My intention is to address the behaviors that lead to soil loss. Conventional grazing techniques lead to erosion and a trend toward desertification. Holistic land management, including intensive rotational grazing, provides a sustainable behavior to address soil loss. I am interested in identifying the barriers that prevent the agricultural sector from adopting these beneficial behaviors.
Jon Plybon
United States
Barriers to Rotational Grazing of Livestock
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Jon
I think we all too often try to guess at barriers - when the tried and true way to deal with both perceived barriers and benefits is to do good qualitative research - time bound groups - focus groups, or individual interviews - in-depth interviews. You get real answers and then can design campaigns to address behaviors. hmfarmer's demonstrates with his candid comments - why you need to talk directly with the target audience to identify barriers and benefits.
Brian
Brian Day
Director, Social Marketing
Rare Conservation USA
United States
Whilst it may be true that there are some "cowboys" out there I think the real barrier to greater implementation of rotational grazing is the cost. To give an example. I added an extra property to my farm just over 2 years ago. It is 320acres in size and I split it into 30 paddocks of around 10 acres. The cost of fencing, water and related infrastructure was A$200k and took a year of my spare time. I might add that the fencing is all electric to keep the cost to minimum. I have no regrets about doing this and am a firm advocate of rotational grazing but not everyone has access to this type of resource.
hmfarmer
Rotational grazing doesn't let cowboys and cowboy wannabes be cowboys. There's too little of the "round 'em up, move 'em out" action.
This was the gist of the comments I heard after a presentation on Alan Savory's rotational grazing system to the Animal and Range Science grad students at the Univ. of Montana (Bozeman). I was a secretary there in 1977-78.
Mariann Cook Andrews
Washington Dept. of Ecology
United States
www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/hwtr
John, a great resource on grazing practices is On Pasture. You can find them at onpasture.com. They've been doing a lot of research and have great practical practices that come from both research and experience. Their organization is called Livestock for Landscapes and they are located in Loveland Colorado.
Karen Scopel
Natural Resource Planner
City of Greeley
United States
www.greeleygov.com
Hi John. I have been doing a lot of work on this and feel like we are making some breakthroughs. Contact me direct if you want to discuss. Working one on one with Doug
Regards, Graeme
[email protected]
Graeme Hand
GS Hand and Associates
Australia