Sustainable Land Management
Course
Courses/Workshops,
Land - by Owen Hablutzel
Holistic Management, Keyline
DesignŽ, and Broad-acre Permaculture
with Kirk Gadzia and Darren
Doherty
November 10-15, 2009
Orella Ranch, California
http://www.permacultureusa.org/2009/12/03/sustainable-land-management-course/#more-1489
The winds of change are blowing extra brisk these days and gathering
transformative momentum. Highlights and ground-truthed strategies for
this agrarian revolution underway were served up and stacked high for
six solid days at the Orella
Ranch Sustainable Learning
Pavilion, during this second module (of four) in the on-going and
leading-edge Carbon Economy
Course.
A partial list of participants
would include multiple farmers and ranchers (most from California, but
some from as far away as Wales!), Permaculturalists from far and
wide-east to west coast, ass0rted eco-preneurs and small business
operators, along with several other representative strands from the
growing and diverse web of people, organizations, and groups
contributing positive actions to regenerative practice and
culture.
Kirk Gadzia (of Resource Management Services) led off this module with an inspiring
three days instructing participants on the well-developed framework
and practice of Holistic
Management. With over 30
million acres worldwide under this form of ecologically sound
management the original work and insights of Allan Savory (originator
of HM) have taken on a powerful life of their own through the many
practitioners and land managers who have found increasing health in
their families, land, resources, and livelihoods through using the
various tools and techniques-from holistic decision-making and
financial planning, to grazing and land planning-found in this
useful framework.
Mr. Gadzia is a renowned
consultant, educator, and author (co-author of Rangeland Health:
New Methods to Classify, Inventory, and Monitor Rangelands through
the National Academy of Sciences, and a practical guide for range
health monitoring,
Bullseye!, among other
publications) with a background in Holistic Management extending to
the early 1980s. His speaking and presentations reflect this depth of
knowledge and wide-ranging experience. Armed with a multitude of
fence-line comparison photos spanning at least 30 years - visual
examples of extensive land improvement and massive carbon
sequestration-Mr. Gadzia leaves the impression he could continue to
show dramatic photo proofs from ranch after farm after ranch across
the globe for the entire three days!
So how are these multiple,
impressive results achieved? The Holistic ManagmentTM processes and
tools leading to these productive achievements were learned by course
participants along the way. It begins with each person or group
establishing a clear definition of the unique whole they are
managing-a baseline for where they are starting from. To decide where
they want to go from there a Holistic Goal is then determined. In the
process of creating this goal participants identify the values,
ethics, and quality of life they wish to create and live by, what they
must produce to achieve those, and how their future resource
base-including land, people, and community-must function into the
future to support everything else in the goal. With a completed
Holistic Goal anyone has available an unusually potent tool-specific
to themselves or their organisation, their passions, proclivities,
talents, values, and their situation-for testing decisions that will
move them towards the livelihood, society and environment they are
working for.
These topics, and an abundance of others-including, soils,
livestock, wildlife, grass physiology, planned grazing, fencing,
decision testing questions, watershed restoration, and so on-spanned
the three days and were interspersed with 'pasture walks' out into
various sections of Orella Ranch. During outdoor explorations
participants learned how to assess on-the-ground functioning of the
various ecosystem processes (water cycle, mineral cycle, energy flow,
and community dynamics-or, succession), as well as how to monitor
these over time in order to learn how management is affecting land
health, and to use this up-to-date information for making better
decisions about practical responses to the emerging land
conditions.
Learning to fully engage in an active and informative feedback-loop
relationship with the land participants explored pastures and enjoyed
Orella's cool, Fall days while overlooking a sparkling expanse of
the Pacific Ocean. All senses were activated in order to better
understand the unfolding of ecosystem processes on the landscape.
Enthusiasm for this part of the learning venture found different
groups wandering within paddocks, surreptitiously digging down through
decomposing grass-litter layers, exclaiming at signs of soil life,
estimating plant production amounts per acre, wagering how much of the
standing material would feed a cow for a day, quantifying species
diversity, and all punctuated by occasional outbursts of collective
glee!
