{"id":719,"date":"2015-02-18T15:45:39","date_gmt":"2015-02-18T20:45:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/?p=719"},"modified":"2015-02-20T01:07:21","modified_gmt":"2015-02-20T06:07:21","slug":"allan-savorys-fantasy-thrills-ranchers-but-hes-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/?p=719","title":{"rendered":"Allan Savory’s Fantasy Thrills Ranchers, But He’s Wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>

Allan Savory has made a career claiming that beef can reverse global warming. His working hypothesis\u2014and do note, it is nothing more than that\u2014is that repopulating desertified landscapes with cattle would revive grasslands, sequester carbon, and, no joke, save the planet<\/em>.<\/p>\n

For decades his message has skirted the periphery of legitimate science, a largely unknown if renegade idea. But, thanks to a TEDx platform<\/a>, Savory’s message has recently gone viral among a vocal subculture of beef eating environmentalists who, science be damned, want to be assured that they are not walking contradictions.<\/p>\n

Skewed by Savory’s fantasy, media coverage of Savory has generally been atrocious. A typical example came just this past week in an alternative paper serving residents of Marin and Napa counties. The short piece<\/a> celebrates Savory’s hypothesis by quoting Savory himself (“we have no option left but the use of animals \u00a0. . . There isn’t an alternative”) and two ranchers.\u00a0“That whole idea is incredibly revolutionary,” says one.\u00a0“We’re very much aligned with Allan Savory’s teachings,” says the other. Well, yeah.<\/p>\n

The only evidence of any opposition to Savory is a quote from me:\u00a0“There’s no such thing as a beef-eating environmentalist.” But this assessment is immediately followed by Savory saying,\u00a0“Every time some scientific insight has come about that is counterintuitive or that goes against the beliefs of society you always get this behavior.”<\/p>\n

And that’s it.<\/p>\n

What’s missing in so much of the Savory coverage is evidence. Had the reporter, Stett Holbrook, consulted with established environmental scientists, rather than act as a stenographer for Savory’s propaganda, he would have had a very different story to tell. That story, in part, is elaborated in the critique I did of Savory in April 2013 in Slate, a version of which follows.<\/p>\n

In addition to my story, I’d urge readers and journalists to see this<\/a> piece, and this<\/a>, as evidence that Savory’s fantasyland would be a hellscape.<\/p>\n

