Anyone who has ever met Bill Burrowsknows he is a man of seemingly infiniteenergy. His energy and enthusiasm forlife and the work he does is contagious.

So you’d think it would have been of littlesurprise to know that at age 70, Bill is still thecoordinator of the 40,000-acre (16,000-ha)Sunflower Coordinated Resource ManagementPlan (SCRMP). But the scope of work withinthat plan and the coordination of so manyagencies are nothing short of amazing. For Bill Burrows and his biological masticatorsit’s just another day on the job.

A Slow StartThe SCRMP is a chaparral belt beginning

25 miles (40 km) west of Red Bluff, Californiawith elevations from 900-5,500 feet (300-1,833m). The SCRMP began in 1977 after acatastrophic fire burned 80,000 acres (32,000ha). A CRMP is a landowner-driven processestablished to achieve environmentalenhancement on a landscape basis.

A memorandum of understanding is developedand signed by landowners and their agencypartners. So while the fire had sparked enoughinterest to actually create a CRMP in 1977, theenthusiasm and follow through waned for thework until 2002 when Bill Burrows took the leadand introduced Holistic Management.

As Bill tells the story, “We sent out aninvitation to all the landowners in the earlymonths of 2002 asking the question: ‘Do we want to make our area fire safe and productivefar into the future?’ We got all sorts of peopleattending from Buddhists who lived in SanFrancisco but owned 900 acres nearby tosomeone who was asked to leave his cross-drawautomatic pistols in his pickup.”

Bill facilitated that first meeting and workedhard to achieve the best possible outcome.“Thank goodness for my training in HolisticManagement,” he says. “I also used Covey’sSeven Habits of Highly Effective People and BobChadwick’s Consensus-Building. The only firmagenda item was a question written on a flip-chart: ‘Do we want to improve our quality of life,develop profitability, and provide for a safe andproductive environment?’

“After 45 minutes of confused interaction, andbeing continually referred back to the question

Grapevine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16Readers’ Forum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16Book Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17Certified Educators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18Marketplace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

NEWS & NETWORK

Governing for SustainabilityALLAN SAVORY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Surving the Worst Drought in 1000 Years—Creative Carbon CockysLOUISA KIELY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7Grazing the Grasslands Could Help TheEnvironment & EconomyPETER HOLTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8Holistic Management as Service LearningR. H. RICHARDSON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

LAND & LIVESTOCKProspecting for Green—The Importance of a Resource Base Reality CheckJIM HOWELL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10Testing the Social Weak Link—Paul and Cheri LittleTONY MALMBERG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

January / February 2006 Number 105 www.holisticmanagement.orgNovember / December 2007 Number 116 www.holisticmanagement.org

Biological Masticators to the Rescueby Ann Adams

healthy land.sustainable future.

continued on page 2

FEATURE STORIES

During a two-day period, the goat herd was placed in an area heavy

with star thistle. As you can see from the photos, the goats decimated the star

thistle allowing opportunity for the perennial grasses to return.

INS IDE THIS ISSUE

ALLAN SAVORY

Moving governments toward sustainabilityrequires holistically designed policies. AllanSavory has worked for more than fifty years onthe major environmental problems and theirassociated violence in much of Africa from theperspectives of a scientist, soldier, researcher,international consultant, and politician. Tolearn more about his ideas on how to createsound policy, turn to page four.

2 IN PRACTICE h November / December 2007

Biological Masticators to the Rescue continued from page one

Holistic Management International works to reverse thedegradation of private and communal land used foragriculture and conservation, restore its health andproductivity, and help create sustainable and viable

livelihoods for the people who depend on it.

FOUNDERSAllan Savory h Jody Butterfield

STAFFShannon Horst, Executive Director

Peter Holter, Chief Operating OfficerKelly Bee, Director of Finance & AccountingJutta von Gontard, Director of Development

Craig Leggett, Director of Learning SitesAnn Adams, Managing Editor, IN PRACTICE and

Director of Educational Products and Outreach Maryann West, Executive Assistant

Donna Torrez, Customer Service ManagerMarisa Mancini, Development Assistant

BOARD OF DIRECTORSBen Bartlett, Chair

Ron Chapman, Past ChairRoby Wallace, Vice-ChairGail Hammack, SecretaryChristopher Peck, Treasurer

Ivan AguirreJody ButterfieldSallie CalhounMark Gardner

Daniela HowellAndrea Malmberg

Jim McMullanIan Mitchell Innes

Jim ParkerChristopher Peck

Sue ProbartJim Shelton

Roby WallaceDennis Wobeser

ADVISORY COUNCILRobert Anderson, Corrales, NM

Michael Bowman,Wray, COSam Brown, Austin, TX

Lee Dueringer, Scottsdale, AZGretel Ehrlich, Gaviota, CA

Cynthia Harris, Albuquerque, NMEdward Jackson, San Carlos, CA

Clint Josey, Dallas, TXDoug McDaniel, Lostine, OR

Guillermo Osuna, Coahuila, MexicoSoren Peters, Santa Fe, NMYork Schueller, Ventura, CA

Africa Centre for Holistic ManagementPrivate Bag 5950, Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe

Tel: (263) (11) 404 979; email: hmatanga@mweb.co.zwHuggins Matanga, Director

HOLISTIC MANAGEMENT IN PRACTICE (ISSN: 1098-8157) is published six times a year by

Holistic Management International, 1010 Tijeras NW, Albuquerque, NM 87102, 505/842-5252, fax: 505/843-7900;

email: hmi@holisticmanagement.org.; website: www.holisticmanagement.org

Copyright © 2007.

healthy land.sustainable future. on the board, a very rough holisticgoal emerged.

The group then decided that we needed severalsub-committees to define the diverse segmentsand objectives within our holisticgoal. Within two hours the meeting was buzzing with excitementas the landowners began working in their sub-committees and the agency personnel acted as resource consultants to the various sub-committees.

“The Finance Sub-Committee determined that we needed some pump-priming funds tosupport some of the Action Sub-committeesrecommendations. Someone knew a Bureau ofLand Management grant that had some potentialfor funding, however the grant was due inSacramento by 5:00 pm that day. The group got together and wrote the grant and one of the landowners drove it to Sacramento and got it there on time.

“We received a total of $60,000 that first yearand were able to develop 16 miles (26 km) of 300-feet (100-m) wide fuel breaks, constructedtwo reservoirs and four springs, and prescribedburned 500 acres of chaparral brush and reseeded300 acres (120 ha) to perennial grasses and forbs.I’m sure our Federal grant people thought wewere going to clean up our backyards with thegrant money since $60,000 represents a very small grant to them.”

One Big Bite at a TimeFrom that meeting the mission and

holisticgoal for the SCRMP emerged—and theenthusiasm and support to drive it forward. The mission was “to enhance 40,000 acres ofchaparral belt land and associated areas in orderto make the land more productive and safe for the social, financial, and environmental needs ofthe temporary stewards of the land.”

Over the last five years the objectives of thisplan have included:

• Reduce fuel load

• Develop fuel breaks• Enhance game and non-game wildlife habitat• Develop water sources for

fire control and wildlife• Extend base flow of streams• Site convert brush to grass and brush to

conifers where appropriate• Provide educational opportunities for

students• Monitor progress of land treatments• Provide habitat for endangered and/or

threatened species• Demonstrate enhancement of chaparral

landsTo accomplish these efforts, Bill worked to get

as many partners and collaborators as he couldon board. They have included: Bureau of LandManagement (BLM), U.S. Forest Service (USFS),U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Natural ResourceConservation Service, California Department ofForestry and Fire Protection, CaliforniaDepartment of Fish and Game, CaliforniaDepartment of Water Resources, University ofCalifornia Cooperative Extension, HumboldtUniversity, Chico State University, ShastaCommunity College, Tehama County ResourceConservation District, Tehama County Departmentof Agriculture, University of California, Davis,California Deer Association, Chico StateFoundation, Sacramento Regional Foundation,U.S. Forest Service Community Protection, BLMNorthwest Forest Plan, USFS Economic Recovery,Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education,California Fire Safe Council, and 65 Landownerswithin SCRMP boundaries.

To coordinate this effort Bill and the AdaptiveManagement Team (AMT) has returned to theSCRMP holisticgoal for guidance.

Beyond Technological MasticatingAs the AMT applied for and received additional

grants and continued to develop fuel breaks,

The long-term plan for the SCRMP was to

use their biologicalmasticators (goats/hair

sheep) to removebiomass and maintain

growth in areas thatalready had biomass

removed so that theecological service

paid for itself.

Finding a Herder

Number 116 h IN PRACTICE 3

they are moving in the direction of theirholisticgoal and mission. Thecollaborators and partners have helpedtremendously to this end, and the resultshave contributed to the buy in from thesegroups. The local Audubon chapter hasbeen monitoring the bird response to thistreatment. Through using recorders theyhave determined there are 50 percent

more nesting birds now that the brush has beenopened up.

The AMT is working on some quantifiablemonitoring of the deer population, butanecdotally, Bill says “We’ve just seen the deerpopulation explode. They come in right after the herd leaves an area. They want the new greenshoots coming up.”

Then there is the macroinvertebratemonitoring performed by Shasta College. Theyuse a monitoring process that examines numbersof indicator species—macroinvertebrates that aresensitive to pollution. “When they first startedmonitoring the streams in the SCRMP area, wewere listed as fair,” says Bill. “The next year wewere listed as good, and for the last two yearswe’ve been listed as excellent. They are seeing alot more of those pollution-sensitive speciesbecause the streams are getting cleaner.”

Bill is particularly proud of the results they’ve achieved with moving the landscape from 100 percent high-serial chaparral to 50percent low-serial (less than 18 inches/450 mmtall) and, in some cases, stands of 50 percentperennial grasses.

On top of the environmental success, 13 Shasta College students were trained in heavyequipment operations, over 40 landowners andagency people were trained in environmentally

sensitive road maintenance, and a demonstrationof the project was given to over 30 landownersand agency people. Moreover, the NRCSestablished permanent monitoring points. All told, the SCRMP held nine major workshopsand/or tours to increase public interest, support,and education and provided over 20 jobs for part-time and full-time employment including:one full-time herder, part-time employment forherbivore management, equipment operators,and equipment maintenance and repairpersonnel.

Next StepsUltimately, the primary focus of the SCRMP

was to balance biomass reduction withnutritional requirements for a financiallyproductive mob which could partially or fully offset the cost of management—a potentiallyself-sustaining system. The idea was to use theseed money to develop infrastructure for thatsystem. To that end, the SCRMP put ininfrastructure to support 4,000 head of sheepand/or goats, including five reservoirs and sevensprings for wildlife, herbivore, and fire control.

Given the massive amount of biomass in this 40,000-acre area, there is plenty of forage available and plenty of job security. But Bill already owns a ranch, and he is turninghis attention back to the ranch and looking foranother coordinator to step up to the plate andorchestrate this plan. They sold off the goats topay for a temporary herder and supplements forthe 400 remaining hair sheep that will continuethe fuel break work for four months to maintainthe work already done. Once a new coordinatortakes over, the work can begin in earnest torebuild the herd and make use of theinfrastructure now in place and the vegetationready to be eaten.

To learn more about the Sunflower CRMP, contact Bill Burrows at:sunflowercrmp@msn.com or 530/529-1535.

Using the masticator ball to knock down brush on either side of the fire break lines, the SCRMP was able to clear 57 miles of 300-feet wide fuel breaks.

Integral to the success of the SunflowerCRMP was finding a good herder.Because herding animals is a dying art in

the U.S., Bill contacted two agencies to finda herder for the project. He contactedWestern Range Association from Salt LakeCity, Utah (801/486-2004) and MountainPlains Agricultural Services from Casper,Wyoming (307/472-2105) to find out howto place a herder for this project.

“Originally I tried to do it all myself, butthe paperwork is a nightmare. Both

agencies worked in a fairly similar fashion,”says Bill. “You basically pay for thetransport and paperwork, then a monthlysalary of $700, food and lodging, whichvaries from $50-200 / month, and worker’scomp as it is required by the state. Theworkers can stay as long as three years,and you must give them at least a two-week vacation once a year. At the end ofthe three years, they need to go home for amonth before they can return to sign upagain.”

water developments, site conversions, monitoringand prescribed burns, they realized they needed to use another tool. “Our AMT determined that we needed to bring in herbivores (biologicalmasticators) to keep the brush under control andto generate income to support the mob,” saysBill. We bought 600 head of meat goats and 400head of hair sheep to do this work. We hired afull-time Peruvian herder, secured 10 guard dogsand two herd dogs, and developed theinfrastructure to herd the mob in a plannedgrazing pattern with 11 different camps spreadthroughout our CRMP.

