Holistic Ranch Management Helps With Economic and Climate Resilience

We hear a lot about climate change and global warming in the news. The warming trajectory provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) can give you a feeling of helplessness. Agriculture sometimes is portrayed poorly in the news, however managed land and the supporting agricultural activities only accounted for 13-21% of global total anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions according to the 2023 IPCC Working Group III Report. In addition, managed and natural terrestrial ecosystems (i.e. grasslands, forests, and rangelands) were a net carbon sink, sequestering a third of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Keeping the “greenside up” on our grasslands and rangelands is probably the best mitigation strategy farmers and ranchers in South Dakota can do.

Holistic ranch management

Holistic ranch management offered ways to think about ranching as part of an ecological system. Thus, inputs such as time, energy, and money can be evaluated as a whole, comparing benefits and tradeoffs simultaneously, to provide a more comprehensive decision-making system rather than impulsive, consumer/ production oriented thinking that permeates our culture. One strategy to help you get into this mindset is to put a high value on diversity. Diversity can be incorporated on multiple scales and systems. For example, range managers have always valued plant diversity because it increases forage quantity and quality for livestock production, reducing the need for expensive supplements. Enterprise diversity (more than one business operation) can generate multiple income streams from shared resources. Thus, the business can insulate itself from economic and climatic disruptions. If one sector of farm income is disrupted, the others are there to even it out.

I visited with Brett Nix and Jim Faulstich, Chair and vice-Chair of the South Dakota Grassland Coalition, respectively, about their experiences of diversifying their ranches. Brett Nix stressed his strategy was to diversify his livestock business. His cow-calf herd is the centerpiece, however the ranch includes three other sub-enterprises as key components: bred heifers kept as stockers, steers kept as stockers, and fat cows. This diversity within the cow-calf enterprise benefits the ranch operation by letting them be flexible to manage through obstacles like drought and variable markets. Brett also has planted farmland back to grassland with a diverse mixture of grasses and forbs. This provides forage for grazing, haying every 3rd or 4th year, and bale grazing in the winter. Brett’s stocking rate is actually double the county average because of the diverse forage resources and their ability to quickly adjust to changing forage conditions with their stockers and fat cows. Thus, they are more resilient when drought or grasshoppers reduce forage. Hence, rarely do the Nix’s need to destock the main cow herd. The bred heifers, steers, and fat cows allow greater flexibility to capture market highs and when grass is plentiful they can graze longer into the summer grazing season.