Savory Institute
1 HN recommender · recommended in 3 months, 2018–2021
47:29 · 2.3M views · May 1, 2018
A 47-minute documentary on Allan Savory and how he used Holistic Management to restore degraded land in Zimbabwe. It covers rotational grazing, soil health and regenerative agriculture.
Offered as further reading in threads about carbon removal, regenerative agriculture and holistic grazing.
3 comments from Hacker News
For those who are interested in the topic of soil reconstruction and balance in nature, some more sources: Documentary on the Loess plateau in China: [LINK] Talk on the Caledonian Forest: [LINK] Talk on using the "herd effect" in Africa: this video A talk presenting a realistic view on soil reconstruction, what IMO is the best argument to convince farmers: [LINK]
I've been watching waay too many youtube videos about reforestation, agriculture and land management recently and I think I've learned a little from it (links at the end). We no longer have the number of massive herds of animals that used to roam the plains/savannahs grazing, pooing and to a lesser extent escaping from predators. This has meant that the grasslands are no longer trampled on and "fertilised". This has caused the grasses to die back, the soil to degrade, to not hold water and to turn to desert. (see the sahara, the outback, parts of china and the usa). Subsequently we've tried to be really careful with the land and not over graze it etc. which tends to have the opposite effect than what is desired. Now I also looked into reforestation because I thought trees were the answer. Grow trees sequester carbon etc. But it turns out the cost of doing this £/$ and water (desalination) would actually be outweighed by both the albido effect (green trees absorb more sunlight than deserts that reflect it back) and that trees don't really grow fast enough to have the impact required. Getting back to the grasslands, it turns out that when you intensively drive a herd over grasslands the grass initially dies back but the root system expands, the plant grows quickly and sequesters carbon into the ground. It actually builds soil and traps carbon and it does it faster than previously thought. The ground is also more permeable to water so when big storms come it actually soaks up th
I used to feel similarly, but now, I'm not so sure. What worries me is that lab-grown meat will allow big ag practices to continue, which will do more harm to our co2 emissions and world's soil health. To expand on this further, there is active research and practices into sustainable farming practices that show diverse crop rotations along dense but short grazing across the land has the ability to rebuild top soil 10x than previously thought. Most importantly this top soil serves as a MASSIVE CARBON SINK. Using this proven methods, we can leverage the world's farmland to sequester carbon while improving the health of our soil and the nurtition density of our food. The catch is that we need the animals to restore soil health and presumably we need the business model of selling the meat to make this practice sustainable. Further Reading: Dirt to Soil - Gabe Brown Alan Savory's Holistic Management Practices - this video [LINK]