“The animals traversed the 57 miles (91 km)of fuel breaks that had been created with heavyequipment including a large steel ball andanchor chain. The heavy equipment would haulthe ball and chain to the top of a fuel break andthen push the ball off the edge of the incline andlet gravity and metal take their course.

“The goats were used to consume regrowth and standing brush as they went. We determinedthe cost per acre to remove the regrowth was$16.44 and $144 per ton to remove the biomass.Depending on the size of the grazing area andquality of forage, the goats would stay anywherefrom eight days to three weeks before moving on.We had more forage than we could get to, but we made sure to graze each area twice a year along the fuel breaks.

“We bought this herd from an operation near Salt Lake City, Utah. The goats weresupposed to be already trained to reclamationworks—eating in wild brush. But they weren’tprepared for what we had for them. Some ofthem got down to business as soon as we turnedthem out. But some of them just stood there andlooked at the others eating. They just couldn’tmake the adjustment. We had to sell the oneswho couldn’t adjust before they starved to death.”

Monitoring the ResultsThe AMT is serious about monitoring the

results of the decisions they have made to see if

Governing for Sustainabilityby Allan Savory

Faced with a growing flood ofimpoverished people streaming into the capital city of Harare in 2000,Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe,

announced his government’s intention toredistribute the country’s land. Immediately, I flew home to see if the government would beopen to my assistance in forming its policiesbased on the new principles of HolisticManagement that I had articulated.Understandably, the bureaucracy, bound within its conventional way of thinking, rejected my offer of help.

Nonetheless, my colleagues and I managed to run a workshop based on the “holisticframework” and involving a broad group ofZimbabweans. Conference participants diagnosedthe problems in Zimbabwe’s patterns of landownership, first looking at possible consequencesof either redistributing or not redistributing land.This analysis indicated the necessity of landredistribution. The manner in which thegovernment intended to redistribute land was then analyzed, and the group concluded that thegovernment’s redistribution policy would lead tothe collapse of agriculture, massive displacementof people, and years of successive problems forfuture governments, as well as continuing landdegradation.

Then, using the holistic framework, weformulated a land policy intended to achieve a comprehensive and sustainable nationalholisticgoal, a guiding statement embodying the short and long-term, comprehensive andenvironmentally tempered aspirations of all theaffected parties. In this way it became apparentthat moving toward the holisticgoal wouldnaturally require millions of people to be settledon the land. Now we could begin to develop aland redistribution policy within a largerframework, which the objective of redistributingland could not achieve. In this way we developeda policy and plan that would result in severalmillion people being resettled on land withoutlosing a single farmer or disrupting agriculture.Further, the holistic policy would lead to a greatlyexpanded tax base for government and thereversal of the current land degradation, which is leading to repeated droughts and internationalfood aid, as well as to greater poverty and urbandrift to city slums.

In considering this example, it is important to note that while there has been international

criticism of the Mugabe government’s landredistribution actions, policies favored by theBritish and American governments, according to our analysis, would have brought similar long-term results (although over a longer timeand with less violence). From the perspective ofHolistic Management, this projection of similarresults from different policies demonstrates a keyinsight: The single factor most responsible forZimbabwe’s current disastrous land policy andMugabe’s increasingly repressive measures to stayin power is the decision-making framework usedby the government.

The main reason for the inevitable failure of the government’s policy was that it operatedwithin the decision-making framework orientedtoward an objective: redistributing land. Thegovernment established a policy leading to actions designed to achieve that objective without weighing the social, economic, andenvironmental consequences. The holistic policydiffered in that it was formed toward a genericnational holisticgoal that expressed howZimbabweans want their lives to be tied to theirlife-supporting environment. Subsequently,measures to achieve the desired way of lifesustained by a stable environment and agricultureindicated a policy framework that would result inmillions more people on the land, improvementof the economy, and reversal of land degradation.

At the beginning of 2007, we can say that as a consequence of faulty policy formation, both the economy and agriculture of Zimbabwehave collapsed. However, even at this late date, the holistic framework could still be used to rectify the situation. Until it is, there is no chance of sustained stable governance.

The Primacy of PolicyThe simple fact that the main role of

governments is to formulate policies did notregister deeply with me until I was faced with thechallenge of leading a shadow cabinet in forminga platform and policies for a political party. This task befell me as president of the RhodesiaParty, one of the three main parties in oppositionto the then-illegal Smith government during aprolonged civil war that lasted until 1980, whenthe independent country of Zimbabwe wasestablished. During those years, despite my earlierscientific training as an ecologist, I could not haveformulated a sound environmental policy becauseI had not yet discovered the reason why unsoundenvironmental policies are almost universal with governments throughout history andthroughout the world today.

In subsequent years, through trying tounderstand desertification—the degradation of land in arid, semiarid, and other areas—I accidentally discovered that all governmentsunknowingly employ the same decision-makingframework when formulating their policies. The same framework is used not only bygovernments in formulating policies affecting the environment but by individuals in all walks of life while deciding their daily course. Evidencefrom common experience and from hundreds of sources supports the claim that this recentlydiscovered framework is universal and has been the underlying basis of decision makingthroughout human existence, regardless of time or culture.

If we take the computer as a metaphor for the human brain, we can characterize humans as having been unaware that the brains of allpeople use the same specific software operatingsystem when making conscious decisions. Andtragically, although that software is used formaking all our conscious decisions, it is onlyappropriate for some of them and is deeply flawed for many others.

Our software performs consistently well in all matters linear, mechanical, and complicated.It has taken us from the Stone Age to spaceexploration. At the same time, however, applyingour software in areas that are complex is leadingthis world to disaster. The planet’s size,abundance, and resilience have fed and shelteredhumanity while absorbing assaults escalating intheir frequency, intensity, and magnitude. Today the effects of these assaults are reaching acollective and historically cumulative crescendothat cannot be ignored.

Worldwide, expanding problems befallhumanity, from malfunctioning economies and deteriorating human relations to violence,biodiversity loss, desertification, ever-increasing

4 IN PRACTICE h November / December 2007

“Governments and countries need to learn to formulate holistically

sound policies if they are to reverse the increasingly constraining environmental degradation

threatening the world’s peoples.”

Number 116 h IN PRACTICE 5

frequency and severity of droughts and floods(even without weather change), and, ultimately,human impact on global climate, which beganlong before the discovery of fossil fuels. Themassive rate of consumption of fossil fuels hasmerely accelerated global climate change.

The Human Decision-Making Process

Shortly after I came to the United States as apolitical refugee in the early 1980s, I was engagedby the U.S. Department of Agriculture to trainsome two thousand professional people in the useof the holistic framework; at that time, it was stillin a process of development that was beingfollowed closely by several U.S. range scientists.After a week of training in the use of the holisticframework, this large sample of professionalpeople analyzed many of their own policies andconcluded that none of them could succeed. One group of thirty-five in the training declared,“We now recognize that unsound resourcemanagement is universal in the United States.”

Because any community or nation dependsultimately on food derived from thephotosynthetic process (green plants and healthysoils), common sense leads us to conclude thatunsound resource management policies in duetime will lead to change and instability ofgovernments and eventually to the downfall ofnations. Throughout history, many civilizationshave failed, regardless of form of governance,because of environmental degradation. Thus, we know that what is being experienced at theglobal level today is new only in its scale.

The symptoms of environmental degradation,or desertification, that we have come tounderstand over thousands of years are:increasing frequency and severity of droughts and floods; drying up of rivers, lakes,underground water, springs, and wells; andmassive invasions of noxious plants and problemorganisms. These environmental symptoms arecoupled with numerous social symptoms,including increases in disease, poverty, socialbreakdown, and violence toward women andchildren. Additional symptoms include resourcescarcity, blaming and victimization often leadingto genocide, urban drift to city slums, war, and the breakdown of governments.

Centuries ago, environmental degradationsymptoms were localized in regions such as theFertile Crescent of the biblical civilizations orChaco and Yucatán in the Americas. Now they areglobal, and countless trillions of dollars have beenexpended in addressing them. Sadly, the overallresult of this investment, despite limited successes,has been exponential global growth of the humanpopulation and its use of Earth’s resources.

A Systems View of The WorldMy experience of working for more than fifty

years on the major environmental problems andtheir associated violence in much of Africa haspermitted me to study these issues from theperspectives of a scientist, a soldier specializing inguerrilla warfare, a researcher, an internationalconsultant, and a politician. Although my viewsderive more from experience than from theory, Ifind modern systems theory to be useful inmaking some aspects of the ideas moreunderstandable.

To my observation, there are several corereasons why, despite the best of intentions, goodgovernance breaks down. Some reasons arescientific in the sense that they are related to theenvironment, while others are structural andresult from adoption of concepts of Westerndemocracy in Africa. Obviously, not all the worksof modern society are leading to failure orproblems, so we need to understand those areas ofour lives that are more successful and those thatare running into trouble. Here, modern systemstheory is helpful.

Three broad types of systems are identified inrecent scientific systems thinking.

• Hard systems are man-made andcomplicated but not complex—that is, they donot express emergent (unexpected or unplanned)properties and are not self-organizing. Theproblems arising within them are not too difficultto solve. Examples include cars, weapons,computers, buildings, roads, railways, andairlines.

• Soft systems are man-made, complicated,and complex. They demonstrate unexpectedemergent properties while being self-organizing.Solving problems that arise in soft systems isextremely difficult. Examples of soft systems arethe many various human organizations,including tribes, political parties, corporations,environmental organizations, universities,organized religion, and governments.

• Natural systems, which are not made by

humans, are complex, with both emergent and unexpected emergent properties, and self-organizing. Problems arising in them areextremely difficult to solve. Examples of naturalsystems are everything in nature, includinghuman beings, all other life-forms, and ourenvironment.

All three types of systems exist simultaneouslyin our households and in all walks of life intoday’s world.

Looking around for examples of apparentsuccess, we find that we are immersed in and fully dependent on rapidly proliferating andhighly successful hard systems, including thosefor transportation (on air, land, and sea),communications (by radio, television, satellite,and Internet), space exploration, computation,medical imaging, and warfare.

In contrast, looking around the world forexamples of serious and rapidly growingproblems, we find them in the realms of soft and natural systems, the complex systems thathumans do not really know how to manage well. These include forests and national parks,economies, agriculture and rangelands, globalclimate, governments, societies, and oceans,rivers, and fisheries. The problems are manifest in such ways as biodiversity loss, desertification,poverty, abusive family relations, violence, andgovernmental corruption together with globalwarming and mounting conflicts and wars.

Enter The PolicymakersGovernment policies affect all three types

of systems. Unfortunately, policies affecting hard systems seldom, if ever, are formulated by considering the longer-term implications of a technological development or its products on either the environment or society. Governmentpolicies affecting hard systems result almostinevitably in corporations benefiting from short-term profits while society shoulders thelong-term costs.

The field of resource management, whichrequires the coordination of hard, soft, andnatural systems for husbanding, harvesting, and exploiting natural resources, is usuallyheavily influenced or controlled by governmentpolicies. Here again, unfortunately, unsoundpolicy formulation is almost universal because ofour human inability to make decisions that canaccommodate and embrace the unpredictableemergent properties of complex systems.

Stated another way, government policiesaffecting natural resources are essentially doomedto fail to manage those resources well becausemaking the resources available for human use

continued on page 6

“The main reason for the inevitable failure of the

[Zimbabwean] government’s policywas that it operated within the decision-making framework oriented toward an objective:

redistributing land.”

6 IN PRACTICE h November / December 2007

Governing for Sustainability continued from page five

things as past experience, expert advice, researchresults, expediency, cultural norms, cost,profitability, cash flow, fear, compromise, a friend’sadvice, intuition, laws and regulations, and so on.

Captives of Flawed SoftwareAnalysis and reflection show that this

framework is employed in the most diverse ofsituations—from a hunter-gatherer family to an urban household and even to the mostsophisticated scientific team involved in spaceexploration. Politicians and governments also use this same framework, though unknowingly.

Identification of the universal decision-making framework lays the foundation forunderstanding flaws that have made it impossiblefor governments (and people generally) to dealeffectively with the complexity of soft and natural

systems. The fact that this previously undiscoveredframework imposes on people and governmentsalike the inability to deal with complexity explainsnot only why so many past civilizations failed butalso why—despite an annual philanthropicinvestment by charitable organizations in theUnited States of over $200 billion for dealing withsocial and environmental ills in the country—those ills are often getting worse.

