Management
February 7, 2023
Some ranchers recognize the importance of soil health as one of the many factors in ensuring a ranch’s sustainability.
“When we’re using grazing animals, it’s as a tool to help provide nutrients to the soil,” said Wendy Millet, the Ranch Director at TomKat Ranch in Pescadero, Calif.
When the soil is not functioning correctly, the water cycle gets disrupted. The plants depend on water to survive; if the soil is not healthy, it will not absorb water for the plants.
“If you have healthy soil, it’ll catch all the water, but if you have compacted soil, for example, it could run off,” Millet said.
Soil health is essential in trapping enough water for plants to function. In turn, the water used and stored by plants cools the Earth.
“You could think of grass as sort of an ice pack. The grass is not only holding water, but it’s also attracting water and cooling that surface,” Julie Morris said.
Joe and Julie Morris measured more than 20 degrees Fahrenheit difference between a patch of ground with dense vegetation and one with scarce vegetation. These areas of bare ground heat the Earth’s surface, creating what Joe Morris refers to as a heat dome.
“A heat dome, because it’s bare ground, pushes water away, and it won’t rain,” Joe Morris said. “We’ve seen this all over the world in various places where the landscape is degraded, and it no longer rains as much as it used to.”
According to Joe Morris, it is essential to focus on the health of the land to prevent degradation and keep the environment healthy.
“Healthier soil will be full of microbes that provide nutrients to the plants and ultimately to the livestock,” Millet said.
Plants are the backbone of the entire ecosystem. According to Joe Morris, the traditional ranching knowledge is that the cattle and the plants will do their jobs if left alone, but this type of management allows the cattle to overgraze and degrade the land.
“In a more conventional management system, you just let the cows out to do their thing, but in nature, predators would have come, and livestock would be moved along. So instead, we just use the electric fencing to keep the animals moving,” Millet said.
This management system allows the plants to work for the cattle and then have time to regenerate while the cattle move to graze in a different pasture. Joe Morris also shares this theory of managing cattle by time rather than solely by numbers.
“Plants need a certain time to recover so that they can work again. If my cattle or my decisions about my cattle do not honor the needs of the plant, the plants get weaker and ultimately die,” Joe Morris said.
According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, these practices combine to make sustainable ranches that improve land quality and reduce climate change, but not all ranchers make such efforts.