One such episode unleashed when pasture monitors discovered a dung
beetle under a new stack of horse manure! A veritable dung beetle
induced riot ensued. Perhaps not since ancient Egypt-where they were
worshiped-has a dung beetle been the focus of so much attention,
respect, and appreciation as many folks gathered around to witness
this amazing decomposer in action.
A partial list of 'A-HA' moments over the first three days, as
articulated by various participants in the Holistic Management
section of the Sustainable Land Management course:
*
Ecological principles are not broken, rather people break
themselves against these principles when they attempt to cheat or
ignore them
*
A diversity of cool and warm season plants (C3 and C4) in
perennial pastures is important for creating longer growing seasons,
more resilient pastures, and increased yields of forage
*
Importance of managing for the 'triple bottom
line'-ecological, social, and economic (a very similar pattern to
Permaculture's ecological 'Care of Earth,' social 'Care of
People,' and ecomomic 'Return the Surplus')
*
Importance of ruminants-especially in the world's massive
areas of 'brittle' (arid) environments-to a healthy, functioning
decomposition cycle
*
TIME NOT NUMBERS: Overgrazing is about the amount of TIME
plants are exposed to grazers and NOT about how many grazers (NUMBERS)
they are exposed to
* People
and non-human animals are also 'successional'-not only plant
communities
*
'Chaos Farming' and 'Chaos Grazing'-creation and
maintenance of landscape mosaics, patches, and heterogeneity-in time
and space-in order to increase edges, diversity, and yield
* Effective
PLANNING is never a single action-rather it is a continuous cycle:
Plan - Monitor - Adjust - Re-Plan
*
Soil surface management is fundamental
*
Importance of the holistic viewpoint and practical value of
the holistic goal
Sunrise over the Pacific at the Orella Ranch campgrounds
With this learning and context fresh in participant's experiences -
and gaining a few new students as well - Darren Doherty commenced
teaching the second three-day section of the Sustainable Land
Management course, on the topics of Keyline DesignŽ, Broad-acre
Permaculture Design, and other innovations developing for regenerative
agriculture and carbon farming.
Mr. Doherty-a prolific Australian Permaculture and KeylineŽ
designer, developer, consultant, and educator (Australia Felix Permaculture) - was the original 'master-mind' and
driving force behind the entire concept and organisation of the Carbon
Economy Course series. Mr. Doherty explained that his plans for this
course were partly a result of his 2007 world tour teaching Keyline
DesignŽ courses, along with his learning more about emerging
methodologies and seeing huge potential in bridging those together. He
notes "an obvious need to have some accelerated training to help
folks work on what I like to call the 'Great Retrofit' of
agricultural landscapes" as "our entire land-based systems are
becoming Carbon poor. Right now we have a unique opportunity to
revitalise our communities and societies through the building of a
Carbon rich landscape (and) we have the technical means to do
so."
The details of these ground-breaking means were the matter-at-hand and
together advance a compelling vision of the multiple regenerative
opportunities emerging with the Carbon economy. The Holistic
Management framework was emphasised as a vital context and
perspective with which to frame and ground the increasing smorgasbord
of pragmatic, ecology-based, land health strategies, including carbon
farming, natural sequence farming, Zero Emissions Research Initiative
(ZERI) methodologies, Soil Food
Web, pasture cropping,
bio-char, Rodale 'crop-rolling,'along with KeylineŽ and
broad-acre Permaculture Design. Taken altogether these form what Mr.
Doherty has called 'Keyline
Design Mark IV.'
In the classroom and during field excursions participants engaged in
the practical issues associated with design and implementation of
regenerative, carbon-rich, extensive systems. Details included:
*
understanding and use of Keyline landscape geometry
* design
and building of farm-scale dams and irrigation systems
*
innovative forestry and silvo-pastoral systems
*
appropriate contexts for carbon sequestration using trees or
grasses
* many
function-stacking variations on multiple, in-line attachments to the
Yeoman's plow (mounder, discs, power harrow, planters, compost tea
applicator, seeders, roller, etc)
*
useful landscape design profiles and examples
*
importance of project costing and phase-planning
* how to
get the most from GIS applications to designs
* Keyline
orchards
*
appropriate contexts for swales vs. keyline
*
establishing proper payments for ecosystem services provided
by farms and ranches
* a keyline
pattern plowing demonstration.