And because the only form of wealth that canultimately sustain any community or nation isderived from the photosynthetic process,understanding this tyranny of the universaldecision-making framework also makes itunderstandable why economies worldwide areinherently unstable. This understanding is thebasis for explaining why America, enjoying thegreatest concentration of universities, scientists,and wealth ever known, now annually “exports” a greater tonnage of eroding soil than all otherexports combined, including grain, beef, timber,and military and commercial hardware. Theinability to deal with complexity also explainswhy, despite so much goodwill and massive

requires the interaction of soft and naturalsystems, which inevitably exhibit unpredictableemergent properties. Once it is understood thatpolicies today, no matter how costly or wellintentioned, cannot address complexity, itbecomes clear why, despite vast effort and funding,the symptoms of environmental degradationcontinue to expand globally.

This explanation of why humans havegenerally failed to deal well with either the long-term effects of hard systems or the complexity ofsoft and natural systems sheds light on the historyof failed civilizations. It also lays the foundationfor overcoming their congenital propensity towardfailure. Recalling the metaphor of the brain as acomputer, we can say again that civilization’scongenital propensity to fail to sustain its resourcebase derives from faulty decision-making software.

The Universal Decision-MakingFramework

Lacking knowledge of this faulty software,humans have long believed that they makeconscious decisions and form policies inthousands of different ways—includingdictatorially, scientifically, democratically,intuitively, emotionally, and culturally. I toobelieved this when I developed the holisticframework in the early 1980s.

Only later was I able to see beyond thisembedded presumption to realize that humanshave always used one simple underlyingframework for all conscious decision making, the universal decision-making framework. This is what I have characterized as our faulty software.Understanding it requires that we strip it to thebare essentials in terms of three aspects: direction,tools, and context.

The operation of the universal decision-making framework in humans through allcultures and ages has assured that their consciousdecisions, whether based on reason and logic oron feelings and intuition, have had a direction.They have been made toward an objective or goal(and through these toward missions and visions).

When reduced to their essence, the toolsavailable to meet objectives and goals have beenhuman creativity, money, labor, technology, fire,and rest. Extensive analysis and testing withthousands of professionals have confirmedrepeatedly that these are the foundation tools; allothers, such as water, law, and the plow, are in oneway or another derivatives of the foundation tools.

Third, we always make our decisions—fromthe household to national governance and towardany objective—on the basis of one or more ofmany considerations or context, including such

expenditure, worldwide biodiversity loss continuesand why its symptom, desertification with itsassociated violence, advances exponentially.

The flaws in our universal decision-makingframework are few but serious. Consider, forexample, the fact that conflicts in societycommonly arise from people having differentobjectives or goals and that these differences havehistorically prevented us from uniting for anyprolonged time, other than in war and alwaysagainst a human enemy. Aside from that, we havetypically united only for brief periods in cases ofnatural catastrophe.

Working within The Holistic Framework

The holistic framework allows policymakers at all levels to do things that were simply notpossible using the universal decision-makingframework. Diagnosing natural resource problemsbefore formulating policies for dealing with themis one such possibility. This diagnosis, previouslyimpossible, is essential because policies are alwaysformed either to deal with a problem or to preventan anticipated problem. For example, afterreceiving training in Holistic Management,government officials in both Bhubaneswar inIndia and Lesotho in Africa determined that theirpolicies did not address the cause of theirproblems, had no chance of success, and mostprobably would worsen their problems.

NGOs receiving similar training in Africa are realizing that most of the projects they areanalyzing have no chance of success and arelikely to further damage people’s lives. Thesameness of this pattern offers strong support forthe view that as nations throughout the worldformulate policies using the universal framework,they are most likely supporting projects doomed to failure or even to making problems worseinstead of solving them.

Here, it is important to note that these failuresare not caused by a lack of either knowledge orgoodwill. The failures arise because governmentsusing the same framework that created theproblems in the first place are unlikely to solvethem using that framework over and over again. I believe it was Einstein who said we are neverlikely to solve our problems with the samethinking that created them.

Until governments are able to diagnoseresource problems and formulate holisticallysound policies, good governance will remain an idea only. Holistic Management is offered as an aid for moving humanity toward thatelusive goal of a peaceful, happy world.

This excerpt was originally published inWorld & I: Innovative Approaches to Peace, Spring 2007, p. 20.

“ Government policies affecting hard systems result almost inevitably in corporations benefiting from short-term

profits while society shoulders the long-term costs.”

Number 116 h IN PRACTICE 7

In Australia, the worst effect of climatechange so far is drought. Specifically, thedrought of 2005/6 and ongoing is the worstin living memory. Our rivers are dying—

the result of poor management as much as lackof rain. The authorities have over-allocatedirrigation licences, not understanding theconditions which we might face. Now manyirrigation farmers face ruin, with no allocationthis year, even though they paid hundreds ofthousands of dollars for their irrigation licences.

We have no irrigation licence, but the droughtof 2006 was hitting us hard in November. We run pure Australian Super Fine Merinosheep—a commercial flock of 1,500 breedingewes, around 900 of last year’s lambs, and a mobof rams. We are on 1,760 acres (700 ha) ofcountry in a “normally” 26-inch (600-mm)rainfall area. We have around 50 paddocks onlyand this is a limiting factor as well.

Rain can fall in all seasons here, but we relyon summer storms to a great extent as growth islimited in winter by frosts. This wool is the best in the world, and our type of wool will find its way into the best suits—you grow less of it persheep, but it sells at a premium.

We were trained in Holistic Management byBruce Ward in 1998. We were lucky to have been trained then because without HolisticManagement we wouldn’t be here.

We had been on the traditional ‘steep learningcurve’ since that time on our property, with variedsuccess. We are classified as “tree changers”having come from the city to fulfill my lifelongdream of having a farm. Naturally our fencingand other rural skills were seriously lacking. We did have creative skills however—in the citywe established and ran a successful marketingagency for 10 years. By the time this drought hit,we only had 50 paddocks, some of which still did not have a water solution. So I wasn’t able to save the land as I wanted.

The timing was also bad. In November wehave young lambs—too young to wean. The wethers (neutered males) had long gone to the slaughterhouse in the first round of drought decision making. So, looking back, our “adoptasheep” program started as an exercisein desperation—or creativity!

We had young lambs, and ewes—no feed, and no money to feed. We decided to sleep on itone more night before taking the decision whichanimals to sell onto a very poor market. Michael

Surviving The Worst Drought in 1000 Years—Creative Carbon Cockysby Louisa Kiely

The Kielys’ land is the darkerarea in the middle. The darkgreen is an indication ofhealthier land that hasn’t beenovergrazed and more resilientto drought. Because the Kielyspulled their sheep into asacrifice paddock and feed thempurchased feed, they were ableto survive the drought with theirflock and land intact. To viewthis picture in color, go towww.holisticmanagement.org.

stayed up, worried, of course. This was my dream,and he didn’t want to see it fail. But, the landmust come first. As David Marsh says, we should“stock to the capacity of the landscape.” Bymorning, Michael had a plan, and a press release.“Adoptasheep” (www.adoptasheep.com.au) wasborn. We were to offer our sheep at $35 for 100days feed. We would take photos and each adoptedparent could name their sheep, and receive acertificate with “their” sheep on it. The words ofthanks on the certificate spoke about saving ouriconic wool industry from the worst drought inliving memory and said “thank you” to the donor.

Well, the newspaper printed the story a fewdays later, and the same day we had a televisioncrew land via helicopter on our front paddock! We had hit a nerve, and everyone wanted to help a struggling farmer. The television piece drew ahuge audience for the station, whose crew adopted a lamb while they were here!

In the next three months, we raised $70,000 for feed, and fed it all out too!

The cards and letters we received wereastounding – everyone thanking us for enablingthem to find a way to help in this drought. Theyhad felt disempowered, but were not disconnected!We immediately put the sheep in a sacrificepaddock—with the best water and shelter..

Our sheep have been saved, but additionally,our land was able to respond when rains came.We went up in a plane to take photos so that wecould help others understand what can happen,with the same rainfall, but just differentmanagement.

The Carbon ConnectionIn 2005 we were chosen as innovative farmers

to take part in 20 days of training given by our

CMA’s (Catchment Management Authorities),whose work it is to help farmers to farm moresustainably.

As a result of this, we were convinced that soil carbon had a critical role to play in the future of Australian Agriculture. Without increasedorganic matter in our soils, we will not survive the likely reduction in rain which changedclimatic conditions will bring here. Let alone the increase in temperatures!

We discovered also that carbon was the nextbiggest currency in the world! Climate change will ensure this, as the world realizes we are facing a carbon-constrained future. Surely, wereasoned, there was an opportunity for HolisticManagement farmers (and others) to takeadvantage of this upcoming market.

So, we formed the Carbon Coalition(www.carboncoalition.com.au), and visited theU.S. in October 2006.

In the space of three weeks we visited every soil expert we could get an interview with,including Dr. Rattan Lal at Ohio University andProfessor Bruce McCarl at Texas A&M University.We knew from our research that the ChicagoClimate Exchange was trading in soil carbon and were lucky to be granted a meeting with Mike Walsh, the Founding Director. He let usknow that we had a rocky road ahead, but that assoon as we could get scientific peer reviewed dataon how much carbon Australian soils couldsequester under changed management regimes,he would be happy to trade with us!

Our battle for recognition of soil carbon creditsas a tradeable commodity has been difficult andexciting. The scientific establishment in Australia

continued on page 8

believes that our soils are so ancientand so thin that we have littlechance to sequester much carbon.However, there is a generalacknowledgement that we have stripmined our topsoils of 80 percent ofits carbon over the last 200 years.Groundcover and perennial grassesare two of the most effective soilcarbon techniques we use.

“Carbon Farming” techniquesare the best way to use water where it falls and hold it in the profile—i.e., it is a drought proofing strategy.But we are still aligning it with a

future Carbon Market—a new source of incomefor farmers. We have set up Carbon Farmers of Australia—www.carbonfarmersofaustralia.com.au, and some hardy souls have joined.

We also have a half-day seminar where we

help to educate farmers about soil carbon andwhat it will mean in the future. To keep the debate moving along in Australia, we are holding a two-day conference in November. We are calling it the “World’s First CarbonFarming Expo and Conference.” We are going to also have the first “Carbon Cocky” competition,where we get our best Carbon Farmers, estimatetheir carbon sequestration efforts using currentcalculators, and then award a prize to the farmer who has managed to increase their soil carbon the most!

We used to think of ourselves as sheep farmers. Then we changed our view, and becamesoil farmers. But now we believe we are carbonfarmers. If your soil carbon is healthy and rising,everything else—soil health, hydrology,biodiversity—should be in good order.

Louisa and Michael Kiely live in Goolma,New South Wales, Australia. They can bereached at: louisa@carboncoalition.com.au.

8 IN PRACTICE h November / December 2007

These certificates were as good as feed in the barn for the Kielys.Australians poured in $70,000 to help the Kielys survive the drought and adopt a sheep.

Surviving the Worst Drought continued from page seven

Grazing The Grasslands Could Help The Environment & Economyby Peter Holter

Recent news reports have told us that ethanol, now the “big player” in the alternative fuels arena, is usingup corn that would otherwise be fed to

cattle, dairy cows, swine, sheep and fowl. Thismeans that the prices being paid for corn arerising rapidly, and these increases in turn driveup the costs of foods we consume and oflivestock feeds that contain corn.

The news stories did not pose or answerquestions about why livestock are consuming corn-based feed in the first place. The answer would be that our industrial livestock industry confinesthe animals to pens and barns—therefore, theyhave to consume manufactured food.

It wasn’t always this way.In the 19th century, animals grazed and

were sustained on the Great Plains, which weregrasslands that covered almost 40 percent of North America. Only about 1 percent of theoriginal ecosystem exists today, because it hasbeen converted to agriculture or is degraded and abandoned.

While the Great Plains did support millions of grazing animals and pack-hunting predatorsthat fed on the grazers, the grasslands remainedhealthy because of the symbiotic and holisticrelationship between the land and the animals.

The presence of predators kept the grazinganimals on the move, and their hoof actionworked the soil so that their manure was quicklyabsorbed. The soil’s organic matter was increased,thereby fertilizing it and keeping it healthy.

Would it be possible to return to a morenatural way of raising livestock? Ourorganization, Holistic Management International,has accumulated abundant evidence—over 23years of working internationally with farming and ranching families—that this is actuallypossible. Today, 30 million acres around theworld, including the United States, are successfullycultivated using Holistic Management.

To change the paradigm of how we raiselivestock, we would have to be willing to free up the acreage, grow the grass and restore thegrasslands, with the animals present, and managetheir grazing in such a way that replicates thebehavior of those wild grazers of yesteryear andthat permits enough time to elapse for the roots of the plants to rest and recover.

