Gary thanks for welcoming me – took on more than I realized in agreeing to do this for three days!! But am enjoying it because I so like the enquiring and mostly open minds of permies as you seem to call yourselves.
Re herding vs fencing – these are simply decisions to be made in the initial or first part of managing holistically (please, as I am asking others to do, read other posts so I do not have to keep repeating what is involved in managing holistically). And this initial decision making also applies to the type of fencing – permanent with how many strands, structure, electric permanent or portable and so on. And it is where we at our Dimbangombe learning site ranch made the decision to use herding because fencing in any form was not in context. Too many elephant, buffalo, sable, kudu, giraffe, zebra, lions, etc etc.
I am increasingly trying to get commercial ranchers in the US, Australia or anywhere to begin seriously relooking at fencing vs herding. Almost all immediately say they cannot because of labour costs – that, despite them saying they are managing holistically, tells me they are still in reductionist mindset. I say this because what we have worked out at Dimbangombe is proving so encouraging due entirely to herding. We are achieving a rate of reversal of
land degradation I have not experienced anywhere since the first advanced
project we ran forty years ago – where we were pushing the envelope to try to see if we could cause failure with holistic planned grazing – which we were unable to do. The reason is in hindsight now obvious to me. Over-resting the land is the single greatest thing leading to desertification in any country – this point I tried to make in my TED talk showing the terrible desertification in a US National Park and on research sites. And using fencing on very large land units we have struggled, and continue to struggle, to overcome the high level of partial rest (which has almost the same effect on the land as total rest as I often illustrate in talks using US experimental plots that demonstrate this). With herding we overcome the partial rest easily and constantly – day and night the entire management herd (500 cattle with some goats and sheep) is always on an area of about an acre or less no matter where we have them. This in turn is leading to much faster improvement in the land,
water retention, wildlife habitat (for most species but we are now having to preserve some bare ground for some species), and of
course the growth of all plants – grasses, forbs, shrubs and
trees. We have cultural and predator problems with using dogs and horses that Australians and others do not have to contend with at all. So I believe when others begin to look at the possibilities seriously – taking into account the full complexity, social, environmental and economic - and improve on what we are doing using dogs and horses they will be surprised. My son is in Australia and you might want to keep in touch with me on this.
Using fedges – I have no experience and only know of our past efforts to use vegetative fences in the form of prickly pear, aloes or sisal. But again simply a matter of seeing if those are in a holistic context – and if so use them.
I am aware of Joel’s work on his farm and his enlightened use of
chickens and pigs and like it. We are using
chickens on Dimbangombe – we keep them in mobile homes where they can roost or lay and be moved at night when the predator friendly overnight kraals move. From dawn to dusk they fend for themselves minimizing fly larvae in the dung and picking parasites off animals held back for any reason as the management herd leaves for their day working to improve the land and water. We did try pigs but had to give up because we could not use dogs. In the thick bush and long grass pigs hung back from the main herd undetected by herders and we were feeding leopards well. Manuel Casas in Mexico had a great management herd – cattle, horses, sheep, goats and pigs all herded in forest with excellent results. Only problem I recall him experiencing was the need to remove the pigs while goats were kidding or sheep lambing. We are using dogs in a limited way – to alert herders at night when lions approach - but even there we are experiencing heavy casualties from leopards and lions, but I think we have a solution to that now.
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