Fieldwork included instruction
with the transit (dunpy) level, as well as a laser level, and was
fully integrated with learning the GIS contour mapping process.
Participants used surveying skills and a simple GPS unit to mark
reference points along the contours of a valley area, then were walked
through the process of getting the GPS points into a GIS format like
Google Earth or MapInfo. With the base contour map this process
provides one can begin to design according to the revealed site
geometry.
The land patterning understanding offered by Keyline sunk in deeper
with participants as Darren Doherty walked the group out on the land
through parts of the proposed future farm dam and catchment system as
designed on Orella Ranch, so that all could visualize in situ how the
plan matched the actual landscape (the existing plan for Orella was
designed by Mr. Doherty along with those students who attended for a
week in April 2007, when Orella hosted the world's first Keyline
Design course).
As the map is never the territory marrying concepts to physical
experience can really send the 'insight-meter' off the charts for
folks. As if to further emphasize this the Yeoman's plow was brought
out, introduced, and thoroughly explained in its functions and parts
by one of the world's foremost experts, and put into the ground
paralleling a true Keyline marked out by freshly trained surveyors.
After many parallel plow passes the survey equipment was used to
demonstrate and confirm that the plowed pattern would in fact guide
water out of the valley and onto the ridges! People only
'eye-balling' the pattern at the site might have sworn that if water
followed those lines out of the valley it would indeed be a miracle
since it appeared to run uphill. The laser level put the eyes to the
test and showed clearly that the lines in fact ran down slope,
regardless of how the brain wanted to interpret it. Another valuable
lesson: use the instrument, eyes can often 'lie.'
Other notable gems from section two of the Sustainable Land Management
course:
* For all
the multiple values, around 22% of a well-integrated farm landscape
should be in trees
*
20%-35% clay content soil is needed for building farm dam
walls - do your 'due diligence' geo-technical testing
*
Keyline pattern cultivation with a Yeoman's plow is a
physical impact that jumpstarts a biological impact which, in turn,
jumpstarts the chemical impact
* The only
inputs to agriculture should be air, water, and sunlight
* Blue
before Green before Black: harvest the water, grow the plants,
sequester the Carbon
* Every
metric tonne of soil organic Carbon sequesters 3.67 tonnes of
atmospheric Carbon
*
Pasture cropping: seeding dry-farmed winter active annuals
into summer active perennials (or vice-versa); more yield, less
erosion, more diversity, less disease, more Carbon, low risk, improved
soil health
*
Big, dense, root networks growing as rapidly as possible
(grasses) sequester the most Carbon per unit of land
*
Fix the soil with relatively inexpensive techniques-HM
planned grazing, Keyline pattern cultivation-before building dams,
chances are you will need much less dam water than you initially
think, once water cycle is more effective
*
Importance of the tool of large animals (cow tractors) and
extending effective land-use into Permaculture zones 3, 4 and 5
* "It's
a lot more interesting than chess!" - Bill Mollison
Indeed, if this course is
anything to gauge by, the regenerative learning and transformations
underway are extraordinarily interesting, intelligent, adaptive,
practical, and needed. And becoming more so every day! Great thanks go
out to Kirk Gadzia and Darren Doherty for their exemplary, ongoing
work, valuable teachings, and vision, as well as to all the dedicated
participants in the series thus far. Kudos are due also to the good
folks at Quail
Springs and Orella Ranch who are doing the demanding work of jointly
organizing and convening this leading-edge series. Congratulations on
another successful module! (See the links to these organizations to
learn more or to donate in support of their ongoing efforts to bring
sustainable land management practices to a wider audience.)
Next up in the Orella hosted West
coast Carbon Economy Course series: ZERI Training (Zero Emissions
Research Initiative) with Erin Sanborn, followed by Re-localisation
with Joel Salatin. See you there!
~~~~~~~~
Owen Hablutzel performs international work in Permaculture design,
consultation, speaking, and education. He is a director of the
Permaculture Research Institute USA, and can be reached at owen (at)
permacultureusa.org