If we could bring animals back to the land in a holistically managed way and restore the grasslands, then:

• Vast amounts of carbon would end up inplant roots instead of in the atmosphere. Thiswould have a positive effect on global warming.

• We would increase the water resources of theland, in underground aquifers and in the prairie.Covered soil retains significantly more water thanbare ground does.

• The overall habitat for wildlife would beimproved.

• Outbreaks of pests and weeds woulddecrease, along with the attendant use ofherbicides and pesticides.

• We could reduce the amount of methanethat is produced by livestock in confined feeding operations.

• We could produce a high-quality, clean-protein product for human consumption.

• We could create another source of biofuels.Research conducted at the University of

Minnesota and reported in the December 2006issue of Science magazine, indicated that biofuelsderived from grassland plants yield up to twice as much energy per unit of land as corn-basedethanol does. This exciting development couldhold the key to the future of alternative energyproduction.

In the end, we would also improve our ruraleconomies.

This commentary appeared in theAlbuquerque Tribune on August 21, 2007.

The University of Texas at Austin has anew category of courses called “ServiceLearning.” According to the Provost,“Academic service-learning is a

pedagogical model that intentionally integratescommunity service, academic learning, andcivic learning. It is a response to the call forhigher education to take responsibility forpreparing active citizens for a diversedemocracy.”

I’ve been teaching “academic” HolisticManagement several years under the label ofNatural Resource Management. Now this classhas become a model for the new Service Learningcategory of selected courses.

We all see people, from individuals togovernments, act as if they believe that theecosystem is predictable and technologicallycontrollable. “Endangered species” and “invasivespecies” are functional opposites, but theunderlying processes are overlooked or oversimplified when one reads the “managementplans.” I am waiting to see who proposes that wecan save the polar bears by floating Styrofoamicebergs in the warming Arctic Ocean. To solve theproblems, we protect the endangered ones as“patients” and fight the invasive ones as an enemy.

These illusions begin before college, and theyare reinforced using published oversimplificationsin class. News is a flow of “sound bites” that haveno nutritive information, making us intellectually“obese” and lethargic.

Students can memorize a “template” ofactions to plug into their computer and receiveoperating instructions to just about anything—orso the educational “theorists” who establish ourpublic school content believe. Such indoctrinationcreates simplistic thinking and over confidence. Inthe U.S. we have the politically institutionalized“Let No Child Excel” (aka “Leave No ChildBehind”) program, educating students byrepeated testing with simplified tests. Students aretreated like computers ready to have softwareinstalled from a “bubble in” answers exercise. Ifthey have the correct answers “installed,” they areready for “Life” after school. It is no wonder thatour students often cannot write a grammaticallycorrect sentence, express an original idea, or linka sequence of ideas into a personal insight!

In my Natural Resource Management courses,there are no prerequisites except that a studentmust be enrolled in college, breathe air, eat food,drink water and occupy space. If they meet thesecriteria, they already are managing naturalresources, so the class is about how they can do a

“better” job and enjoy living. After an introductory discussion of decision

making the students begin crafting theirholisticgoal. I can tell they learn from theexperience when a curious spouse appears in theclass. Since learning is unique, documenting thatlearning requires a degree of flexibility that isinherent in the learning portfolio as developed byProfessor Margaret Syverson(www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~syverson/olr/manifesto.html). Students document what they havelearned and note the conditions that contributedto their learning experiences. They learn to

share knowledge with others.Field exercises in the class are much like any

Holistic Management monitoring exercise. Soilsurface, plant growth patterns, animal signs, etc.are indicators of the underlying ecologicalprocesses. A group of students reconstruct therecent history of a “site.” Students are asked whattools or management changes may move thefunctions in a new direction, and support differentplant and animal communities. “Reading” theland is a skill they begin to develop.

Each individual’s holisticgoal generates manyobservations of their own resources, andpracticing what they learn begins to sharpen their“eye” to what is happening around them. Theexperiences of building effective collaborationsreveals the benefits and improves their skills inlistening, monitoring other people’s meaning instatements,

The most unusual projects come fromgraduate students in other disciplines, such asArchitecture, Engineering, Kinesiology, Education,and Liberal Arts. These students expose me to newcontexts for Holistic Management. It is alwaysgratifying to see how the principles universallyapply. Graduate students from these disciplinesoften learn things they never expected. Sometimesthey have changes in perspective and modify theinterpretation in their research.

The student perspective from the class reachesinto the faculty. This class always challenges me. Inever teach without learning, and I may besurprised by a student’s question or observation. Iam invited to give several “guest lectures” a yearin other classes, and I make a practice to includethe things I’ve learned, often from what failed towork as expected.

Why is this called “service learning”? Since thecourse has no exams, the students initiallyconsider this a party course. If they are doing it asa project for a client, their motivation is improved,but they discover motivation from what they arelearning in an authentic world of experience. The“teaching to the test” syndrome has dulled thestudents’ minds, and they are bored. The joy ofdiscovering a “story” in the observations is a self-service experience. If they are motivated by a job“for” another person or organization, they areeven more so when they realize that learning isreally a self-service—a life-changing experience.I facilitate self discovery, and it becomes a“rehabilitation course” for “human products”from our largely dysfunctional educationalassembly line.

Dick Richardson is a Certified Educatorteaching Integrative Biology in the School ofBiological Sciences at the University of Texas atAustin. He can be reached at:d.richardson@mail.utexas.edu.

Number 116 h IN PRACTICE 9

Holistic Management as Service Learningby R. H. Richardson

recognize what they learned, ranging fromabstract ideas to physical skills. They monitor fivecriteria, analogous to our monitoring ecosystemdynamics. The five “Dimensions of Learning” are:

1. gained confidence and independence,2. acquired new knowledge and

understanding,3. acquired new skills and strategies,4. used prior or emerging experience,5. acquired new insights through critical

reflection.When one or more of these criteria are met,

the student has learned something new. Recordingthe learning context documents the conditionsand results from the learning. Compared to“exams,” these criteria drastically change theclass dynamic. For example, “cheating” becomes“collaboration” and the activity and learningsatisfies the “show me” criteria for a skepticalobserver. Students’ attitudes change and selfconfidence increases. Enthusiasm, initiative andmotivation are enhanced.

Until the students have a personalizedunderstanding related to their own experience,they likely have not fully absorbed the lesson.They are free to use their own expressions,including choosing different vocabulary thatmatches their experience and perceptions.Flexibility in communication enhancesunderstanding, and gives students confidence to

For a long time, I’ve operated under the assumption that regardlessof the resource base’s location, managing holistically would resultin its improvement and ever-increasing prosperity of the wholeunder management. I’ve had experience in winter rainfall coastal

California, wet and humid east Texas, droughty New Mexico, and high,cold Colorado. I’ve visited ranches in many environments in Africa,Argentina, Australia, and New Zealand. In all of these places, myobservations and experience have told me that holistically groundedprosperity and long term sustainability are highly achievable.

With the right essentials in place—mimicking nature under plannedgrazing, focusing on solar energy harvest, letting the animals do the work,optimizing stocking rate, keeping overheads at a bare minimum, disciplinedfinancial planning, engaging in enterprises that are personally exciting andmotivating, etc.—any place can be managed for holistic soundness.

But, for innumerable reasons, there’s a good chance that in the course ofour lives we’ll face the necessity to reevaluate the specific resource base fromwhich we derive our sustenance and quality of life. If you are at the point ofpondering a change of address, I think there are some serious issues to thinkthrough as you go about your new resource base search. Through our ranchtours, we’ve had the great opportunity to visit numerous excellent operations,and watch their evolution over the years. Most of these ranches are soundfrom most of the points of view mentioned in the preceding paragraph. But, a few of these operations really stand out in terms of their ecological,social, and (most notably) economic abundance. About a year ago I satdown in an attempt to list some traits that appear to be common to theseexceptional grass-based, holistically managed livestock operations. The two key factors are scale and ease.

Numbers MatterIf you’ve created a high value, reasonably high volume direct market

niche, that’s one way to generate dollars. The other way is to sell lots ofnumbers—scale. You can sell individual cuts to individual people, but forthose of us who don’t have the character, inclination, or aptitude to deal with lots of customers, we have to have scale to make things economicallyinteresting. What’s scale? It’s unique relative to the needs and realities of each of us, but when I think of scale, I think of the number of cattle one full-time labor unit can handle by him/herself in a specific environment.

It doesn’t take much more labor or base infrastructure (truck, set of

corrals, squeeze chute, loading ramp, portable hot wire) to handle 100 headof cattle than it does to handle 2,000. It takes more land, obviously, but itdoesn’t take much more of these basic infrastructure or labor inputs. A bigherd requires a big crew a few days a year, but for 95 percent of the time, thebig herd doesn’t take any more labor input than the little herd. Most of theactual daily work with grass-based livestock production is directly correlatedto the time it takes to get out to the paddock and open the gate into the newpasture. Highly profitable operations spread this labor over lots of critters.

Opening and closing gates (and moving portable hot wires) according to a well-conceived grazing plan is also very high marginal reaction work(valuable results for the time and money spent). Time spent fixing fence(contractors can do that), sitting on tractors, or babysitting cows duringcalving is very low marginal reaction work. Ensuring all your critters areconstantly moving onto fresh, recovered, high quality forage is what pays. By doing so, your livestock stays in optimal condition without spending anymoney, the health of the ecosystem processes consistently improves, and

Prospecting for Green—The Importance of a Resource Base Reality Checkby Jim Howell

&&

10 h November / December 2007Land & Livestock

The pampas of Argentina are world famous as grazing heaven for good reason—it’s flat and productive, dominated by cool season grasses,close to the massive market of Buenos Aires, enjoys reasonably goodinfrastructure, requires no irrigating or hayfeeding, and has abundant,shallow, easy-to-pump groundwater and lots of surface water.

Number 116 h 11Land & Livestock

carrying capacity increases. When you can spread this high value labor inputand base infrastructure investment over a great big herd, you’ve got scale.

The Elements of EasyThe second essential ingredient to high profitability is ease of

management. Actually, I should probably say “relative” ease of management.Ranching and farming is never easy, but some places are definitely easierthan others. There are lots of components to this part of the equation, andthey don’t all have to be met to have relative ease of management. But, mostof them do. It’s hard to be conscious of how easy (or difficult) your particulararea is to manage unless you’ve had the chance to see lots of places outsideof your immediate neighborhood. As we’ve traveled to grazing operationsaround the world, and as I’ve become aware of the limitations and strengthsof our own area in Colorado, I’ve gradually developed a list of componentsthat add up to “relative ease of management.”

Up, Down, or Straight AcrossFirst, no place that’s steep is easy. The ranch we lease in Colorado has

lots of positives, but almost all of it is vertical. This is hard on people(stringing a temporary hot wire across 700-foot deep canyons takes a lot outof you), hard on cattle, hard on horses, hard on vehicles, hard on roads, hardon pumps. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it’s hard. It’s hard to constantlyfight gravity. So, to me, ease of management starts with gentle topography.Flat is great, a little undulation is no problem, but vertical gets old. Thisprobably seems obvious, but it wasn’t to me until I realized there was lifebeyond the mountains.

Between Steppe and SavannaInherent primary productivity is also closely correlated with easy—

but only to a point. Here I’m talking about how many SDA (stock days peracre) the land can produce. The cold, windswept steppes of Wyoming (verylow production—hard to grow grass) are a long, long ways from the tropicalsavannas of Zimbabwe (very easy to grow lots of grass). The level ofproductivity correlated with ease of management probably doesn’t line upwith either of these extremes.

The low production end of the spectrum has a lot of imbedded cost. When I say low production, I’m talking about country that battles to supporta cow for a year on 40 acres or more. When productivity drops that low, thereis a lot of money tied up in permanent infrastructure investment andmaintenance (roads, fences, waterlines) per cow unit. There is also a lot ofinefficiency in simply getting around. Whether your means of transport is bytruck, 4-wheeler, horse, or your own two legs, big country eats up a lot oftime in just getting from one place to another. This is costly not just in the

opportunity cost of your time, but in fuel and vehicle maintenance as well.Most of the time, low production country is sparsely populated. Distance totown, distance to markets, and quality of roads all tend to add cost and make life harder. If the area is also steep and rugged, things are double-tough. This combination characterized my early married life on the HighLonesome Ranch in southwestern New Mexico, but Daniela and I were young and full of enthusiasm, so were naively innocent of the less-than-idealconditions of our employment.

