OVERVIEW

ebook one | THE FOUNDATIONS

OF HOLISTIC MANAGEMENT
 Copyright © Savory Institute 2019
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1|2 © SAVORY INSTITUTE 2019

THE FOUNDATIONS
OF HOLISTIC MANAGEMENT
CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 5
Holistic Management delivers results 5
Improving resource management in these challenging times 5
The time for Holistic Management 6

THE KEY INSIGHTS OF HOLISTIC MANAGEMENT 9

First key insight: 9
A holistic perspective is essential in management—Nature functions in wholes
Second key insight: 10
The brittleness scale and how it affects the land’s response to the influences upon it
Third key insight: 12
The predator-prey connection and land health in brittle environments
Fourth key insight: 13
Time rather than numbers governs overgrazing (and overtrampling)

NURTURING OUR PLANET THROUGH HOLISTIC MANAGEMENT 15

Ecosystem processes: Understanding the language of the land 15
Tools for managing ecosystem processes 16

CORE COMPONENTS OF HOLISTIC MANAGEMENT 17

Whole under management: Clarifying what you are managing 17
Holistic context: Creating the context for your management 17
Actions and decision making: Selecting appropriate tools and actions 17
Context checks: Using the seven checking questions 18
Feedback loop: Monitoring proactively 19

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 PLANNING AND MONITORING PROCEDURES 21
Building wealth 21
Land and livestock management 22

GUIDELINES FOR USING THE MANAGEMENT TOOLS 27

HOLISTIC MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK 30

GLOSSARY 31

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INTRODUCTION
HOLISTIC MANAGEMENT DELIVERS RESULTS
For over 40 years Holistic Management has delivered results for land managers and those
who care for the land. Whether you are a commercial or subsistence farmer, rancher,
pastoralist, environmentalist, government employee, or informed consumer, Holistic
Management gives you the management tools to understand nature and work with it.
This whole farm/whole ranch/whole conservation area/whole community/whole system
approach to resource management provides you with some key principles and practices
that will help you manage land to improve its health and create a sustainable future for
generations to come.
Thousands of people are managing holistically to improve land health and productivity,
increase profitability, and improve the quality of life for all who rely on the resources
managed. This ebook provides an overview of the holistic management basics and is the
starting point of a journey that will enable you to masterfully create the results you want
now and for future generations.

IMPROVING RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IN THESE CHALLENGING TIMES

Resource managers everywhere are challenged by declining land productivity, increasing
costs of production, pressures from the global marketplace, onerous government
regulations, extreme weather, changes in societal attitudes about land use, and a host of
other concerns. Most people who want to learn more about holistic management have
already heard about the solid results people achieve: increased profits, stocking rates, and
crop yields, and the return of springs and creeks along with increased production of many
perennial grasses, much more wildlife, and improved quality of life. Holistic management
will help you assess your situation and manage it from a holistic perspective. By
understanding how nature functions and managing your resources to enhance symbiotic
relationships, everyone wins.

You use Holistic Management in conjunction with the

tools you already have in your toolbox, maximizing your
effectiveness as a decision maker and resource manager.

If you are a land manager, you can enhance your ability to interact with and manage your
resources by looking carefully at the environment in which you live—at the soil cover,
moisture, and fertility, the variety of living organisms on the land around you, and how
well plants are capturing the sun’s energy. All these and many other factors affect how

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 productive your land will be, not only today, but if you do your job well and manage
your resources carefully, far into the future. You are not simply a land manager, but a
land steward. And, when you consciously address your social and economic needs in the
process, you will have a greater ability to sustain the progress you have made on the land.
Healthy environments support a variety of different living things, from the tiniest soil
organisms, to the plants that grow above the soil surface, to the animals that harvest them
and cycle the nutrients back into the soil. This biodiversity brings strength and balance to
an environment. If you do a good job managing your land resources, you build and sustain
diverse populations of living things and enhance the environment that sustains us all.
Holistic management, simply put, helps us make better, more informed decisions that
balance social, environmental, and financial considerations, while leading us in the
direction we want our lives to take.