Why Savory is Wrong<\/strong><\/p>\n

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When Allan Savory finished his TED talk<\/a> early last month, foodies worldwide collectively salivated. In roughly 22 minutes, Savory, a biologist and former member of the Rhodesian Parliament, challenged the conventional wisdom blaming livestock for the degradation of global grasslands into hardpan deserts. It has long been a basic tenet of environmentalism that 10,000 years of overgrazing has caused this desertification. Environmentalists insist that to restore degraded landscapes, we must reduce the presence of cattle, eat less meat, and allow ecosystems to repair themselves. Savory, who admits that he\u2019s suggesting \u201cthe unthinkable,\u201d wants humans to do the exact opposite: Add cattle to the deserts, manage them with obsessive precision, and eat more meat. Most of the world\u2019s land, he says (at about 18:40), \u201ccan only feed people with animals.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u00a0Savory\u2019s hypothesis hinges on what he calls \u201cholistic management and planned grazing.\u201d These methods are designed to re-enact the movements of the prehistoric herds that once nurtured global grasslands with their manure deposits and \u201choof action\u201d (gentle trampling that increases the soil\u2019s ability to hold water). By mimicking the natural symbiosis between plants and animals, holistic grazing would, Savory argues, encourage the regrowth of carbon-sequestering grasslands. These grasses would absorb enough carbon to counteract the methane production that\u2019s associated with cattle husbandry (thanks to cow burps and farts) and halt global warming. (To put that claim in perspective, note that the Earth\u2019s oceans and plants currently absorb only half <\/em>of the 7 billion metric tons of carbon<\/a> that human activities release into the atmosphere each year.) In order for Savory\u2019s plan to work, the stocking density of livestock\u2014the number of animals grazing a given area of land\u2014would need to increase, in some cases, by as much as 400 percent. And for ranchers to make a living, they would sell their beef.<\/div>\n
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Savory\u2019s speech quickly attracted praise. Chris Anderson, the TED host, said to Savory after his show, \u201cI\u2019m sure everyone here … wants to hug you.\u201d Michael Pollan, apassionate advocate<\/a> of pastured beef, called Savory\u2019s talk the \u201chighlight of TED\u201d in a tweet that provocatively asked, \u201cEat MORE meat?<\/a>\u201d The Organic Consumers Association published an article that used Savory\u2019s presentation to assert<\/a> that \u201cwhat we need is MORE moving, grazing animals, not less,\u201d and to argue that holistic grazing \u201cwould be beneficial for the environment, the health of the animals, and subsequently the health of humans consuming those animals.\u201d The takeaway was clear: If you\u2019re interested in saving the planet, sharpen your steak knives.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Well, not so fast. For all the intuitive appeal of \u201cholistic management,\u201d Savory\u2019s hypothesis is beset with caveats. The most systematic research trial supporting Savory\u2019s claims, the Charter Grazing Trials, was undertaken in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe today) between 1969 and 1975. Given the ecological vagaries of deserts worldwide, one could certainly question whether Savory\u2019s research on a 6,200-acre spot of semiarid African land holds any relevance for the rest of the world\u2019s 12 billion acres of desert. Extrapolation seems even more dubious when you consider that a comprehensive review of Savory\u2019s trial and other similar trials<\/a>, published in 2002, found that Savory\u2019s signature high-stocking density and rapid-fire rotation plan did not lead to a perfectly choreographed symbiosis between grass and beast.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Instead, there were problems during the Charter Grazing Trials, ones not mentioned in Savory\u2019s dramatic talk. Cattle that grazed according to Savory\u2019s method needed expensive supplemental feed, became stressed and fatigued, and lost enough weight to compromise the profitability of their meat. And even though Savory\u2019s Grazing Trials took place during a period of freakishly high rainfall, with rates exceeding the average by 24 percent overall, the authors contend that Savory\u2019s method \u201cfailed to produce the marked improvement in grass cover claimed from its application.\u201d The authors of the overview concluded exactly what mainstream ecologists have been concluding for 40 years: \u201cNo grazing system has yet shown the capacity to overcome the long-term effects of overstocking and\/or drought on vegetation productivity.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The extension of Savory\u2019s grazing techniques to other regions of Africa and North America has produced even less encouraging results. Summarizing other African research on holistically managed grazing, the same report that evaluated the Charter Grazing Trials found \u201cno clear cut advantage for any particular form of management,\u201d holistic or otherwise. It noted that \u201cmore often than not\u201d intensive systems marked by the constant rotation of densely packed herds of cattle led to a decline in animal productivity while doing nothing to notably improve botanical growth.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A 2000 evaluation of Savory\u2019s methods in North America<\/a> (mostly on prairie rangelands in Wyoming, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico) contradicted Savory\u2019s conclusions as well. Whereas Savory asserts that the concentrated pounding of cow hooves will increase the soil\u2019s ability to absorb water, North American studies, according to the authors, \u201chave been quite consistent in showing that hoof action from having a large number of animals on a small area for short time periods reduced rather than increased filtration.\u201d Likewise, whereas Savory insists that his methods will revive grasses, \u201cthe most complete study in North America\u201d on the impact of holistic management on prairie grass found \u201ca definite decline\u201d of plant growth on mixed prairie and rough fescue areas. It\u2019s no wonder that one ecologist\u2014who was otherwise sympathetic toward Savory\u2014flatly stated after the TED talk, \u201cSavory\u2019s method won\u2019t scale<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Even if Savory\u2019s plan could scale, foodies would still have to curb their carnivorous cravings. The entire premise of any scheme of rotational grazing, as Savory repeatedly notes, is the careful integration of plants and animals to achieve a \u201cnatural\u201d balance. As Dr. Sylvia Fallon of the Natural Resources Defense Council has shown, symbiosis between grazing herds and grasses has historically worked best to sequester carbon when the animals lived the entirety of their lives within the ecosystem, their carcasses rotted and returned their accumulated nutrients into the soil, and human buy prednisone<\/span><\/a> and intervention was minimal to none. It is unclear, given that Savory has identified this type of arrangement as his ecological model, how marketing cattle for food would be consistent with these requirements. Cows live up to 20 years of age, but in most grass-fed systems, they are removed when they reach slaughter weight at 15 months.\u00a0Cheating the nutrient cycle at the heart of land regeneration by removing the manure-makers and grass hedgers when only 10 percent of their ecological \u201cvalue\u201d has been exploited undermines the entire idea of efficiency that Savory spent his TED talk promoting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Further weakening Savory\u2019s argument for the wholesale application of holistic management to the world\u2019s deserts is his distorted view of desert ecology. There are two basic kinds of deserts: genuinely degraded landscapes in need of revival and ecologically thriving ones best left alone. Proof that Savory fails to grasp this basic distinction comes when, during his talk, he calls desert algae crust (aka \u201ccryptobiotic crust<\/a>\u201d) a \u201ccancer of desertification\u201d that represses grasses and precipitate runoff. \u00a0The thing is desert algae crust, as desert ecologists will attest, is no cancer. Instead, it\u2019s the lush hallmark of what Ralph Maughan, director of the Western Watersheds Project<\/a>, calls \u201ca complete and ancient ecosystem<\/a>.\u201d According to the U.S. Geological Survey<\/a>, \u201cCrusts generally cover all soil spaces not occupied by green plants. In many areas, they comprise over 70 percent of the living ground cover and are key in reducing erosion, increasing water retention, and increasing soil fertility.\u201d Savory, whose idea of a healthy ecosystem is one with plenty of grass to feed cattle, neglects the less obvious flora\u2014such as, in addition to algae crust, blackbrush, agaves, and creosote\u2014that cattle tend to trample, thereby reducing the desert\u2019s natural ability to sequester carbon on its own terms. \u201cIt is very important,\u201d Maughan writes, \u201cthat this carbon storage not be squandered trying to produce livestock.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Savory\u2019s most compelling and controversial assumption\u2014one that\u2019s absolutely central to his method\u2014is that humans can viably \u201cmimic\u201d (a word he uses about a dozen times in the TED talk) \u201call of nature\u2019s complexity.\u201d This is a stunning claim. The conceit of mimicry as a virtue of Savory\u2019s technique is challenged in part by the fact that not all deserts rely on the presence of herd animals for their ecological health. In many desert ecosystems, desert grasses evolved not alongside large animals but in concert with desert tortoises, mice, rats, rabbits, and reptiles. It\u2019s difficult to imagine how a human-managed ecosystem such as Savory\u2019s\u2014dependent on manipulating the genetics of livestock, building sturdy fences, manufacturing supplemental feed, and exterminating predators\u2014is more representative of \u201cnature\u2019s complexity\u201d than a healthy desert full of organisms that have co-evolved over millennia.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