At the other end of the spectrum—the high rainfall, tropical latitudesavannas—we have lots of productivity, but this country is a long ways fromeasy. First, these areas are always dominated by warm-season grasses thatproduce prodigious amounts of dry matter. This forage loses lots of quality as it dries out going into the dormant season, and even when it’s green andgrowing it’s not all that wonderful. There are ways to handle this drop inquality (ultra high density grazing, which helps maintain an even plane ofnutrition, protein and energy supplements, etc.) but it is a constant battle to maintain animal condition. As a result, it’s tough to get cows bred backand it takes young cattle a long time to reach finish weight.

The other major issue with high productivity in the tropics is the parasiteburden, both internal and external. I remember Johann Zietsman remarkingthat the high altitude savannas on Zimbabwe’s central plateau are paradise,but they are “paradise for everything,” including just about every parasiteimaginable. You can’t believe the tick loads, and the associated tick-bornediseases, that these guys have to deal with. Again, these things aremanageable, but they sure don’t make life easy.

C3 Beats C4Between these two extremes there is a lot of much easier country.

And, the more an environment is dominated by cool season, C3 grasses, the easier it tends to be, even up to very high levels of productivity. Over thecourse of the year, cool season grasses (both annuals and perennials) tend tomaintain a much better ratio of protein to energy relative to warm seasonplants (C4), especially under good planned grazing. As a result, breed backproblems are much less bothersome, and with the right genetics and grazingmanagement, cattle can finish on grass in 18 months. Flat or gently rollingcountry covered with a dense cover of cool season grasses is grazing heaven.

Cool, C3 grass country also tends to be associated with less extremeweather. The constant threat of precipitation failure is more of an issue inhotter country, where precipitation tends to come concentrated in thesummer months, and also tends to come as spotty thunderstorms as opposedto broad-sweeping weather fronts. At the High Lonesome, I remember driving

continued on page 12

The High Lonesome Ranch insouthwestern New Mexico is a long ways from easy—low productivity,long distances, lots of infrastructure per cow unit, very erratic precipitationpatterns, lots of hard-to-get-to, roughcountry, remoteness, and the need to pump and pipe every bit of water to elaborate cell centers like this one.

many times over. But what if you can find a resource base where, because oflive running water, all this investment and associated operating costs areunnecessary, or at least minimal? Believe me, creeks and permanent pondsmake life a lot, lot easier.

Grass GardensI spend a lot of time every summer spreading water around the irrigated

ground on our leased place. The irrigated pastures grow about six times more grass per acre as the dryland range country, so it’s worth my effort to do it (at least that’s what I tell myself). It’s all wild flood irrigation out ofditches that divert from creeks, so the infrastructure maintenance costs areminimal, and there is no pumping expense, but it still takes time. The thingthat’s hard to stomach is that I know of lots and lots of country that growsjust as much or more forage per acre as this irrigated ground (and of similarquality), but it does so thanks to natural precipitation—no ditches, shovels,center pivots, or side rolls necessary.

South African holistic manager Ian Mitchell Innes came on a RockyMountain ranch tour with us in 2002. At the time we were leasing aproductive, but very labor intensive, irrigated ranch next to our low place. I was showing Ian’s group this place, elaborating on how productive it was. I could tell Ian was less than impressed. Finally, he spoke his mind. “You’re not a rancher, Jim. You’re a mudslinging gardener.” He was right. I was doing way too much work, treating that place like a high input garden. Message: easy country is not irrigated.

Get the Hay OutAnd then there’s the whole haying habit. Some places just have to feed

hay. Permanent snow cover demands it, and these places are not easy. They are cold and severe, and the haymaking necessity eats up lots ofpotential profit. But, lots of folks feed hay where snow cover is minimal or non-existent (i.e. where it’s not necessary). There is lots of this type ofcountry. These areas present big opportunities for those who have developedthe art of grazing planning and understand how to manage for qualitywinter grazing. If these areas are also reasonably productive, flat or rolling,covered with cool season grasses, and have creeks and ponds, then it’s hard not to make money with cows.

Farm to MarketFinally, no place is easy if you can’t get your critters to market without

a Herculean effort. This is one of Patagonia’s big disadvantages. Isolationmeans roads are few and far between. Those that do exist are rough andoften impassable. The same is true for big stretches of the American West and much of interior Australia. There is quite a bit of good country—country that meets most of the above “easy” criteria—that is very flat andnon-scenic (and therefore pretty cheap), but that has excellent roadinfrastructure. These areas are often located in marginal wheat growingareas, which I presume is why the roads were paved in the first place. It’sgood, productive, cool season prairie country in its natural state. Prolongedwheat farming wears it out. If put back to native grasses, this country cangrow a lot of beef at minimal cost.

Tapping PotentialApart from scale and ease of management, another factor to keep in

mind (as you evaluate a resource base move) is “unrealized potential.”Armed with the insights and skills of holistic grazing, land, and financialplanning, there isn’t anyplace that doesn’t present unrealized potential. But,some places present more than others. Moreover, that potential is often much easier to tap into in some environments relative to others.

For example, I’ve been on numerous ranches in the American Southwest

Prospecting for Green continued from page eleven

through a flood on the neighbor’s place one night. As soon as we drovethrough our gate, we started making dust. The rain was that spotty. Therewere some pastures on the High Lonesome that didn’t grow a blade of grassduring the summer monsoons for over two years, because it just flat didn’train there. This never happens in cool country. Also, because it’s cool, andbecause a lot of the precipitation actually arrives during the winter,evaporation is less of an issue and it’s easier to build soil moisture. High quality spring growth is essentially a given. In hot C4 country—especially hot, low production country—nothing is a given.

Water PointsOne of the positives of our steep country in Colorado is the presence of

little creeks and springs all over the place. The canyons are tough, but at leastthey’ve got water running down the middle. This is another big componentof relative ease of management—easy-to-get-to, abundant water. In anideal situation, water development is unnecessary because of access tosprings, creeks, lakes, ponds, or rivers.

That tends to be a rare luxury, however, and the costs (in investment andoperation) of stockwater systems can be huge. As land becomes steeper andlower in production, these costs tend to amplify. Low production countrytends to be dry, which means live running water tends to be scarce. Thatmeans you have to trap runoff in ponds (always a risky gamble, again,especially in dry country) or pump it out of the ground. Some places have topump little bits of water from a long ways down, and sometimes this water ispretty marginal in quality. Then you’ve got to get that water spread outaround the property, which means lots of pipe. In cold country, you’ve got tobury that pipe way down deep. At each water point you’ve got to store lots ofwater, especially if you’ve got scale and great big herds (which you need tohave), in case the pump goes down. At each water point, you’ve got to havethe necessary infrastructure in place to enable that great big herd to get adrink without stress, which means sufficient trough space and a high flowrate from the storage tank into the trough. This is all doable, and thisinvestment, if well designed and spread over sufficient scale, will pay for itself

12 h November / December 2007Land & Livestock

There is a lot of land just west of the Great Dividing Range in southern New South Wales, Australia that is excellent grazing country. It is dominated by very high quality, cool season annual grasses, is reasonably productive and remarkably flat, has excellentinfrastructure, requires no hayfeeding, and many areas have good surface creeks. But, if you’re into gourmet dining and live opera, be prepared to travel.

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that have lots of grossly underutilized forage. This forage is typically a long ways from existing water (sometimes horizontally, sometimesvertically). Because it’s usually also low production country, so stocking ratesare low and distances are long. This means that any investment made inwater infrastructure (to make accessible these hard-to-get-to corners andridges) is usually costly (because of the length of pipe needed) relative to theincreased stocking rate. Compare this to the pancake flat, 40-inch (1,000mm) rainfall Pampas of Argentina, where continuous, year-long grazing isthe norm on most ranches. These places often have live water and numerouspaddocks, and distances are short because of high productivity. But, they areproducing way under their potential due to poor grazing management. Bysimply combining herds and planning the grazing within the existinginfrastructure, with no investment other than a pad of grazing planningcharts, lots of unrealized potential can be immediately realized.

The Whole PictureBut, you might not like flat, featureless country. Maybe steep, rugged,

and dry lines right up with your desired quality of life. Deciding on the rightresource base for you and your whole goes deeper than scale, ease ofmanagement, or unrealized potential. First and foremost, your quality of life has to enter the picture as you evaluate where to do your sunshineharvesting. If flat and featureless is depressing, and wildness and diverseterrain keeps life interesting, then go where you’re excited to get out of bed in the morning. A good friend of ours has a hard time seeing himself in highproduction country. As he states it, “I like to be able to turn my horse around,and I need a little gravity to keep his ears snapping.” In my case, the wildnessof Colorado—with elk running all over the place, pristine creeks flowingdown every canyon, and beautiful views in every direction—goes a long way to canceling out the difficulty created by the steep topography and longwinters.

We know ranchers in Africa that are acutely aware of the myriadchallenges—ecological, political, social, and economic—that dominatetheir lives, but many of these families can’t imagine life anywhere else. Their lives aren’t easy, but they’re rich and interesting and definitely notboring. At the end of the day, we have to evaluate the extent we’re willing to engage in trade-offs.

Another big consideration is the type of community you want to live in.That well-priced, but burnt out, wheat country is, currently at least, typicallypretty depressed. The towns in these areas are usually ugly and semi-abandoned, and the folks that live there not typically on the leading edge ofany sort of agricultural revolution. Could you handle that socialenvironment? Maybe so. Maybe you find the challenges—environmental,

economic, and social—of these regions hard to resist. But if you need access to live opera and abundant gourmet dining options, think twice before heading to the high plains.

Fiduciary ResponsibilityAnd obviously, if you’re looking at trading out one asset for another, price

of land per animal unit has to work. This issue drives me crazy in Colorado,where land is so insanely overpriced that, if I’m really honest with myself, myfamily is not acting with fiduciary responsibility by holding onto this place. If we sold our steep, not-very-productive, cold and snowy Colorado landscape,we could replace it in just about anyplace in the world and come out wayahead in terms of increasing our scale and return on investment.

For example, let’s say you’re in hard, but scenic and overpriced, country,and the price of land per animal unit is currently $20,000. You’ve got nodebt, but your scale is marginal at 300 cows and the return to the value ofyour land base is negligible. Now let’s say you’ve found some country thatmeets lots of the “ease of management” criteria, but is valued at only $5,000per animal unit. It’s more remote, not as scenic, but lots easier. With thesame capital base, you can quadruple your scale, probably at a much lowercost of production per pound of beef, and greatly increase your return tocapital and your family’s level of prosperity. I’ve been a big proponent ofkeeping families on the same land base and building on the unique localknowledge that develops through multiple generations. I still do highly valuethis intergenerational continuity, but as I get older and think about thefuture of my own family, I realize that honest financial analysis has to be a primary driver of our decision making.

I’ve only talked about the land’s value in terms of cows and grazing. Anyanalysis of any resource base has to look all the other potential value aresource base possesses. The list is inexhaustible, and needs to be determinedfor every unique situation. You might be close to a growing town, and intwenty years the likelihood that the town will be at your fenceline is high.What’s the value of that? Your ranch might be hard from every angle, but it’sgot a herd of desert bighorn sheep that crazy people pay ridiculous amountsof money to come hunt. On top of that, there’s an antenna on the high pointof an escarpment that generates a great big dividend with absolutely noexpenditure of effort. Do those traits make up for your low stocking rate, highcosts in infrastructure maintenance, distance to town, etc.?

Each of us has to work through all these issues and considerations forourselves. There’s no recipe, thank God. All this complexity is what keeps lifeinteresting. But, if we can step back and bring some order to the complexitywith a rational approach to evaluating our resource base—we should have abetter chance of putting our families in the right place for the right reasons.

The wild Andean foothills of ArgentinePatagonia are blessed with spectacularscenery, abundant lakes, rivers, streams, and springs, cool season grasses, lots of flat,easily accessible terrain, and the possibility ofhayless wintering. The drawbacks are thatmost of it is very difficult to access due tosparse infrastructure, and it is very lowproduction country, so distances are excessiveand cost of infrastructure development andmaintenance per animal unit is very high.

Paul and Cheri Little waited 15years before HolisticManagement® GrazingPlanning didn’t raise red flags

with the social weak link test. Theircommitment and patience not to outruntheir headlights offers a lesson on howslow can be fast.

Too often we see people leaving theirfirst Holistic Management seminar ecstaticand ready to hit the ground running.However, they find themselves returning toa community where they find no supportand no one to share their excitement. Without camaraderie the newly plantedseed of knowledge withers and dies and Holistic Management becomes adistant memory.

At the other end of the spectrum, the newly exposed student becomes aknow-it-all evangelist and careens into their community out of control. Theyare like a speedster driving too fast for their level of knowledge or skill. Sharpcorners arrive faster than their headlights can possibly reach. This recklessyouth stirs fear of crashing and burning and the community steers wide fromHolistic Management.

