New Grazing Theory Puts Roaming Cattle to Work

Dan Carver bumps across an upland pasture in a pickup truck that has seen a lot of rugged miles. Clouds of powder-dry loam, churned up by the tires, waft through the windows as he stops at a pasture gate. Looking at the high-desert hills, he explains a new theory of land management he hopes to put to use.

The Savory Grazing Method proposes that large herds of cattle be grazed on arid land in order to pound up grasses and revitalize the soil--”the way Mother Nature used to with millions of head of buffalo creating a trampling effect,” Carver said.

To prove that the theory works, Carvers hopes to land funding for a 20,000-acre, five-year demonstration project that would be carried out on the Imperial Stock Ranch. The Wasco County Soil and Water Conservation District wrote Carver’s proposal, which has been submitted to the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board and the Deschutes Resources Conservancy.

For his project, Carver plans to move 500 cows to a different 50-acre pasture every day--and in every 50-acre pasture, he plans to plant 10 pounds of new native grass and crested wheat seed.

This is a radical idea to many, especially those who believe that cattle are a blight on the land and that the Savory method is a scam designed to exploit public lands.

The grazing system he hopes to implement is based on the experience of Allan Savory, once a research biologist and game ranger in the British Colonial Service of what was Northern Rhodesia (today Zambia).

What Savory saw on the savannas of Africa was that large herds of herbivores were continually moved to new grazing areas by predators. The effect was that large numbers of animals grazed intensely but were not allowed to overgraze because of the marauding predators.

The Savory Grazing Method is based on the idea that range land is in poor condition because it is undergrazed, not overgrazed, as is the predominate belief.

Savory reasons that in arid climates, grassland evolved under conditions where the natural decomposition of plants had been shaped and aided by the pounding of hoofs. He noted that in lands turned public where herds no longer roamed, desertification and erosion resulted as the grasses left ungrazed died and gave way to woody plants.

Carver believes that adopting the Savory Grazing Method will make chemicals, biological controls and bulldozers tools of the past, replaced by cattle as the primary vehicle for keeping land in optimum condition.

Ranchers have experimented with the Savory Grazing Method in several places, including the Palouse country, a wheat-growing region in eastern Washington known for its fine silty soil. But whether it works depends on who you talk to.

“It worked pretty good in the Palouse country,” said Dusty Eddy, district conservationist for the Natural Resource Conservation Service of the USDA. “If [Carver] does it, he will get some very good results as long as he can keep up the management end.”

The management end Eddy refers to is extensive with the Savory method, since cattle must be moved daily to replicate the intense but short grazing cycle of herds on the move. To re-create this, a rancher must move large numbers of livestock frequently and move stock water supplies in tandem.

The proposal Carver has developed calls for $80,000 per year for five years to run the ranch.

Rick Craiger, program representative for the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board and a proponent of the demonstration project, says a further advantage of the Savory method is that rather than paying farmers and ranchers to leave land alone, as is done in the Conservation Resource Program, with the Savory method, the land will continue to be used but in a different way.

Under the Conservation Resource Program, farmers are paid annual rental payments for planting permanent crops such as crested wheat grass on highly erodible land to conserve soil. But this land is not open for grazing.

Ron Graves, district manager for the Wasco County Soil and Water Conversation District, supports the idea of the Savory method but agrees it is a management-heavy approach.

“There are not many ranchers that would be able to do the intensive type of management required of the system,” Graves said. “Carver is one of the few in the county that would be able to dedicate the kind of resources to make the system successful.”

“We are working with respected people in range management to develop a monitoring strategy,” Craiger said. “Hopefully, we’ll put together funding this winter and start next spring.”

“The grazing demonstration,” Carver said, “might change how the entire West looks at cattle.”