Activity 3.3 – Regenerative Agriculture Part 2

 1.0 Points of View

The author is looking at Savory’s ideas from a scientific viewpoint.  He believes that the majority of Savory's claims are not backed up by research or are almost entirely made up. He wants to be able to conduct his own research following Savory's steps but was not provided any information regarding that and was told that his results can not be copied.

2.0 Purpose

Infer the authors’ goals and objectives.

He essentially wants to be able to prove Savory wrong and show how his version of regenerative agriculture is not a good example of it. He also wants to be able to prove that there are other variations of this topic that can be proven to be more efficient. Savory claimed that his ideas worked for many people, however never provided the perimeters in which his experiment was conducted. Which means that not a lot of people have been able to recreate what he does.

3.0 Questions at Issue

Present the problems and issues the authors write about.

One continuous problem was that Savory had never referenced any scientifically supported statistics or information. Many of his claims were from his own account and other people that he had helped.  He was also exposed for using false pictures claiming that they were the results of his ideals , when in reality they were pictures of a national park. Another problem was other research had been conducted  using similar theories and they yielded less-favorable results.

4.0 Information

They had observed that often time Savory would not engage in any conversations involving statistics or science. He would claim that his plan could not be replicated because all environments are different. When one of the authors met Savory he would use pictures to try and support his claim while using a lot of ethos and pathos within his arguments. He also claimed that by following his method he could return 50 percent of the earth back to its natural state.

 

5.0 Interpretation and Inference

5.1 Briske et al (2014).  They found no substantial evidence that proves increasing cow usage will turn dry lands back to fertile lands. His version of regeneration agriculture is based on the idea “Multipaddock Grazing” which has been proven to work, however Savory’s version has not.  At the end of their analysis they said that Savory’s idea could work if certain adjustments were  made and if there was an understanding that “Multipaddock Grazing” was its own idea.

5.3 Ketcham (2017).  Opinions from multiple perspectives were taken into account by the end of this article. Various people with educated backgrounds had said that his assumptions were false and based almost entirely off of his own idea. Researchers had also provided evidence that decreasing grazing helps the land more.           

6.0 Concepts

  • Multi Paddock Grazing: use of high livestock densities for short time periods and  long time periods of grazing to increase grass growth

 

  • Desertification: when fertile lands become deserts 

 

  • Carbon-farming: absorbing carbon from the atmosphere and returning it into the ground

 

  • Rangeland: a large area of land populated by native species ( plants, animals)

 

  • restedland : land that has never been grazed

7.0 Assumptions

Explain the authors’ presuppositions, assumptions, and those things taken for granted.

The author's main assumption is that Savory's idea is already completely wrong. Initially it sounds like the author wanted to talk to Savory more to prove him wrong rather than actually listen to his ideas. In the article written by Brown it also sounds like he may have faced some backlash from a previous article published and is now trying to further justify his reasoning as to why Savory is wrong. Both authors also assume that they can somewhat change people's minds by the end of their articles.

8.0 Consequences

The overall end result was basically the breakdown of every point in Savory’s argument. Researchers used both reason and factual data to counter every point made. Savory’s argument was dissected and proven wrong so people reading these articles could understand why he was wrong along with the fact that his ideas were doing more damage than good. However, they're still some people who use Savory’s ideas on their own farms.











References

Biggest Little Farm. (2020). The biggest little farm synopsis. https://www.biggestlittlefarmmovie.com/synopsis/

Briske, D. D., Bestelmeyer, T., Brown, J. R., Fuhlendorf, S. D., & Polley, H. W. (2014). The Savory method can not green deserts or reverse climate change. Rangelands, 35(5), 72–74. https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles/4472/RANGELANDS-D-13-00044.pdf

Links to an external site.

Holmgren, D. (n.d.). About permaculture. Holmgren Design. https://holmgren.com.au/about-permaculture/

 Ketcham, C. (2017). Allan Savory’s holistic management theory falls short on science. Sierra.  https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2017-2-march-april/feature/allan-savory-says-more-cows-land-will-reverse-climate-change

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