Holistic grazing planning practices are rooted in
the belief that wild herds of animals functioned to keep grasslands
healthy and productive. By managing domestic livestock on the farm to
mimic this behavior and positively impact soil health, our ecosystems
can be restored to a healthy state where lush forages thrive.

Farmers using holistic management techniques, a practice
that is growing across the nation, focus on integrating cropping and
grazing practices that begin with healthy soil and end with a fully
sustainable farm operation. Managing your farm operation holistically
means assessing the entire operation: the social, environmental and
economic impacts.

Holistic Management International (HMI, www.holisticmanagement.org),
a 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in New Mexico, has developed holistic farm
management decision-making tools, offers certification classes to those
wishing to become educators, and provides educational services to both
beginning and experienced farmers. Those services include distance
learning courses, workshops, on-farm field days, and written materials
and resources. HMI’s value statement says: “We believe people count,
healthy land is essential, and money matters.”

While holistic management may sound esoteric, there are
tangible management tools essential to the process. Graphs, charts and
goal-setting exercises are used to help minimize risk, increase
profitability and sustain land resources. The basic principle of
holistic management is that nature functions as a whole. All
environments are unique and need to be understood in order to work
within them, not against them. Managing holistically requires putting
some basic practices in place: an inventory of your farm, a vision
statement, the development of healthy soil, an understanding of all
resources available for use, a way to test decisions before they are
made and results monitoring.

Phil Metzger, retired from the Natural Resources
Conservation Service, has been a certified holistic management educator
for over a decade. Based in Norwich, N.Y., Metzger’s experience in rural
economic development and natural resource planning are instruments he
now uses to mentor farmers who are interested in implementing holistic
grazing planning on their farms.

“Holistic grazing planning is putting animals in the
right place at the right time for the right reason,” Metzger said.
“Holistic grazing planning and implementation is not a practice, but a
mode of operation.”

Grazing holistically

To get started in holistic grazing planning, you must
first formulate a holistic goal for the farm. Once you know what you
want to achieve as a whole, then grazing planning can occur. The grazing
plan works to create the landscape desired; pays attention to animal,
forage and land health and production; considers the impact on
profitability; takes into account your schedule with regard to animal
movements; considers short and long-term results; and plans for paddock
recovery periods.

“Rotational and mob grazing are practices. Holistic
grazing planning is a process, which includes more than just how short
to graze or how often to move animals. It is all in the plan, which is
attentive to a more comprehensive impact,” Metzger said. “There is a lot
to learn, usually, so after [farmers] have a holistic goal and can
articulate what they are trying to create, it is OK to move on to
figuring out the available forage and needs on the chart. How many acres
do you have? What is your forage production? How long can you graze?
What is your planned stocking rate? Look at the seasonal big picture
first. What is it that you are trying to create through your grazing
plan and implementation?”

Holistic grazing planning isn’t just a way to graze. It
is a means to an end, and that end is the overall holistic goal of the
farm. Making a holistic grazing plan involves a comprehensive grazing
chart that includes the movements of the animals; other needs of the
land, such as cropping and harvesting; the needs of wild animals, like
grassland nesting birds; needed rest periods; available forage; and
breeding or calving times. By anticipating their combined effect on the
overall plan, adjustments can be made to maximize positive animal
impacts.

Metzger said, “Use a chart to graph out happenings that
impact your ability to manage on your farm, and start to figure out
where the animals will be and when.”

Keys to planning

Holistic management utilizes several tools to assist with
the assessment and monitoring of these complex interactions on the
farm. Biological monitoring of the soil, along with forage assessments
and inventories, are two of the tools used to help plan the grazing
strategy. Holistic grazing planning is based more on plant recovery
period than on grazing time. Maximizing the positive impact of grazing
animals on the pasture is often more important than minimizing
overgrazing.

Building healthy soil is one of the necessary practices
of holistic grazing planning. Holistically building the soil requires
soil cover, plant diversity, a continual live root, appropriate
disturbance and adequate recovery time. Controlling just how the solar
energy contained in plants is harvested is the key to being sustainable.

A biological monitoring assessment of soil health
involves randomly selecting a small quadrant of land to examine.
Ideally, each paddock or field will have several areas examined. Observe
for bare soil. Note the plant species and overall plant health. Look
for insect, earthworm or animal evidence. Take note of the height of the
canopy. Seek out any evidence of erosion, log the soil characteristic,
and notice any plant litter, including its stage of decomposition. This
assessment provides a snapshot of where the land is now. This data is
reviewed over time, and the impact of management decisions and natural
factors can be assessed.

