A TED video featuring Allan Savory! In it, Allan summarizes his life's work and pulls together a wide variety of information to make a compelling case for holistic management of the world's grasslands. https://permaculturenews.org/2013/03/05/allan-savory-how-to-green-the-worlds-deserts-and-reverse-climate-change-ted-video/#more-9394
Desertification is scary, and IMO, we need more awareness, and more people like Jadav Payeng; an Indian man turned a barren sandbar in northern India into a lush new forest ecosystem. He planted ALL 1360 acres by himself. https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/w...man-single-handedly-plants-a-1360-acre-forest
Whilst HM is a really good, it has a big pit fall. I have done the course and would recommend it to anyone interested in operating a grazing enterprise, including pigs. But, the problem, which needs to be planned into your system is the hightened fire risk. I know people out at Tumbarumba who were wiped out by bushfires, totally, fences, yards, melted gates, water, livestock, all that was left was their house - thanks to the RFS. Their problem was the amount of grass, and the fires just couldn't be stopped and moved to quickly to move the cattle. Just something to keep to the back of your mind, I know it has led to a lot of discussion amoung our HM farmers group.
Very interesting Martyn. Nice to see you back here by the way. With regards to the fire danger I hesitate to contribute that HM should give you the process to deal with dangers such as fire and suggest that slashing would be an option if grazing was not keeping pace in danger times. I have not even started the course but hope to learn more about the decision process, over and above the grazing. This is where permaculture will combine well to design the risk to minium through species selection and placement of dams and such. It seems that too much grass is a great problem to deal with. Turning that problem into an oportunity will be fun.
lets cease the degradation now that is going to cause increased desert, and rehabilitate all that habitat plus what has been decimated for at least the last 100 years here in australia, then greening the deserts won't be necessary len
Green shelter belts of not so flammable trees might be worth adding to the system. I'm keen to hear about how the course goes Mark - ONE day when I get land I'd really like to try some form of rotational grazing system. It seems very logical.
Thanks, I've been doing some teaching, I was woring with Nick Huggins but decided I wanted to be more community and grassroots involved then business, we started our own group and have been doing some of our own courses. When you start your course you'll understand better, but the only thing you really plan for is drought. It's not a failure in the idea, just something that needs to be addressed. The problem with slashing is when you've got 5000 acres one tractor and fires are spoting more then 1km ahead of teh fire front it gets difficult. And again whilst tree belts and wind breaks do work, as our climate changes and the weatehr that brings fires and that fires bring change there may be need for some new strategies.
How to green deserts This just blew my mind. I am putting it here to see if you'll were aware of this video talk Allan Savory: How to green the world's deserts and reverse climate change https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI
With regards to the fires being uncontrollable, how much of this is attributable to the depopulation of rural land? Would more hands be helpful? 5,000 acres is a heck of a lot of land for a small group of people to tend! It is too bad that our current socioeconomic system strongly discourages people to live in rural areas. It is easy for me to say that we need more people living there, but how do they make a living is another question. I don't know about Australia, but at least in the States I'm not too sure that our state and federal governments would look too fondly on large numbers of people repopulating the rural land (even if it were possible due to private property rights). If you aren't a transnational corporation or a member of the top 10%, you best be paying your taxes. Anyway, I also want to say that Allan Savory really does appreciate the work we do to spread the concept. I was writing an "article" on HM back in January and had to contact the Savory Institute for a certain reference. They responded almost immediately and Mr. Savory himself contacted me to thank me for taking the time to write. While it is impossible to expect these figures to respond to everyone who helps out along the way, it has helped my confidence a lot.
I think it might happen to some extent via the sharing economy, if older landowners who can no longer work the land share it with younger people who want land to farm but can't afford to buy it. Or groups might be able to buy land in common through a land trust or other method.
You know what the best thing to do is, actually plant trees and practice permaculture via observation for each area. True story, I troll you not.