Rancher and Holistic Management Practitioner Walt Davis joins us to talk about his transition from a high, input technology intensive cattle rancher to an observation-based, ecological holistic manager. Topics of discussion include the economics of input-intensive agriculture, controlling parasites through observation and management, techniques for gauging animal health and performance, and attempts to develop software for grazing planning.
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6 responses to “Episode #122: Inadvertently Organic”
I find it difficult to understand why, despite all the evidence that working with nature, as in Holistic management, is the only sustainable and profitable way to manage land, there is still so much resistance to changing from the high input unsustainable methods of land management that we have been conned into believing is the right way to farm or ranch.
@ Andy H.
I’d assume that the resistance comes from large agribusiness because only they can profit from such a ridiculously unsustainable system. It takes a very particular type of evil genius to undo a natural food system in less than fifty years. My only worry is that we’ll never get what we’ve lost back. Farmers with vast knowledge of how to grow food naturally are rare and with in a generation or two will be completely eliminated from the system.
In my opinion our only hope is to resist CAFOs and Genetically altered foods as these are the tools that multinational agribusiness is using in their wining battle to take over the entire food system.
But as Walt notes, he wasn’t a large agribusiness, and he still bought into the high-tech, high-input management process. Human perception, or lack therof, drives this as much as anything. And subsidies do an enormous amount to ameliorate the questionable economics.
i wish i had some land so i could put forth these wonderful ideas.
Frank, this is one of your exceptional interviews in which you get the ball rolling and then the speaker takes over wonderfully. I could listen to this guy for hours. Walt Davis emphasized that “if it costs money, we’re not doing it” and this closely parallel’s Fukuoka’s “do nothing” principle (as in “don’t get in the way” or “don’t over-do” rather than “take no actions ever”), and the anecdote of the peculiar time that spiders made webs across Davis’ short paddock grass is parallel to a Fukuoka anecdote of the same kind, of spiders making webs across his entire rice paddy on a particular occasion, ostensibly in synch with the life cycle of a particular pest. Phenology (seasonal-lifecycle-foodweb-synchrony) and myth (diamond-spider-web-dawn-dew)! Also, the connection is made between a low “normal” parasite load and health, which is a theme in human health to some degree (helminthic therapy, hygiene hypothesis).
[…] great quote from my interview with Holistic Management practitioner Walt Davis. Another interview with Walt is in the pipeline, so stay tuned. Thanks to the blog dig this / […]