On today’s Sustainable Living Program our guest was Allan Savory. For centuries we believed livestock were a major cause of desertification, but Savory’s research showed that the cause lay in how those livestock were managed. His solution involved mimicking the behavior of the formerly vast herds of wild grazing animals he had witnessed as a young biologist. He devised a simple method any pastoralist can use to move massive amounts of carbon and water from the atmosphere back to the soil and begin reversing thousands of years of human-caused desertification – on the scale required, which no technology imaginable can accomplish. In the process, we can feed more people and enhance societal well-being.
Allan’s the co-founder of the Savory Institute and wrote the classic book Holistic Resource Management. In 2003 received the Banksia International Award and won the 2010 Buckminister Fuller Challenge. One of todays most famous farmers, Joel Salatin, wrote “History will vindicate Allan Savory as one of the greatest ecologists of all time!” Mr. Savory will be speaking in Georgia on December 11th & 12th. We also talked with Will Harris, a family member of White Oak Pastures about his 5th generation farm based on sustainable land stewardship & humane animal stockmanship the Savory Event.
One Response to “Holistic Resource Management – Allan Savory on Sustainable Living”
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Cattle that grazed according to Savory’s method needed expensive supplemental feed, became stressed and fatigued, and lost enough weight to compromise the profitability of their meat. And even though Savory’s Grazing Trials took place during a period of freakishly high rainfall, with rates exceeding the average by 24 percent overall, the authors contend that Savory’s method “failed to produce the marked improvement in grass cover claimed from its application.” The authors of the overview concluded exactly what mainstream ecologists have been concluding for 40 years: “No grazing system has yet shown the capacity to overcome the long-term effects of overstocking and/or drought on vegetation productivity.”
http://www.suindependent.com/news/id_8641/OPINION:-The-day-that-cows-save-the-world.html
http://snapbuzz.org/holistic-management-misinformation-on-the-science-of-grazed-ecosystems/
http://mikehudak.com/Articles/HM_Memo_131113.html
http://www.thewildlifenews.com/2013/11/12/allan-savory-myth-and-reality/
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food/2013/04/allan_savory_s_ted_talk_is_wrong_and_the_benefits_of_holistic_grazing_have.html
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/03/17/adam-merberg-on-grazing-and-allan-savory-and-ted/
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijbd/2014/163431/