The Science Supporting Holistic Management Improving Soil Health

Despite over 40 years of thousands of people practicing Holistic Management® around the world on over 40 million acres and numerous scientific, peer-reviewed studies, there are still some people who want to detract from the results achieved by Holistic Management practitioners and ignore the science behind why it works. A disappointing article in the March 2017 Sierra Magazine focused mostly on making disparaging comments about Allan Savory and trotting out the same detractors and their articles about why Holistic Management is not backed by science.

Having read similar articles over the past 20 years, I was amazed that there was no attempt to report on the numerous scientific studies that have emerged in the past 5-10 years that actually do scientifically document the results of Holistic Management practitioners as well as all the studies that show how good livestock management can lead to soil health and how soil health is tied to carbon and methane sequestration.

Ironically, the very desired outcomes that the Sierra Club articulates in its Agriculture and Food Policy actually occur when agricultural producers use Holistic Management to improve land health and productivity. While there are a host of scientific papers, there are a few scientists that have focused much of their research to demonstrate the science behind how Holistic Planned Grazing (or Adaptive Multi-Paddock Grazing) does improve soil health that I would like to highlight in the hopes that more people will read their work.

One person is soil scientist Dr. Christine Jones from Australia with much of her research available on her website.

There are a number of different articles well worth reading on that site, as well as an article in which she discussed the research done by Dr. Mark Adams from the University of Sydney regarding the soils ability to sequester methane.

Another scientist is Dr. Richard Teague from Texas A & M Agrilife. He has a number of different studies that he has undertaken with numerous other scientists focusing on GHG mitigation, as well as an article on the role of ruminants in reducing agriculture’s carbon that was co-authored with Dr. Rattan Lal of Ohio State University.

He has also done specific research in Canada and Texas comparing the increased carbon sequestration on land where people are practicing Holistic Planned Grazing in comparison to their neighbors that are not. On average in the Texas study the holistically grazed land added 3 tons Carbon/ha/yr more than the heavy continuously grazed neighboring land.

The above is excerpted from an article on the HMI web site. There are several other studies sited. Read the rest of the article here: The Science Supporting Holistic Management Improving Soil Health.