Holistic Management

See savory.global/holistic-management for in-depth information and courses.

A brief overview of Holistic Management

Allan Savory explains the paradigm shift involved in understanding Holistic Management.

For a more in-depth video with Allan Savory speaking about Holistic Management, see this video with timestamped notes.

Background

Holistic Management was developed in the 1960s by Allan Savory Allan Savory, a Zimbabwean ecologist, farmer, and wildlife biologist. Confronted with desertification in Africa, Savory discovered that traditional land management practices disrupted natural cycles, contributing to grassland degradation. Holistic Management evolved as a decision-making framework to manage whole systems, balancing ecological, financial, and social outcomes.

It all started with Allan's quest to figure out what was behind the world’s rapid and ongoing transformation into desert. After a long and unexpected journey he realised that the only common factor that underlies desertification the world over is human decision making. He then developed holistic management as a framework for empowering land managers to make land management decisions that halt and indeed reverse desertification.

Over time, Holistic Management has expanded globally, with the Savory Institute training practitioners and promoting the principles in diverse contexts, from arid regions to temperate climates.

Key Elements of Holistic Management

Decision-Making Framework: Decisions are guided by a Holistic Context, ensuring alignment with desired quality of life, resource base, and production goals.

Holistic Financial Planning: Integrates economic sustainability with resource regeneration.

Planned Disturbance: Uses grazing animals to mimic natural processes like trampling, fertilisation, and plant growth stimulation.

Monitoring and Feedback: Continuous observation and adaptive management address nature's dynamic complexity.

Benefits

Here are a few of the benefits offered by Holistic Management and regenerative agriculture principles:

Carbon Drawdown: When land is managed holistically, the density, diversity, and vigour of plants growing on the land are all increased, thus increasing the amount of CO2 being pulled out of the atmosphere and into the soil through photosynthesis. Research even shows that Holistic Planned Grazing can increase soil carbon levels by ~3 tons of carbon per hectare per year. How's that for a climate solution?

Increased Biodiversity: Grasslands co-evolved with grazing herbivores and with properly-timed impact from livestock on a landscape, pastures develop robust and complex plant communities that provide habitat for all different kinds of wildlife.

Profitable Farms: By increasing the amount of forage and the number of animals the land can support, while reducing reliance on inputs like grain and synthetic fertilisers.

Drought, Flood, & Wildfire Resilience: Drought, flooding, and wildfire are all linked to a landscape's broken water cycle. Whereas healthy soil acts like a sponge soaking up water. A 1% increase in soil organic matter allows an acre of land to store an additional 20,000 gallons of water, providing a necessary reserve in times of drought, and increased capacity to absorb flash flooding events.

Animal health: Livestock consume a more complex diet of forage which leads to greater nutrient density in their meat and milk. Moving a herd frequently, keeps them off fouled land and reduces the need for medications like de-wormers.

Challenges

Complexity: Requires significant learning and mindset shifts.

Scaling Up: Demands investment in training, networks, and public awareness.

Summary

Holistic management is a way of dealing with complexity, that honours the whole system, plants, animals, people and land.

Instead of maximising one at the expense of the other, it optimises the whole and aligns our actions with the rhythms of the living world, allowing us to make decisions that balance environmental, financial and social wellbeing.

Part of this framework, specifically designed for managing land and livestock, is a step by step process called holistic planned grazing that charts out and calculates everything a farmer, rancher or pastoralist needs for success.

By matching available forage to livestock needs, monitoring the growth and recovery of grasses and checking decisions through a series of targeted questions. Holistic planned grazing helps animals get to the right place at the right time with the right behaviour, mimicking the ways wild heards once grazed. In doing so, ecosystem function improves and grasslands become more productive and resilient, creating a photo-synthetic powerhouse that pulls carbon out of the atmosphere and into the soil, feeding the cycles of life.

From the African Savannah and the Mongolian Steppes to the American West and the Australian Outback, tens of thousands of farmers, cowboys, herders and pastoralists are all using holistic management to regenerate land and improve livelihoods.

Their incredible results show that healthy land, animals and people are all intrinsically connected, and possible. All it takes is a move towards managing holistically.