THE TIME
Holistic FOR HOLISTIC
Planned MANAGEMENT
Grazing: Making Grasslands Whole Again
A new approach
Although is neededhave
many grasslands to address the most
been badly pressing
degraded global problems
it is possible to managewethemfaceto
today: degradation.
reverse global climate change, failing
Well-managed agriculture,
grasslands haveincreased droughtsrole
a very important andtoflood events,
play globally
as providers ofrates
catastrophic livelihoods, water catchments,
of soil erosion, hunger and and bio-diverse
poverty, among habitat
otherfor a multitude
disasters, of
combined
plants and animals (Milchunas & Lauenroth, 1993; Savory and Butterfield,
with the broadening recognition that our economic models, based on the flawed 1999). In
addition, they hold a large reserve of soil carbon which, when released under
presumptioncontributes
degradation, of infinitetogrowth
carbonindioxide
a worldemissions.
of finite resources,
However, underare inherently unsustainable.
restorative
This new approach
management degraded needs to involve
grassland a paradigm
can enhance shift, a sequestration
soil carbon whole new way of thinking,
(Derner et al.,
2006; Allard
because the et
oldal.,ways
2007;
of Soussana
thinking et al.,helped
have 2010; Teague et al.,global
create these 2011).problems.

Holistic Management
An innovative biologistis in
that paradigm
Zimbabwe
shift. named Allan
First conceived and Savory
developed by
pioneered Holistic Management
Zimbabwean ecologist, game ranger,
and its planning process, Holistic
politician, farmer, and
Planned Grazing. rancher
Thanks to Allan
Savory
Savoryover
and40 yearsfor
others, ago, Holistic
decades we
have been learning how to
Management is guided by a decision restore
grasslands
making andby mimicking nature.
management In
framework
fact, the synergistic nature of eco-
(shown on page
restoration 30) that helps
is a prominent themeensure
economic,
throughoutecological, and social
Holistic Management.
The process
soundness, involves re-establishing
simultaneously, both short-
the evolutionary relationships
and long-term (see biography at http://
between grazing animals and their
Allan Savory, Founder of Holistic Management savory.global). Savoryconservation
habitats. Successful articulated four key
Allan Savory, Founder of Holistic Management insights
minded that are pivotal
grassland to our
managers
understanding of the natural world—insights that underpinpracticingthe Holistic
Holistic Management
Management
enhance the health of the ecosystem upon which we depend, as well as improve
framework. Holistic land, grazing, and financial planning procedures enable on-the-ground their
profitability and quality of life. This is done while simultaneously providing ecosystem
managers to effectively handle the inherent complexity of stewarding natural ‘wholes.’
services desired by society through building soil, water, and plant resources (Walters,
1986; Holling & Meffe, 1996; Stinner et al., 1997; Reed et al., 1999; Savory and
Butterfield, 1999; Barnes et al., 2008; Teague et al., 2009).
1 | 6 To
© SAVORY INSTITUTE 2019
accomplish this, Holistic Management practitioners
combine scientific principles and local knowledge to
The focus of this series of ebooks is on the ecologically regenerative, economically viable, and
socially sound management of the world’s grasslands. These environments comprise two-
thirds of the earth’s landmass. Their degradation has been ongoing since the first hominids
discovered the tool of fire, and has accelerated in concert with the expansion of the human
population (with its associated reduction and in some cases eradication of most of the
world’s large wild grazing and browsing animals, the subsequent replacement with fewer
numbers of more sedentary, domesticated livestock, and soil-degrading cropping practices).
Land degradation starts with a loss of soil cover, composed of both living plants and
decaying plant litter, which leads to less effective water and mineral/nutrient cycling,
reduced solar energy flow, and reduced biodiversity in terms of species and numbers of
individuals within them. This degradation can lead to the loss of previously sequestered
soil carbon (a major source of our existing atmospheric CO2 load), severely degraded land
or desertification, and the loss of food production capacity.
The Green Revolution, based on high input, industrial agriculture (massive inputs of
petrochemicals and herbicides, monoculture cropping, and confinement animal feeding
operations) has increased global food production tremendously, but has tended to severely
degrade its ecological and socio-cultural capital base in the process.
The Green Revolution has not been characterized by ecological or social integrity—quite
the contrary. Horrific soil erosion, dead zones at the mouths of rivers, severely depleted
levels of biodiversity, impoverished rural communities, soil fertility loss, and oxidation of
soil organic matter have been exacerbated by the Green Revolution in many places.
The good news is that land degradation can in most cases be reversed, and this is the task
in which Holistic Management practitioners have been engaged for over 40 years. We now
have successful Holistic Management practitioners spread across the globe, from Canada
to the tip of Patagonia, to Europe to Zimbabwe, to Australia to Montana. We posit the
necessity of a new ‘Revolution’ (perhaps a Brown Revolution), based on the regeneration of
covered, organically rich, biologically thriving soil, healthy plants and animals, and brought
to fruition via millions of human beings returning to the land and producing food.
The more humid, reliable rainfall regions of the world will have to develop agricultural
models based on small, biodiverse farms, imitating the natural, multi-tiered vegetation
structures of these environments. This is where most of the grain, fruits, nuts, and
vegetables will be produced. Based on the premise of ecological integrity, these farms,
will out of ecological necessity be small and highly diverse. The Holistic Management
framework has an essential role to play in the evolution and management of farms in these
types of environments, and many others are working on and developing the practical
know-how, insights, and production models that will lead to success on the ground.
Most people managing holistically are more versed in the other two-thirds of the world—
the grasslands. Broadly defined, grasslands are those environments in which grasses play a

