.

 

50 minutes ago, aurum said:

I don’t mean to shit on the video you posted, I love that these ideas are being shared. I’m just pointing out the systemic blocks to actualizing something like this.

Haha, no worries, shit all you want. Healthy discussion makes us only wiser(; 

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43 minutes ago, Vrubel said:

I am not getting your point about needing more people in agriculture, this method does not require this.

I was making more a general point about holistic, regenerative agricultural. Not necessarily the method described in the video.

46 minutes ago, Vrubel said:

First of all, you are talking here about the western world I assume, while Allan Savory is talking about places like Africa.

Yes I’m speaking of the west. I don’t know what the situation is in Africa.

47 minutes ago, Vrubel said:

Second, farming is not necessarily a low-status profession. Modern farming in the west has a lot of high-tech involved and usually, the profits are very decent. In Africa people farm mostly for subsistence and they care more about feeding themself than about the social status of their profession.

Farming certainly can make money. But in general, jobs requiring manual labor are seen as less valuable, more replaceable and therefore lower status. This might not be true in certain contexts as obviously social status is a fluid thing. I’m generalizing.

Also, in general it’s still more profitable to run large scale, low labor industrial farms than small, high labor regenerative farms. That could change and I believe it will as industrial agricultural continues to reveal itself as unsustainable. But we need to be aware of the current incentives that are in place.


 

 

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