Desertification a biological problem- are livestock the answer.

[llamedos]

Allan Savory presentation from Forum For Agriculture earlier this year.

source http://www.forumforagriculture.com/ffa2017-videos/ http://www.forumforagriculture.com/speeches-slides/

 

[Farmer Roy]

a very interesting bloke

 

[Yale]

Not much desertification going on around here......

 

[Pasty]

He has shown that he can reverse it. That's all we need to know really. He should be massively supported. Not a problem that affects us but on a wider scale, it's massive.

 

[7610 super q]

Do we want him to reverse it though ?

 

[ollie989898]

Is it economic to reverse it more to the point?

You realise that a lot of desertification was in fact caused by uneducated folk grazing animals on land to begin with?

Not to mention the idea that his animals are going to somehow make up for the fact that some of these places go without rain for months even years at a time?

The fact is there have always been deserts, they have grown and shrank over time according to the climate at the time. Humans have definitely meddled with some areas of land and caused desertification, that much is very clear.

 

[5312]

If his ideas were followed across the world, there would be a massive increase in beef and lamb production
But it does seem to work, not sure if the green lobby would be happy with all the extra methane though

 

[Farmer Roy]

moan moan groan not our problem the greens wont like it moan . . .

 

[CornishTone]

I do like listening to this guy. He has a very compelling argument and his theories do seem to give genuine results. Possibly more relevant to those of us in a dryer climate than the UK.

The bit I need clarification on is how does he start the process? I can get my head around the grazing cycle and how stock start to reverse the desertification process, but where does the initial feed for the stock come from if it's completely denuded of vegetation as some of those pictures show? They must have food there or they wouldn't last long enough to start increasing OM etc etc.

 

[Global ovine]

If his ideas were followed across the world, there would be a massive increase in beef and lamb production
But it does seem to work, not sure if the green lobby would be happy with all the extra methane though

The methane increases are more to do with nitrogenous fertiliser usage than number of ruminants. We have less ruminants on earth now than after the last ice age. It is just many are now farmed in relatively intensive systems driven by high N inputs. But point taken, as many of the green lobby are voraciously anti farming. Such is the disconnect with food origins.

 

[Farmer Roy]

Buy that man a beer

 

[5312]

The methane increases are more to do with nitrogenous fertiliser usage than number of ruminants. We have less ruminants on earth now than after the last ice age. It is just many are now farmed in relatively intensive systems driven by high N inputs. But point taken, as many of the green lobby are voraciously anti farming. Such is the disconnect with food origins.

I agree completely, in particular, they seem to be anti livestock farming even though grazing grass is very good for the environment as the videos show

 

[5312]

I do like listening to this guy. He has a very compelling argument and his theories do seem to give genuine results. Possibly more relevant to those of us in a dryer climate than the UK.

The bit I need clarification on is how does he start the process? I can get my head around the grazing cycle and how stock start to reverse the desertification process, but where does the initial feed for the stock come from if it's completely denuded of vegetation as some of those pictures show? They must have food there or they wouldn't last long enough to start increasing OM etc etc.

I am not sure how he managed it in some of those parts of Africa but some of the examples in the USA and Argentina they fed a lot of bought in hay to start with.

 

[ollie989898]

The green movement are often vociferously anti-farming because it can cause serious ecological damage to a region if it is not done very carefully.

Having large numbers of livestock in an area can cause extreme damage because of the way they consume biomass which is then removed into the human food chain.