Holistic management

Holistic management (from ὅλος holos, a Greek word meaning all, whole, entire, total) in agriculture is a systems thinking approach to managing resources that was originally developed by Allan Savory for reversing desertification. In 2010 the Africa Centre for Holistic Management in Zimbabwe, Operation Hope (a 'proof of concept' project using holistic management) was named the winner of the 2010 Buckminster Fuller Challenge for 'recognizing initiatives which take a comprehensive, anticipatory, design approach to radically advance human well being and the health of our planet's ecosystems'. The idea of holistic planned grazing was developed in the 1960s by Allan Savory, a wildlife biologist in his native Southern Rhodesia. Setting out to understand desertification in the context of the larger environmental movement, and influenced by the work of André Voisin, he concluded that the spread of deserts, the loss of wildlife, and the resulting human impoverishment were related to the reduction of the natural herds of large grazing animals and, even more, the changed behavior of the few remaining herds. Savory concluded that livestock could be substituted for natural herds to provide important ecosystem services like nutrient cycling. However, while livestock managers had found that rotational grazing systems can work for livestock management purposes, scientific experiments demonstrated it does not necessarily improve ecological issues such as desertification. As Savory saw it, a more comprehensive framework for the management of grassland systems — an adaptive, holistic management plan — was needed. In many regions, pastoralism and communal land use are blamed for environmental degradation caused by overgrazing. After years of research and experience, Savory came to understand this assertion was often wrong, and that sometimes removing animals actually made matters worse. This concept is a variation of the trophic cascade, where humans are seen as the top level predator and the cascade follows from there. Savory developed a flexible management system designed to improve grazing systems. Holistic planned grazing is one of a number of newer grazing management systems that aim to more closely simulate the behavior of natural herds of wildlife and have been shown to improve riparian habitats and water quality over systems that often led to land degradation, and be an effective tool to improve range condition for both livestock and wildlife. Holistic planned grazing is similar to rotational grazing but differs in that it more explicitly recognizes and provides a framework for adapting to the four basic ecosystem processes: the water cycle, the mineral cycle including the carbon cycle, energy flow, and community dynamics (the relationship between organisms in an ecosystem), giving equal importance to livestock production and social welfare. Holistic management has been likened to 'a permaculture approach to rangeland management'. While originally developed as a tool for range land use and restoring desertified land, the holistic management system can be applied to other areas with multiple complex socioeconomic and environmental factors. One such example is integrated water resources management (IWRM), which promotes sector integration in development and management of water resources to ensure that water is allocated fairly between different users , maximizing economic and social welfare without compromising the sustainability of vital ecosystems. Another example is mine reclamation. A fourth use of Holistic management is in certain forms of no till crop production, intercropping, and permaculture. Holistic management has been acknowledged by The United States Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service (USDA-NRCS). Holistic management planned grazing has four key principles that take advantage of the symbiotic relationship between large herds of grazing animals, their predators and the grasslands that support them: Claims that holistic grazing can have a profound effect on climate change by making grazing cattle carbon negative have no basis in any peer-reviewed scientific literature and are based on literature only available on the Savory Institute website. Range scientists have not been able to experimentally confirm that intensive grazing systems similar to those at the center of holistic management show a benefit, and claim that managers' reports of success are anecdotal. An assessment of multiple research studies, published by the United States Department of Agriculture, concluded that 'these results refute prior claims that animal trampling associated with high stocking rates or grazing pressures in rotational grazing systems enhance soil properties and promote hydrological function'. Similarly, a survey article by Briske et al. that examined rotational grazing systems found 'few, if any, consistent benefits over continuous grazing.' A paper by Richard Teague, a coauthor of the USDA paper, et al. pointed out that Briske had examined rotational systems in general and not Savory's holistic planned grazing process. The paper contrasted the success reported by many ranchers practicing multi-paddock grazing with the general lack of evidence found by formal research.