In 1990, Savory admitted that attempts to reproduce his methods had led to \u201c15 years of frustrating and eratic [sic] results<\/a>.\u201d But he refused to accept the possibility that his hypothesis was flawed. Instead, Savory said those erratic results \u201cwere not attributable to the basic concept being wrong but were always due to management.\u201d In a favorable interview with Range <\/em>magazine<\/a> in 2000, Savory seemed unconcerned with the failure of his method in scientific trials: \u201cYou\u2019ll find the scientific method never discovers anything. Observant, creative people make discoveries.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Understandably, given his adherence to scientifically questionable conclusions in the face of evidence to the contrary, scientific institutions have not gone out of their way to work with Allan Savory. As a result, Savory has built his own institutions. From theCenter for Holistic Management<\/a> (later the Allan Savory Center for Holistic Management<\/a>) to the Savory Center to Holistic Management International<\/a> to the\u00a0Africa Centre of Holistic Management<\/a>, Savory has kept his ideas in motion. Today, Savory, nearing the end of his career, heads the for-profit<\/a> Savory Institute<\/a>. Whether desert landscapes or the foundation\u2019s coffers become any greener remains to be seen. In the meantime, the evidence continues to suggest what we have long known: There\u2019s no such thing as a beef-eating environmentalist.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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 <\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Allan Savory has made a career claiming that beef can reverse global warming. His working hypothesis\u2014and do note, it is nothing more than that\u2014is that repopulating desertified landscapes with cattle would revive grasslands, sequester carbon, and, no joke, save the planet. For decades his message has skirted the periphery of legitimate science, a largely unknown if renegade idea. But, thanks to a TEDx platform, Savory’s message has recently gone viral among a vocal subculture of beef eating environmentalists who, science be damned, want to be assured that they are not walking contradictions. Skewed by Savory’s fantasy, media coverage of Savory has generally been atrocious. A typical example came just this past week in an alternative paper serving residents of Marin and Napa counties. The short piece celebrates Savory’s hypothesis by quoting Savory himself (“we have no option left but the use of animals \u00a0. . . There isn’t an alternative”) and two ranchers.\u00a0“That whole idea is incredibly revolutionary,” says one.\u00a0“We’re very much aligned with Allan Savory’s teachings,” says the other. Well, yeah. The only evidence of any opposition to Savory is a quote from me:\u00a0“There’s no such thing as a beef-eating environmentalist.” But this assessment is immediately followed by Savory […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":720,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[120,121,71,119],"class_list":["post-719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-allan-savory","tag-holistic-grazing","tag-ranchers","tag-stett-holbrook"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/happy-cow.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p54Vzk-bB","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=719"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":732,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719\/revisions\/732"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}