Paul and Cheri Little found the middle way by waiting to implementHolistic Management® Grazing Planning with community support. As aresult, their community has moved a step towards the practice of HolisticManagement.

Moving to the Cutting EdgeThe Klamath Basin begins in southern Oregon and goes down into

northern California. The Littles’ ranch lies in the Wood River Valley at theupper end of this basin, which is the bottom of an ancient lakebed, nearChiloquin, Oregon. They get 16-20 inches (41-51 cm) of annualprecipitation, mostly in the winter. The majority of land in the valley iscurrently used for cattle grazing, which is supported by extensive irrigationand drainage systems that divert water from the spring-fed creeks and riversonto pastures.

Testing the Social Weak Link—Paul and Cheri Littleby Tony Malmberg

Much of the valley has 15-25 feet (5-8m) of topsoil and the Littles’ place ison 90 feet (27 m) of mud. Although this valley makes up only five percent ofthe land area in the upper watershed, almost 25 percent of the water suppliedto Upper Klamath Lake originates here due to the high density of artesiansprings. The geography has created an epicenter where several ranchers arenow working together to try and get more water downstream to supportsalmon runs.

Settled in the 1880s, most in the valley changed to dairy andcheesemaking by the turn of the century. Brucellosis put the dairies out ofbusiness and an early winter caught ranchers unaware, resulting in thestarvation of many cattle. This event strengthened the practice of movingsouth in the winter and grazing the high production meadows for six months.The ranchers moved their cattle in and out on the railroad at Chiloquin,Oregon. Today, the Upper Klamath Basin is both the summer range foryearlings on their way to finishing feedlots as well as pasture for pairs, whosecalves go on to market and mothers return to California for the winter.

Cheri Little’s family, the Bacchis bought their ranch in California after thegold rush in 1851. Cheri’s father, Francis survived the depression and addedparcels to the ranch in later years. He sold some of his cattle and paid off hisranch in 1958. He bought the upper Klamath Basin ranch in 1961. Likeeveryone, they irrigated the deep soils and grazed continuously. Paul andCheri Little bought into the business in 1985. Shortly thereafter Paul andCheri went to Fresno, California where Allan Savory taught a HolisticManagement® Grazing Planning course.

Paul had been exposed to the “Savory Cell System” in college where theteachings focused on increasing productivity by rotating livestock rather thantesting towards one’s holisticgoal.

“At the seminar in Fresno,” Paul says, “I realized there was a lot more toHolistic Management than rotating pastures. I was impressed that finance,grazing, monitoring, ecosystem processes, regrowth, and recovery, all involvelogic, numbers and could be quantified. I knew Allan was at the cutting edgeand it got my attention. The idea that one just can’t cut numbers to improveland health really stuck with me.”

Paul says his father-in-law, Francis, was a good listener but definitely thefinal decision maker. They talked a lot about cell grazing but not HolisticManagement. At some point, Francis was convinced cell grazing was morework than it returned and that was the end of it. Francis retired in 1988 andPaul’s brother-in-law, Chuck, became the senior partner.

Chuck encouraged more discussion and prompted Paul to go ahead andimplement holistic grazing planning. But Paul did not want to move aheadwithout Chuck’s understanding of what was involved. Paul made severalattempts to get Chuck to Holistic Management seminars and Chuck in turnencouraged Paul to go ahead. Paul continued to wait rather than strain therelationship. He did not want to proceed until Chuck had a betterunderstanding of what Holistic Management® Grazing Planning was allabout.

Taking the LeapSeveral things changed in 2001. Paul became solely responsible for

management of the Klamath Basin ranch. The family decided to lease theirwater rights to the Bureau of Reclamation to generate income for familymembers owning an interest in the real estate but not the ranching business.Klamath Basin Rangeland Trust (KBRT), an organization created in responseto the current water crisis in the Klamath Basin, organized in the valley.During this period of flux, Paul took the initiative to implement holisticgrazing planning.

To determine his non-irrigated stocking rate, Paul spent time in thelibrary researching historical accounts of ranchers’ increased hay productionafter they started irrigating. Most tripled their hay production, so Paul planned

14 h November / December 2007Land & Livestock

KlamathBasinranchersmakemoregreen(money)with lessgreengrass.

Social Weak LinkTesting Question:“Have I/we consideredand/or addressed anyconfusion, anger, oropposition this action

could create with peoplewhose support I/we need in the near or

distant future?”

Number 116 h 15Land & Livestock

to reduce his six-month stocking rate from two acres for one cow-calf pair(144 ADA or 346 ADH) to six acres (48 ADA or 118 ADH). The calves weigh400 lbs (181 kg) when they turn out in May and 780 lbs (355 kg) when theyship the calves in October (a 100 lb / 45 kg increase from 2001).

To test the economics of leasing the water rights, we can use the general“rule of thumb” for local yearling-gain operations for an incomecomparison. Yearlings pasture for $0.32 and $0.35 per pound of gain for steersand heifers respectively. Gains run from 2.5-2.8 pounds per day (1.14-1.27kg). Therefore, irrigated pasture would gross $141.12 per acre or $57 perhectare, best case (2.8 lbs. X $0.35 X 144 ADA). Using Paul’s estimate of 1/3production for dryland pasture, it will gross $47.04 per acre or $19 per hectare(2.8 lbs. X $0.35 X 48 ADA). The loss in gross income to stop irrigating wouldbe $94.08 per acre or $38 per hectare. However, the Bureau of Reclamation(BOR) paid $80 per acre to lease the water rights and the Littles receivedanother $110 per acre for improved management and capital improvementsfrom the Natural Resource Conservation Services (NRCS) in 2001 and $100 in2002 through 2007.

Even though Paul’s dry land stocking rate was 1/3 of the irrigated pasture,these two payments made dry land 68 percent more profitable to use the waterfor fish. Stocking rate gains have brought the cattle income and water lease tomatch irrigated pasture yields leaving the payment for management andcapital improvements to go toward meaningful changes toward futuresustainability and profitability.

Fish RanchingThe Klamath Basin Rangeland Trust (KBRT) was founded in 2001, in part

to help ranchers toward long-term profitability. Director Shannon Petersonsays, “The goal of KBRT is to increase the quantity and quality of wateravailable for use by both farmers and fish, particularly the endangeredshortnose and Lost River sucker species that live in Upper Klamath Lake.Downstream the coho and chinook salmon will benefit too.”

To improve water quality and quantity, KBRT focused its efforts in theWood River Valley because with such a large amount of water originatingfrom a relatively small area, land use changes by only about 15 ranchingoperations could significantly benefit Upper Klamath Lake and otherdownstream water needs.

“In addition to water quality and quantity, we have a goal to support thelocal livestock industry and match landowners with existing programs thatmake the economics feasible.” Shannon explains.

The final goal of KBRT is to improve riparian areas and stream channelmorphology for long-term sustainability. The USDA pays a management andcapital improvements fee to land owners ranging from $38 to $110 per acretoward this end. This not only keeps ranchers profitable but it helps keep the

ecosystem processes functional during the transition period. “I lease one ranch that we’ve had a difficult time keeping drained,” Paul

muses, “and the plants haven’t adapted and improved their production aswell as the ground that we’ve stopped irrigating completely. It took three yearsfor the dry land species to get their roots under them and we increased ourstocking rates to 40 percent up from 33 percent of the irrigated pasture yield.”

Initial projections of dry land stocking rates ranged from 20 percent to 40percent of the irrigated stocking rates, once community dynamics madeadjustments towards the drier climate. For those leasing their water rights, aquick and smooth transition toward more productive dry land plants becamepriority.

Toward this end, Paul approached the KBRT board in 2007, and offered toorganize a holistic grazing planning seminar. Two of the board members, JimRoot and Kurt Thomas, lease their land to Paul and were supportive. Theboard approved the seminar in principle and Shannon Peterson went to workwith Cheri Little to make it happen.

After 22 years of plodding along, Paul and Cheri had strengthened theirsocial weak link—and many family members who were not willing to attenda holistic grazing planning course actually attended with enthusiasm.

Six weeks after the seminar I asked Paul if any of the participants were stillinterested in holistic grazing planning. Paul replied, “People’s vocabularyhave changed. People are talking about how stock density would create theanimal impact necessary to treat the hummocks. They are consideringputting in a new fence to reduce “time,” or they are discussing the potential ofincreased stock density in order to improve grazing uniformity.”

Paul is excited to plan for shorter recovery periods and keep more plants intheir vegetative state for a longer period of time. He is confident from hisobservations that the slow growth recovery period is 60 days. This wouldshorten his grazing period to an average of 10 days from the average of 26days he grazes presently.

I asked Paul what kept his interest in working for 22 years to overcome thesocial weak link. He said there were several factors:

1) Allan Savory’s ability to explain the benefits of Holistic Management sothat he knew it would and could work.

2) His personality is stubborn but not confrontational. This was a goodcombination for keeping focus while waiting.

3) He watched his neighbors, the Hyde family, turn their ranch around,with the practice of Holistic Management. He went to a field day on theirranch and listened to Allan Savory for a second time. Watching the Hydes’successes fed his interest.

4) His own success of increasing his stocking rates by 20 percent in thepast three years nurtured his interest in learning more about HolisticManagement.

5) The Klamath Basin Rangeland Trust brought the final variable intoplace both in organizing the seminar and in providing an audience ofcommunity members motivated to learn more.

While Paul and Cheri have made great strides in their own practice ofHolistic Management and encouraging others in their practice, they continueto move forward carefully. Paul’s not planning on pushing ahead with otherHolistic Management classes. “I don’t think a full slate of seminars wouldserve us,” he commented. “It’s like responding to changing growth rates inexecuting our grazing plan. When our community is ready for anotherseminar, we’ll schedule one. Everybody feels good about what they learned atthe grazing planning seminar. If we come in immediately with anotherseminar, it might offend or confuse someone. We want to figure out thegrazing planning first.”

It’s good advice. Paul and Cheri have demonstrated that slow can be fast.We don’t want to outrun our headlights or we’ll be running in the darkwithout our community.

In 2001, the Littlesmade 65percentmore moneywith noirrigation.

Dimbangombe Ranch headquarters.The longer term aim is to mitigate the

effects of future droughts by improving landhealth, which each community will begin to do by combining their animals into acommunity herd under supervision of trainedherders who create and implement seasonalgrazing plans. Our Africa Centre staff, led byHuggins Matanga, will work closely with localorganizations and government veterinarianswho will provide expertise we lack. We aregrateful to USAID for their support of this workand their belief in the ability of our staff, whoremain deeply committed to turning around a desperate situation and whose enthusiasmnever wavers.

HMI Receives Dixon Foundation Grant

HMI is excited to announce that wereceived $75,000 from the DixonFoundation, in Denton, Texas, asthe first installment of a $300,000

grant for the next five years focused on data

collection, research, and documentation. The documentation provided throughrigorous, scientific documentation,concerning the relationship betweenimproved grazing management andimproved soil, plant and water resources, will help provide a proof of concept to helppeople understand the value of HolisticManagement. It will also help pave the wayfor opportunities for carbon payments tocommercial producers and communal landgrazers who are prepared to improve theirgrazing management.

The first phase will be a full literaturereview specific to the relationship betweengrazing management and soil and waterresources. HMI will also gather data from 25 Holistic Management sites in the U.S.,Canada, Mexico, Australia, and southernAfrica. HMI will also identify 15 sites in threeregions—North America, Australia, andsouthern Africa—where ongoing data can be collected for a period of four years.

Craig Leggett, HMI’s Director ofLearning Sites, will spearhead this effort.

U.S. State Department Visitor

On September 24, HMI welcomed its first-ever visitor from China,Zhang Hong, a program managerin the Hefei office of Heifer

International. The U.S. State Departmentmade the arrangements for Mr. Zhang’s visit

16 IN PRACTICE h November / December 2007

HMI Receives USAID Funding

In early September, HMI got word from the U.S. Agency for InternationalDevelopment (USAID) that it hadapproved renewed funding for a project

launched by HMI and our Africa Centre forHolistic Management in 2005. The grant, in the amount of $329,750, was awardedthrough USAID’s Office of Foreign DisasterAssistance to address the drought disaster in Zimbabwe, a situation exacerbated by thecountry’s economic collapse.

We will build on what we learned in 2005-2006 with the first two pilot villages indesigning the training and implementationwith two new communities that neighborthem. The emphasis in this grant is onproviding immediate relief—adequate waterfor livestock in single, large herds; treatment(with the herd) of cropfields prior to the rains;the planting of nutrition gardens (by and for HIV/AIDS support groups); training ofcommunity animal health workers; and a self-sustaining (through sales) veterinarysupply store housed at the Africa Centre’s

The article “Moving the World Towards Sustainablity” byChristopher Peck and Allan Savory in IN PRACTICE #115 makes some excellent points about soil management and climate change.

