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Alan Savory's holistic planned grazing seems to have worked for both preventing and reverting the desertification of brittle land. Would be very interesting to

Alan Savory's holistic planned grazing seems to have worked for both preventing and reverting the desertification of brittle land. Would be very interesting to see more attempts at using it in these places, especially since it would be hard to make the land worse.

roboticmind 3y ago
>We find all of Mr Savory’s major claims to be unfounded.... Scientific evidence unmistakably demonstrates the inability of Mr Savory’s grazing method to reverse rangeland degradation or climate change, and it strongly suggests that it might actually accelerate these processes https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190052813500320?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019005281...
- c0brac0bra 3y ago
  > We conclude that transitioning to regenerative agriculture involves more than a suite of ‘climate-smart’ mitigation and adaptation practices supported by technical innovation, policy, education, and outreach. Rather, it involves subjective, nonmaterial factors associated with culture, values, ethics, identity, and emotion that operate at individual, household, and community scales and interact with regional, national and global processes. Findings have implications for strategies aimed at facilitating a large-scale transition to climate-smart regenerative agriculture. (Majority of farmers in the study are holistic practitioners) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959378018309117?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09593...
  - roboticmind 3y ago
    I don't understand the relevance of that study here? The study is not looking at effectiveness of "holistic grazing"? There's not any environmental analysis here nor anything quantitative. It's mainly looking at interviews with people and talking about the friction in using those kinds of techniques
myshpa 3y ago
‘It’s Pseudoscience’: George Monbiot Blasts Regenerative Grazing In Heated Debate with Alan Savory https://plantbasednews.org/news/environment/george-monbiot-regenerative-grazing-in-debate/ https://plantbasednews.org/news/environment/george-monbiot-r... Monbiot said that there was no empirical evidence that holistic management could mitigate the climate crisis. He went on to say that there is also no evidence it can offset the emissions it produces itself. On the contrary, he said that there’s “loads of contradictory evidence showing that grazing livestock systems are a major net loss of carbon into the atmosphere.” He highlighted that there had been several papers published recently that found removing animals from land allows more carbon to be sequestered. “Far from livestock grazing helping to mitigate climate breakdown, it actually accelerates climate breakdown,” he said. He pointed out that Savory’s claims had been debunked repeatedly, and added that there are “several words” that can be used to describe a claim for which there is no evidence or that has already been debunked. “One of them is pseudoscience,” he said. “One of them is mumbo jumbo… But perhaps the most appropriate one in this case is bullsh*t.” The debate: https://www.youtube.com/embed/rhwEaCmQ2XE https://www.youtube.com/embed/rhwEaCmQ2XE
- c0brac0bra 3y ago
  > “…the controversy over the effectiveness of HM can be traced back to the narrow terms in which HM was initially studied, at a time before social-ecological frameworks were developed. Studying a different agricultural paradigm was inhibited because—within an industrial farming paradigm—the only credible way to establish the value of an agricultural practice was to frame it in narrow, positivistic terms that removed the rancher as a thinking, adaptive agent, instead focusing solely on generic treatment efficacy for increasing forage, reducing desertification, and fixing carbon. […] A more holistic approach to co-producing scientific knowledge about HM, grounded in enhancing the capacity and agency of ranchers, should be seen as part of the system change that HM is attempting to leverage within agriculture.” https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338777621_A_half_century_of_Holistic_Management_what_does_the_evidence_reveal https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338777621_A_half_ce... "Monbiot’s approach falls squarely into the “narrow industrial paradigm” Dr. Gosnell warns about. In his opening remarks, Monbiot insisted that carbon sequestration is simply not adequate, and to address climate change livestock advocates must demonstrate permanent carbon capture in the soil. This demand, however, is the perfect example of applying reductionist thinking to complex living systems." https://savory.global/statement-on-the-allan-savory-george-monbiot-debate-at-oxford/ https://savory.global/statement-on-the-allan-savory-george-m...

roboticmind 3y ago

>We find all of Mr Savory’s major claims to be unfounded.... Scientific evidence unmistakably demonstrates the inability of Mr Savory’s grazing method to reverse rangeland degradation or climate change, and it strongly suggests that it might actually accelerate these processes https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190052813500320?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019005281...

c0brac0bra 3y ago
> We conclude that transitioning to regenerative agriculture involves more than a suite of ‘climate-smart’ mitigation and adaptation practices supported by technical innovation, policy, education, and outreach. Rather, it involves subjective, nonmaterial factors associated with culture, values, ethics, identity, and emotion that operate at individual, household, and community scales and interact with regional, national and global processes. Findings have implications for strategies aimed at facilitating a large-scale transition to climate-smart regenerative agriculture. (Majority of farmers in the study are holistic practitioners) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959378018309117?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09593...
- roboticmind 3y ago
  I don't understand the relevance of that study here? The study is not looking at effectiveness of "holistic grazing"? There's not any environmental analysis here nor anything quantitative. It's mainly looking at interviews with people and talking about the friction in using those kinds of techniques

myshpa 3y ago

‘It’s Pseudoscience’: George Monbiot Blasts Regenerative Grazing In Heated Debate with Alan Savory https://plantbasednews.org/news/environment/george-monbiot-regenerative-grazing-in-debate/ https://plantbasednews.org/news/environment/george-monbiot-r... Monbiot said that there was no empirical evidence that holistic management could mitigate the climate crisis. He went on to say that there is also no evidence it can offset the emissions it produces itself. On the contrary, he said that there’s “loads of contradictory evidence showing that grazing livestock systems are a major net loss of carbon into the atmosphere.” He highlighted that there had been several papers published recently that found removing animals from land allows more carbon to be sequestered. “Far from livestock grazing helping to mitigate climate breakdown, it actually accelerates climate breakdown,” he said. He pointed out that Savory’s claims had been debunked repeatedly, and added that there are “several words” that can be used to describe a claim for which there is no evidence or that has already been debunked. “One of them is pseudoscience,” he said. “One of them is mumbo jumbo… But perhaps the most appropriate one in this case is bullsh*t.” The debate: https://www.youtube.com/embed/rhwEaCmQ2XE https://www.youtube.com/embed/rhwEaCmQ2XE

c0brac0bra 3y ago
> “…the controversy over the effectiveness of HM can be traced back to the narrow terms in which HM was initially studied, at a time before social-ecological frameworks were developed. Studying a different agricultural paradigm was inhibited because—within an industrial farming paradigm—the only credible way to establish the value of an agricultural practice was to frame it in narrow, positivistic terms that removed the rancher as a thinking, adaptive agent, instead focusing solely on generic treatment efficacy for increasing forage, reducing desertification, and fixing carbon. […] A more holistic approach to co-producing scientific knowledge about HM, grounded in enhancing the capacity and agency of ranchers, should be seen as part of the system change that HM is attempting to leverage within agriculture.” https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338777621_A_half_century_of_Holistic_Management_what_does_the_evidence_reveal https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338777621_A_half_ce... "Monbiot’s approach falls squarely into the “narrow industrial paradigm” Dr. Gosnell warns about. In his opening remarks, Monbiot insisted that carbon sequestration is simply not adequate, and to address climate change livestock advocates must demonstrate permanent carbon capture in the soil. This demand, however, is the perfect example of applying reductionist thinking to complex living systems." https://savory.global/statement-on-the-allan-savory-george-monbiot-debate-at-oxford/ https://savory.global/statement-on-the-allan-savory-george-m...