Digging Deeper into Disruption
Kent Solberg, Consultant
Understanding Ag, LLC
Disruption is one of the three Rules of Adaptive Stewardship within the 6-3-4™ as taught through Understanding Ag, LLC, and the Soil Health Academy. Disruption is a normal part of agriculture and natural systems. Grazing is another form of disruption, which can and should be used to promote positive impacts on the soil ecosystem and your bottom line.
Disruption implementation
How a disruption is implemented is critical to managing and maintaining soil health and the ability of the soil biome to respond to the disruption. Our disruptions must be planned and purposeful, built around an understanding as to how they impact the soil resource and its ability to not only recover but to restore vital ecosystem functions, such as the ability to capture and store water from precipitation and cycle nutrients. As farm and ranch managers, we control the timing, intensity, duration, frequency and pattern of the disruptions. Each of these disruption aspects determine the outcome, or in other words, the compounding and cascading effects to either a set of positive or negative reactions (Rule of Compounding).
To be effective in building resiliency in our farm and ranch operations, implementing our disruption cannot violate the Six Principles of Soil Health. Let’s take a closer look at each aspect of a grazing disruption.
Timing
Timing relates to the time of year we implement our disruption (grazing event) on a particular portion of the land we manage. Farmers and ranchers, like most humans, prefer to operate on some form of a schedule. Cows are milked and or fed on a schedule, just as we tend to sleep at night, eat at certain times of the day, schedule activities and events, keep a calendar, etc. We find changes to that schedule, or routine, uncomfortable. However, if we schedule our grazing event on a particular portion of our land at the same time of year each year, it will have a strong influence on the vegetation present on that site.
This was driven home to me years ago when visiting various grazing operations. One example of note involved a farm that had been “rotational grazing” for several years. The pasture was divided with permanent division fences to create multiple paddocks, and across a broad valley on the far hillside, I noted that one of the small permanent paddocks really stood out across the green pasture. It was completely white, as if it had been painted. I asked the farmer what was growing on that site. He said “Oh, that’s yarrow, it’s in full bloom and I can’t seem to get rid of it. The cows don’t like it in bloom.” I asked him if he rotated through his paddocks at the same time each year. He said, “Yes, I begin here and get to each of them about the same time every year.” Unknowingly, his highly timed grazing schedule was creating the exact disruption that encouraged one specific plant to dominate a particular paddock. Changing the time of year we graze a particular paddock will influence the plant species composition within that paddock. If we are working to advance “Diversity” within the Six Principles of Soil Health, we need to adjust the time of year we implement our grazing disruption.
Intensity
Intensity includes both stock density (pounds of animal per acre during an individual grazing event) and the degree of forage utilization. If we consistently utilize greater than 70% of the above ground plant biomass because we feel we “need to so we are not wasting feed,” we will have a negative influence on preferred forage species.
There may be times we may want to have a high degree of utilization. For example, if we have a warm season native grass component in a paddock that is dominated by cool season tame grasses, we may target that site for a short-term intensive grazing event to suppress one set of plants at a specific time of year to encourage another to build greater plant diversity across our operation. Or we may create an ultra-high stock density event designed to trample a very high percentage of the plant biomass to stimulate a different plant response. However, we would not want to repeat these disruptions in the same manner on the same acres on a regular basis. We want to mix things up. Just as top athletes mix up the intensity of workout events to build strength and endurance, we want to mix up our grazing events to build resiliency in our pasture systems.
Duration
Duration is the amount of time the disruption will last. A set-stock, season-long continuous grazing program will produce a very different soil, plant and livestock response than short-duration grazing events. Research in Missouri has demonstrated that cattle will have the highest dry matter intake during day one and two on a paddock system where animals are moved every 5-7 days. These animals are not able to intake the minimal amount of dry matter to maintain body condition during the last 3-4 days while on that same paddock. When shifted to a new paddock, the pattern repeats itself. Less preferred forages begin to take over as the preferred forages are repeatedly clipped before having the opportunity to fully recover during the weeklong occupation of these paddocks, reducing overall pasture carrying capacity.
Daily paddock shifts within these larger paddocks can increase forage production and utilization, while adding additional days of rest and recovery to sites that have been grazed. We have observed 15-20% increases in available forage after only one year of implementing at least once-daily paddock shifts within larger paddocks. This is like adding 15-20% more pasture acreage without buying or renting additional pasture. Imagine what can that do for your bottom line.
Frequency
Frequency involves how often the disruption event takes place, or in other words, how long of a recovery and rest period there is between grazing events. Farmers in the east and Midwest often talk about how many days it takes to get around to all of their paddocks. Frequent numbers cited are 28-35 before they “need to” start the process again. Across the board, these operations are overstocked –period. Forage plant recovery is based on:
- The intensity of the previous grazing event;
- Weather;
- Time of year;
- Plant species present on the site; and
- Soil health
Each of these factors determine how long it will take the grazed plant to recover.
Consequently, we need to know how to identify when a grazed plant has recovered. Plants grazed in May have a different recovery time than plants grazed in August. Plants don’t operate on a set schedule, they respond based on the conditions listed above. If we want to build soil health and improve soil function, or in other words, address soil compaction and increase the depth of our soil aggregation, we need to add additional rest time. This rest period is roughly the same number of days it took the plants to recover from the previous grazing event. So, if it takes 42 days for the grazed plants to recover from a June grazing event and if we want to build soil biology and aggregation, we need to add at least another 42 days before we return animals to this site.
If you are saying to yourself at this point that you “can’t do that” on at least a portion of your pasture, you are overstocked. And if you are overstocked, it requires more mechanically harvested feed to maintain your herd or flock numbers–feed that is more expensive than what your animals can graze under their own power. If you are overstocked, you are simultaneously losing money and damaging your soil and forage resource base. Your ability to work through extreme weather events and market downturns is being severely hampered. More mouths to feed do not always equate to additional profits, so the number of animals must be in balance with your resource base.
Pattern
Pattern as discussed here includes the shape of our paddocks and how we rotate animals across our pastures. Noted in the example above, if we are in a set rotation pattern, it will have an influence on the plants that express themselves in that paddock. If we desire to honor the principle of diversity, we will strive to change which paddock we begin grazing in each year. We will use our temporary fencing, virtual fence or herding to adjust the shape of the paddock from grazing event to grazing event based on our goals and observations. We will strive to utilize a different paddock for calving or lambing each year, or which paddock we will use as our “vacation” paddock so that we can take our family on a reprieve from the operation for a few days, and we will move where our winter feeding (out wintering) will occur from year to year. In doing so, we will create a wider array of plant diversity across all our acres. We will build plant heterogeneity, or a mosaic of habitats, through the different stages of plant maturity, diversity of species, and the amount and type of cover across our acres to benefit a variety of grassland wildlife.
I hope you have identified a common theme running through each aspect of our planned disruptions – building diversity, which also builds resilience. Building this diversity through our management is based on the managers’ observations and adaptive management. Building observational skills is a major part of the Soil Health Academy’s learning experience to help you become a better manager. I hope you’ll consider becoming part of the growing number of farmers and ranchers who are using observation-based management to grow their operations through application of the 6-3-4ä.
When you do, I think you’ll discover that “disrupting” some of our traditional management conventions and traditions will yield a wide range of benefits for your land, your animals and your bottom line.