However, there was an important omission, even in a popular article likethis one where brevity is essential. The article mentions nuclear power, andbriefly outlines the testing procedure. But the decision to build more nuclearplants is not a simple yes or no on a possible opportunity, to be tested by itself.There is ALWAYS an existing situation, a status quo. In the case of baseloadpower generation in the U.S., that current reality is about 55 percent coal.

In testing decisions, we need to compare at least two options. Otherwise, the status quo, the existing situation, is given a free ride. However, the strategy of testing something by itself—testing only the new, not the old—remains broadly popular.

In order for a person, a government, an organization, or a corporation todecide not to adopt a new idea, the flimsiest and most transparent excuse will

often suffice. But in order to change what you’ve always been doing, a lawsuit, bankruptcy, revolution, or some other kind of major event isusually required. The way things are (coal power) occupies the often-invisible high ground behind us. It becomes part of our identity, on which we have little objectivity or perspective.

Testing nuclear power by itself, and then testing nuclear power side byside with coal power, are likely to lead to very different results. Likewise, onehears all sorts of negative things about corn grain ethanol production, oftenwithout reference to feed corn production which is typically the status quo.

Pollsters are highly aware of the influence of context in the way questionsare asked. Categorization comes into play always, as when it is assumed that“beef production” contributes greatly to global warming, and there is nodistinction made between feedlot production and grassland production.

In addition, testing choices side by side usually spurs creativity. If oneoption comes out somewhat better than another, one tends to ask, how couldwe make it much better, or what third option might be better still?

One of the starting questions used by consensus facilitator Bob Chadwick is, “what is the current situation and how do you feel about it?”This question encourages self-awareness and the current reality to be part of the picture.

news from holistic management international h people, programs & projects

Readers’ Forum

because they were aware of our expertise in combating and reversing desertification.

Zhang, who previously had not beenfamiliar with HMI’s work and with our contractwith Heifer International in Southern Africa,was visiting New Mexico under the auspices of the State Department’s International VisitorLeadership Program. He works in an arealocated very close to Mongolia, which has ahigh-desert environment.

“Mongolia used to have tall grasses, and we have songs about how the grasses were ashigh as our horses and cattle, and we couldonly see them when the winds blew,” Zhang explained.

Zhang would like to establish a partnershipso that they can introduce HolisticManagement to his colleagues and bring this idea to the people involved in herdmanagement in China.

Number 116 h IN PRACTICE 17

Book Review by Ann Adams

Neal Kinsey is one of the more well-known soil consultantswithin the sustainable agriculture industry. He’s also well-known within the Holistic Management network because

he’s worked with many Holistic Management practitioners tomaximize soil fertility on croplands and pastures. I had neverread the first edition of Hands-On Agronomy written in 1993, soI was glad to finally have the opportunity to read the newly(2006) revised and expanded version coauthored with CharlesWalters of Acres USA.

The 2006 edition has three new chapters and Charles Walter hasworked the text over with a fine tooth comb. Neal is known for his conversational style, so the book ishighly entertaining with story upon story of Neal’s ability to read the soil. There is no voodoo magichere—just a clear understanding and practice of the William Albrecht-style of fertility balancing.

From the beginning Neal’s fundamental principle is those who are stewards of the land must feedthe soil. The book is centered on that philosophy, which meshes well with Holistic Management as Nealtakes a holistic approach to soils. He also ascribes to “the law of the little bit”—a caution againstassuming that more is better. Likewise, he uses the concept of the weakest link in his work by lookingfor the imbalanced nutrient that is locking up the other nutrients.

What I particularly enjoyed about Hands-On Agronomy is the way Neal explained the concepts ofnutrients and healthy soil function with the way in which it translates into plant health. With properlybalanced nutrients, the plant roots and stems are supported in more efficient photosynthesis so it canmake optimum use of sunlight (improved energy flow). Likewise, it can make better use of water(water cycle) and CO2, nitrogen, and mineral nutrients (mineral cycle). Furthermore, it gives adequatesupport to the hormone and enzyme systems so the plant can resist threats from insects and diseases.

My favorite chapter was “Considering Use of Manures.” Kinsey notes that manures aren’t justadding nutrients, they are helping to stimulate the release of nutrients from the soil. That’s why whenyou add manure or compost and then take a soil test after growing a crop, you may actually have moreof a given nutrient in the soil than was in the original manure. Manure stimulates microbial actionand mild organic acids are formed that break down the nutrients plants need. A ton of beef manurewith 80 percent moisture will hold 400 pounds of organic matter. That manure, however, needs to bequickly incorporated into the soil as its relative value is reduced by 50 percent after four days.

Hands-On Agronomy will give you a solid understanding of the roles of each major mineral andencourage you to take a closer look at your own soils and what you can do to increase soil fertility.

Also, for a thorough comparison of coal versus nuclear power, see Allan Yeomans’s book PRIORITY ONE: Together We Can Beat Global Warming (www.biospheremedia.org).

Peter DonovanEnterprise, Oregon

Thank you for these comments, Peter, very well reasoned. One point that might not be clear for folks who haven’t read thearticle yet is that the section where the six sentences on nuclearpower appear is titled “Single Problem Decision Making.” The

entire essay is addressing itself not just to our current annual carbonoutput, but to the “legacy carbon” problem, the carbon that has beenbuilding up in the atmosphere for the past 200 years, the source of globalclimate change. One of the points we were making is that in the currentflurry of awareness about global climate change, the solutions presentedtend to be very narrowly focused, i.e. “reduce carbon!” As you know,Holistic Management® decision making steers us away from such simple minded formulations.

You could frame the question in this way: how can we reduce the historic

over-accumulation of carbon in the atmosphere in a way that sustainsculture and economy, and generates energy and income, without doing harmto anyone or the biosphere? I don’t pretend to have a comprehensive answerto such a question, but it is hard for me to see how nuclear power rises evento within the top 10 of possible solutions to such a question. That was thecontext of the question, as I think the article in its entirety makes clear.

Another point that I think adds to the good point you make with yourposting, is that no testing process has meaning without a reference to aholisticgoal. It is impossible to presume a holisticgoal for the entire planet,6+ billion people are tough to generalize, but we can probably assume that a point of view like “do no harm” might be included in how we testedproposed solutions. It is possible, though I have not been convinced yet, thata new form of nuclear power could overcome that quality of life line item.

I will also state that I am not unequivocally opposed to nuclear power.Several people that I respect such as Stewart Brand and James Lovelock make a strong case for it. My mind is open, but with my holisticgoal andwith the information that I’ve seen, I’m not convinced. I have only readportions of Yeoman’s book, but I will give it a second look.

Christopher PeckWindsor, California

Hands-OnAgronomy:

Understanding Soil Fertility and

Fertilizer Use by Neal Kinsey and

Charles Walters

Acres USA, 2006 416 ppISBN 0-911311-95-5 $30

Chinese visitor, Zhang Hong (top right)visited with Peter Holter and Shannon Horst.

18 IN PRACTICE h November / December 2007

CALIFORNIA

Bill Burrows12250 Colyear Springs RoadRed Bluff, CA 96080530/529-1535 • 530/200-2419 (c)sunflowercrmp@msn.com

Richard King1675 Adobe Rd.Petaluma, CA 94954707/769-1490707/794-8692(w)richard.king@ca.usda.gov

Christopher Peck6364 Starr Rd.Windsor, CA 95492707/758-0171Christopher@naturalinvesting.com

* Rob RutherfordCA Polytechnic State UniversitySan Luis Obispo, CA 93407805/756-1475rrutherf@calpoly.edu

COLORADO

Joel BensonP.O. Box 4924Buena Vista, CO 81211719/395-6119joel@outburstllc.com

Cindy Dvergsten17702 County Rd. 23Dolores, CO 81323970/882-4222hminfo@wholenewconcepts.com

Daniela and Jim HowellP.O. Box 67Cimarron, CO 81220-0067970/249-0353howelljd@montrose.net

Craig Leggett2078 County Rd. 234Durango, CO 81301970/946-1771crleggett@holisticmanagement.org

Byron Shelton33900 Surrey LaneBuena Vista, CO 81211719/395-8157landmark@my.amigo.net

Tom WaltherP.O. Box 1158Longmont, CO 80502-1158510/499-7479tagjag@aol.com

GEORGIA

Constance Neely1160 Twelve Oaks CircleWatkinsville, GA 30677706/310-0678cneely@holisticmanagement.org39-348-210-6214 (Italy)

IOWA

* Margaret SmithIowa State University,CES Sustainable Agriculture972 110th St., Hampton, IA 50441-7578515/294-0887 • mrgsmith@iastate.edu

LOUISIANA

Tina PilioneP.O. 923, Eunice, LA 70535phone: 337/580-0068tina@tinapilione.com

MAINE

Vivianne Holmes239 E. Buckfield Rd.Buckfield, ME 04220-4209207/336-2484vholmes@umext.maine.edu

Tobey Williamson52 Center St., Portland, ME 04101207/774-2458 x115tobey@bartongingold.com

MICHIGAN

Ben BartlettN4632 ET Road, Traunik, MI 49891906/439-5210 (h) • 906/439-5880 (w)bartle18@msu.edu

MINNESOTA

Gretchen Blank4625 Cottonwood Lane NPlymouth, MN 55442-2902612/670-9606ouilassie@comcast.net

MONTANA

Wayne Burleson322 N. Stillwater Rd., Absarokee, MT 59001406/328-6808 • rutbuster@montana.net

Roland Kroos 4926 Itana Circle, Bozeman, MT 59715406/522-3862 • KROOSING@msn.com

* Cliff MontagneP.O. Box 173120Montana State University Department of Land Resources &Environmental ScienceBozeman, MT 59717406/994-5079 • montagne@montana.edu

NEBRASKA

Terry GompertP.O. Box 45Center, NE 68724-0045402/288-5611 (w)tgompert1@unl.edu

NEW HAMPSHIRE

* Seth Wilner24 Main Street, Newport, NH 03773603/863-4497 (h) • 603/863-9200 (w)seth.wilner@unh.edu

NEW MEXICO

* Ann AdamsHolistic Management International1010 Tijeras NW, Albuquerque, NM 87102505/842-5252anna@holisticmanagement.org

Kirk GadziaP.O. Box 1100, Bernalillo, NM 87004505/867-4685 • (f) 505/867-9952kgadzia@msn.com

David Trew369 Montezuma Ave. #243Santa Fe, NM 87501505/988-1508 • trewearth@gmail.com

Vicki Turpen03 El Nido Amado SWAlbuquerque, NM 87121505/873-0473 • kaytelnido@aol.com

Kelly WhiteNo. 4 El Nido Amado SWAlbuquerque, NM 87121-7300505/873-1324 (h) • 505/379-1866 (c)kellyw@h-a-s.com

NEW YORK

Erica Frenay454 Old 76 RoadBrooktondale, NY 14817607/539-3246 (h) • 607/279-7978 (c)efrenay22@yahoo.com

Phil Metzger99 N. Broad St.Norwich, NY 13815607/334-3231 x4 (w) • 607/334-2407 (h)phil.metzger@ny.usda.gov

John Thurgood17 Spruce St., Oneonta, NY 13820607/432-8714jthurgood@stny.rr.com

NORTH DAKOTA

* Wayne Berry Williston State College, P.O. Box 1326Williston, ND 58802701/774-4277wayne.berry@wsc.nodak.edu

U N I T E D S T A T E S

U N I T E D S T A T E S

OHIO

Larry DyerOlney Friends School61830 Sandy Ridge RoadBarnesville, OH 47313740/425-3655 (w)740/425-2775 (h)

larry@olneyfriends.org

PENNSYLVANIA

Jim Weaver428 Copp Hollow Rd.Wellsboro, PA 16901-8976570/724-7788 • jaweaver@epix.net

TEXAS

Christina Allday-Bondy2703 Grennock Dr.Austin, TX 78745512/441-2019tododia@sbcglobal.net

Guy Glosson6717 Hwy 380, Snyder, TX 79549806/237-2554glosson@caprock-spur.com

Peggy MaddoxP.O. Box 694Ozona, TX 76943-0694325/392-2292westgift@hughes.net

* R. H. (Dick) RichardsonUniversity of Texas at AustinDepartment of Integrative Biology, Austin, TX 78712512/471-4128d.richardson@mail.utexas.edu

Peggy Sechrist106 Thunderbird Rd., Fredericksburg, TX 78624830/990-2529sechrist@earthtones.com

Elizabeth Williams4106 Avenue BAustin, TX 78751-4220512/323-2858 e-liz@austin.rr.com

WASHINGTON

Craig MadsenP.O. Box 107, Edwall, WA 99008509/236-2451shepherd@healinghooves.com

Sandra Matheson228 E. Smith Rd., Bellingham, WA 98226360/398-7866mathesonsm@verizon.net

Doug Warnock1880 SE Larch Ave.College Place, WA 99324509/525-3389 (w) • 509/525-3295 (h)509/856-7101 (c)dwarnock@charter.net

WEST VIRGINIA

Fred Hays P.O. Box 241, Elkview, WV 25071304/548-7117sustainableresources@hotmail.com

To our knowledge, Certified Educators are the best qualified individuals to help others learn to practice Holistic Management and to provide them with technical assistance when necessary. On a yearly basis, Certified Educators renew their agreement to be affiliated with HMI. This agreement requires their commitment to practice Holistic Management in their own lives, to seek out opportunities for staying current with the latest developments in Holistic Management and to maintain a high standard of ethical conduct in their work.