By taking a forage inventory, the stocking density for
the land can be calculated. Measuring the amount of dry matter per acre
can be accomplished with a pasture stick. Optimal forage has about 250
or more pounds of dry feed per acre per inch of height. Once the actual
forage available is known, assume that every animal needs to consume 3
percent of its body weight per day. This calculation provides the animal
days per acre, which can determine the required paddock size and
stocking density. Forage health and nutritional quality will factor in
making these decisions.

A key component of holistic grazing planning is regularly
examining the results of your grazing strategy and adjusting it
accordingly. Since a herd is always impacting the land, planning for
this impact and controlling it by altering animal density, time or
stocking rate of the land is necessary. A grazing chart that considers
the complexity of factors associated with livestock grazing is
instrumental in this process.

“Plan, monitor, adjust, monitor, adjust. It is a dynamic
process that requires you to pay attention to what is going on with your
animals and on the ground,” Metzger said. “Monitoring should be done at
peak growth, and this will be your baseline, so each successive year
you can determine if you are making progress.”

All of this planning is focused on managing the soil
through animal impact and animal grazing. Minimize overgrazing, reduce
labor, speed up the mineral cycle and increase the health of the land.
Increasing the stocking density without sacrificing animal performance
or land health while increasing profitability is the goal.

Farmer profile

Tricia Park, her husband, Matt, and son, Cameron, work
their 150-acre Creekside Meadows Farm in New Woodstock, N.Y., and have
found success with holistic management. In fact, Park is training to
become a certified educator through HMI.

Holistic grazing planning has helped the Parks revive
fields that were depleted from overuse, having been planted to alfalfa
for over a decade. Within a year of implementing a holistic grazing
plan, the farm experienced more biological soil activity, better forage
availability and nutrition, less input usage and no forage deficits.
Metzger serves as their farm mentor.

“We had excellent weight gains on our cattle, highest
ever that we’ve had. Our hanging weights were 200 pounds higher than our
past weights,” Park said. “We are proud of it. All this training,
reading, thinking [and] experimenting has worked to our benefit. Our
pastures are thick and lovely, our cattle gain weight on grass only – no
grains!”

This gain came in 2012, while the region was suffering
through a period of drought and forage was in short supply. Many farmers
in the area, she said, ran out of grazing forage in July or August,
causing hardship.

“We want more farmers to think how they can manage things
for better forage. It takes some serious thinking outside the box. It
is also different on every farm,” noted Park.

“Hay is expensive to buy and expensive to make, so we do
what we can to keep the cattle on pasture,” she said. “The longer we can
keep them out on pasture, the less work we have to do to care for them.
We are still learning and experimenting [to find] what works for our
farm, our climate, our cattle and our pastures.”

Stockpiling, a technique used in holistic grazing
planning, allows animals to graze on pasture after the growing season.
If a stockpiled forage pasture receives heavy snow before it is grazed,
it can be utilized in the spring. Another management practice is winter
bale grazing – putting the animals on pasture and feeding hay bales,
which has been shown to increase forage production the following spring
in areas where the bale grazing occurred.

“Any way we can get fertilizer – manure and urine – on
the pastures with no tractor is a good thing for the bottom line of the
farm. Any time we can not feed hay is a good thing for the bottom line,”
Park said. “If we can do all that with just some management adjustments
during the summer and still have healthy, happy cattle, it is a great
thing.”

All of these practices create a land impact, Metzger
said. The positive impact on drainage and fertility, caused by the
animals’ hooves and the manure deposited, can positively impact soil
biology, leading to higher forage production and quality as the
ecosystem’s health increases. The purpose of holistic grazing planning
is to manage the impact and always consider and adjust for a wide range
of variables in order to reach the holistic goal.

“Everything is connected on a farm,” Metzger said. With
holistic grazing planning, “You manage toward what you want, not what
you don’t want.”

Holistic grazing planning increases resiliency by
building a healthy soil, one that can survive an adverse event such as a
flood or drought, as the basis of a healthy farm. Health in a holistic
system includes more than the environment; it includes the health of the
farmer and the farmer’s family, and their relationship to the
community. By devising a farm grazing plan that incorporates land,
people and profit, holistic grazing planning is helping to keep farmers
farming, soils healthy, animals thriving and rural ecosystems intact.

The Cornerstones of Holistic Management

Holistic Management International lists four cornerstones
of practicing holistic management on its website. Following are the
bullet points for one of those cornerstones. To see the others, visit www.holisticman agement.org/holistic-management/121-2.

Increase Land and Animal Health and Productivity with Holistic Grazing Planning

• Simultaneously maximize stocking rate and improve land health and productivity
• Use livestock to improve the health of land and increase profit
• Coordinate three primary land management tools (rest, grazing, animal impact) to grow more pasture
• Maximize the harvest of sunlight by managing stocking rate, time, stock density and herd effect
• Make the best plan for the season ahead to reduce your stress