Holistic Planned Grazing Expert Shares Ideas Through TED Talk

Holistic Planned Grazing Expert Shares Ideas Through TED Talk

I’m KayDee Gilkey with today’s Open Range.

Are you familiar with the TED conferences? Well, one of the most inspirational people I’ve had the opportunity to interview in the last year has been Allan Savory, the father of holistic planned grazing who spoke at the Washington Cattlemen’s Convention last fall who recently gave a TED talk.

Here is a portion of my interview with Savory, who has more than 40 years of experience in holistic planned grazing.

Savory: “In actual fact, if you look at some of the wilderness areas in the United States they are deteriorating as badly as anything in Africa. And they have had no livestock on them or large animals for probably close to 100 years now. So it is over resting the land that is the big problem and overgrazing was discovered more than 60 years ago to have nothing to do with numbers of animals but everything to do with the movement of animals and the time of exposure and re-exposure of plants. So the world, government policies, our educational system and everything 60 years later is still operating on deeply held beliefs or myths but the science is solid that overgrazing is not due to animal numbers and nothing shows this better than the degradation of land under seasonal rainfall where there are no animals -- it is as bad as Africa.”

I’d encourage you to take the time and watch his presentation. Are you operating under tightly held beliefs or science?