For more information about or application forms for the HMI’s Certified Educator Training Programs, contact Ann Adams or visit our website at: www.holisticmanagement.org.

* THESE EDUCATORS PROVIDE HOLISTIC MANAGEMENT INSTRUCTION ON BEHALF OF THE INSTITUTIONS THEY REPRESENT.

Certified Educators

Certified Educators

Number 116 h IN PRACTICE 19

AUSTRALIA

Judi Earl73 Harding E, Guyra, NSW 236561-2-6779-2286judi@holisticmanagement.org.au

Mark GardnerP.O. Box 1395, Dubbo, NSW 283061-2-6884-4401mark.g@ozemail.com.au

Paul GriffithsP.O. Box 3045, North Turramura, NSW 2074, Sydney, NSW61-2-9144-3975pgpres@geko.net.au

George Gundry Willeroo, Tarago, NSW 258061-2-4844-6223ggundry@bigpond.net.au

Graeme Hand 150 Caroona Lane, Branxholme, VIC 330261-3-5578-6272 (h); 61-4-0996-4466 (c)graemeh1@bordernet.com.au

Steve Hailstone“Niwajiri,” 5 Lampert Rd., Crafers, SA 515261-4-1882-2212; sh@internode.on.net

Helen LewisP.O. Box 1263, Warwick, QLD 437061-7-4661739361-7-46670835 helen@insideoutsidemgt.com.au

AUSTRALIA

Brian MarshallP.O. Box 300, Guyra NSW 236561-2-6779-1927fax: 61-2-6779-1947bkmrshl@bigpond.com

Jason VirtueMary River Park1588 Bruce Highway South, Gympie, QLD 457061-7-5483-5155jason@spiderweb.com.au

Bruce WardP.O. Box 103, Milsons Pt., NSW 156561-2-9929-5568fax: 61-2-9929-5569blward@the-farm-business-gym.com

Brian Wehlburgc/o “Sunnyholt”, Injune, QLD 445461-7-4626-7187brian@insideoutsidemgt.com.au

CANADA

Don CampbellBox 817 Meadow Lake, SK S9X 1Y6306/236-6088doncampbell@sasktel.net

Len PigottBox 222, Dysart, SK, SOH 1HO 306/432-4583JLPigott@sasktel.net

Kelly SidorykP.O. Box 374, Lloydminster, AB S9V 0Y4780/875-9806 (h) • 780/875-4418 (c) kjsidoryk@yahoo.ca

KENYA

Christine C. JostInternational Livestock

Research InstituteBox 30709, Nairobi 00100254-20-422-3000254-736-715-417 (c)christine.jost@tufts.edu

MEXICO

Ivan A. Aguirre IbarraP.O. Box 304Hermosillo, Sonora 8300052-1-662-289-0900 (from U.S.)52-1-662-289-0901rancho_inmaculada@yahoo.com.mx

Arturo Mora BenitezSan Juan Bosco 169Fracc., La MisiónCelaya, Guanajuato 3801652-461-615-7632jams@prodigy.net.mx

MEXICO

Elco Blanco-MadridHacienda de la Luz 1803Fracc. Haciendas del Valle II, Chihuahua Chih., 3123852-614-423-4413 (h)52-614-107-8960 (c)elco_blanco@hotmail.com

Miguel Aguirre CamachoSAGARPA Delegación

Estatal en TlaxcalaLibramiento Poniente Número 2Colonia Unitlax, San Diego MetepecTlaxcala, Tlaxcala 9011052-246-465-0700

Adrian Vega LopezCalle Norte 80 #5913Col. Gertrudis Sanchez, 2a. SecciónDelegación Gustavo A. Madero, México, D.F. 07890

Jorge Efrain Morales MartinezCalle Primero de Mayo #578-ACol. Centro Histórico, Morelia, Michoacán, 5800052-443-317-4389

Jose Angel Montaño MoralesCalle Samuel Arias #111Fraccionamiento

Forjadores de PachucaMineral de la Reforma, Hidalgo 42083

Alejandro Miranda SanchezCalle Cerro Macuiltepec No 23Col. Campestre Churubusco, Delegación CoyoacánMéxico, D.F. 04200

Jose Ramon “Moncho” VillarAv. Las Americas #1178Fracc. CumbresSaltillo, Coahuila 2527052-844-415-1557jrvillarm@prodigy.net.mx

Silverio Rojas VillegasSAGARPAAvenida Irrigación s/n, Col. Monte de CamargoCelaya, Guanajuato, 3803052-461-612-0305

NAMIBIA

Gero DiekmannEcoso Dynamics CCP.O. Box 363, Okahandja264-62-518-091 (h)264-612-51861 (w)264-812-440-501 (c)dero@mweb.com.na

Colin Nott P.O. Box 11977, Windhoek264-61-225085canott@iafrica.com.na

Wiebke VolkmannP.O. Box 182, Otavi264-67-234-557 or 264-81-127-0081wiebke@mweb.com.na

I N T E R N A T I O N A L

NEW ZEALAND

John KingP.O. Box 12011, Beckenham, Christchurch 824264-3-338-5506succession@clear.net.nz

SOUTH AFRICA

Jozua LambrechtsP.O. Box 5070, Helderberg, Somerset West, Western Cape 713527-21-851-5669; 27-21-851-2430 (w)jozua@websurf.co.za

Ian Mitchell-InnesP.O. Box 52, Elandslaagte 290027-36-421-1747blanerne@mweb.co.za

Dick RichardsonP.O. Box 1853, Vryburg 8600tel/fax: 27-082-934-6139Dickson@wam.co.za

Colleen ToddP.O. Box 20, Bergbron 171227-82-335-3901 (cell)colleen@lantic.net

SPAIN

Aspen EdgeApartado de Correos 19, 18420 Lanjaron, Granada(0034)-958-347-053 aspen@holisticdecisions.com

UNITED KINGDOM

Philip Bubb32 Dart Close, St. Ives, Cambridge, PE27 3JB44-1480-496295philipbubb@onetel.com

ZIMBABWE

Amanda Atwood27 Rowland Square, Milton Park, Harare263-23-233-760amandlazw@gmail.com

Huggins MatangaAfrica Centre for Holistic ManagementP. Bag 5950, Victoria Falls263-13-42199 (w)263-11-404-979 (c)hmatanga@mweb.co.zw

Elias NcubeAfrica Centre for Holistic ManagementP. Bag 5950, Victoria Falls263-13-42199 (w)263-11-214-584 (c)achmcom@africaonline.co.zw

U N I T E D S T A T E S

WISCONSIN

Heather Flashinski16294 250th St., Cadott, WI 54727715/289-4896amun0069@hotmail.com

Andy Hager W. 3597 Pine Ave., Stetsonville, WI 54480-9559715/678-2465 • ahager@tds.net

* Laura PaineWisconsin DATCP N893 Kranz Rd., Columbus, WI 53925608/224-5120 (w) • 920/623-4407 (h)laura.paine@datcp.state.wi.us

WYOMING

Andrea & Tony Malmberg768 Twin Creek Road, Lander, WY 82520307/335-7485 (w) • 307/332-5073 (h)307/349-8624 (c) • Andrea@LifeEnergy.usTony@LifeEnergy.us

I N T E R N A T I O N A L

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Number 116 h IN PRACTICE 21

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Bernalillo, NM 87004

kgadzia@msn.com

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Kirk Gadzia has over 15 years

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Contact:

Introduction to HolisticManagement Courses

February 4-9, 2008

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GRANDINLIVESTOCK SYSTEMS

2918 Silver Plume Dr., Unit C-3Fort Collins, CO 80526

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CORRAL DESIGNS

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Number 116 h IN PRACTICE 23

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Presenting a series of workshops:

December 4-6, 2007 Creating Best Outcomes & Planning for Profit

January 15-17, 2008 Planned Grazing & Optimizing Forage

February 19-21, 2008 Animal Behavior & Grazing Management

March 4-6, 2008 Putting It All Together-Managing the Whole

Follow-up with participants is planned. Eastern Washington location to be determined

For more information contact:

Managing Change Northwest at 509-525-3389 or dwarnock@charter.net

Managing Change NorthwestA team of certified Holistic Management educators in Washington State who serve the Pacific Northwest,

helping people on their journey toward resource sustainability.

Workshops - Talks - Stop by Visits

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Books & MultimediaHolistic Management: A New Framework for Decision-Making,

_ Second Edition, by Allan Savory with Jody Butterfield . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $35

_ Hardcover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $55

_ 15-set CD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $99

_ One month rental of CD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $35

_ Spanish Version (soft). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $25

_ Holistic Management Handbook, by Butterfield, Bingham, Savory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $25

_ At Home With Holistic Management, by Ann Adams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $20

_ Holistic Management: A New Environmental Intelligence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $10

_ Improving Whole Farm Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $10

_ Video: Creating a Sustainable Civilization—An Introduction to Holistic Decision-Making, based on a lecture given by Allan Savory. (VHS/DVD/PAL) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $30

_ Stockmanship, by Steve Cote . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $35

_ The Grassfed Gourmet Cookbook, by Shannon Hayes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $25

_ The Oglin, by Dick Richardson & Rio de la Vista . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $25

_ Gardeners of Eden, by Dan Dagget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $25

_ Video: Healing the Land Through Multi-Species Grazing (VHS/DVD) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $30

TO ORDERIndicate quantity in box preceding item, print shipping address at right, mail thispage (or a copy) and your check or international money order payable in U.S.funds from a U.S. bank only to: Holistic Management International, 1010 Tijeras NW, Albuquerque, NM 87102Credit card orders: 505/842-5252, or fax: 505/843-7900. For online ordering visit our secure website at: www.holisticmanagement.org

Subscribe to IN PRACTICE_ A bimonthly journal for Holistic Management practitioners

Subscribe for 1 year for only $30/U.S. ($35/International)2 years ($55/U.S.; $65/International) 3 years ($80/U.S.; $90/International)

_ Gift Subscriptions (same prices as above).

_ Special Edition: An Introduction to Holistic Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $5

_ Compact Disk Version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$14

_ Bulk subscriptions available.One year for $17 each/U.S., or $22 each/International______ Please indicate number of one-year subscriptions

_ Back Issues: $5 each; bulk orders (5 or more issues) $3 each. List Please indicate issue numbers desired: ___,___,___,___,___,___,___,___,___,___

_ CD of Back Issues: #71 - 89 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$25

Planning and Monitoring Guides

_ Introduction to Holistic ManagementAugust 2007, 128 pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$25

_ Financial PlanningAugust 2007, 58 pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$17

_ Aide Memoire for Grazing PlanningAugust 2007, 63 pages. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$17

_ Early Warning Biological Monitoring— CroplandsApril 2000, 26 pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$14

_ Early Warning Biological Monitoring—Rangelands and GrasslandsAugust 2007, 59 pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$17

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Planning Forms (All forms are padded - 25 sheets per pad)

_Annual Income & Expense Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$17

_Worksheet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$ 7

_Livestock Production Worksheet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$17

_Control Sheet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$ 5

_Grazing Plan & Control Chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$15

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All shipping is surface or media mail.

Contact HMI for shipping rates for priority,

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Questions? 505/842-5252 or hmi@holisticmanagement.org

SoftwareHolistic Management® Financial Planning (single-user license) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $249 Please specify PC or Mac, Office ‘95 or ‘97, 2000, XP, or 2003 and version of Excel you are using

Pocket CardsHolistic Management® Framework & testing questions, March 2000 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$4

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healthy land.sustainable future.

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