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 critical role in stabilizing soil—from dry deciduous forests to savannas or open grasslands
to arid and semiarid rangelands. These are environments that coevolved in the presence of
large grazing herbivores, in conjunction with their pack-hunting predators, and in most
instances they are characterized by seasonal or erratic rainfall, and extended periods of the
year with very low atmospheric and soil humidity. The presence of these large herbivores,
interacting with their landscapes the way nature intended, is critical. Via the skillful
practice of Holistic Planned Grazing, we can effectively mimic this behavior, reversing
land degradation, and generating solar-based profit in the process. In these environments,
ranches and grazing lands should be moving to ever-larger management units (which may
be achieved through collaboration if not through ownership), allowing for larger herds.
The implications of taking this management approach to scale in the grasslands of the
world are massive. Slight increases in soil organic matter over these huge portions of Earth’s
landmass, may result in the long-term safe and natural sequestration of many gigatons of
carbon. In effect, we would be putting masses of carbon back where it belongs—in the
soil—and more importantly, where it can actually do some good. Organically rich soils feed
soil bacteria, protozoans, and fungi, active populations of which lead to ever greater plant-
available nutrients and less and less dependence on outside fertilizer inputs.
Soils that are higher in organic matter also
possess greater water holding capacity,
thereby increasing drought resilience and
water infiltration, which may lead to
regenerating aquifer and ground water
reserves critical for cities and communities
throughout the globe. In the process of
doing this—in effect, mimicking nature—
there is no creation of ‘waste’ as it actually
becomes an asset, input costs are
dramatically reduced, animals tend to be
healthier and more productive, and profit
(based on ecological integrity, or true
wealth, derived directly from the sun) is
Bison rancher and holistic manager Mimi Hillenbrand
the result. Of course, we also are producing
showing her grazing and land plans.
Photo by Kirk Gadzia nutrient-dense, pasture-produced
protein—exactly what our Paleolithic,
hunter/gatherer evolved physiology is
designed to consume.

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THE KEY INSIGHTS OF HOLISTIC MANAGEMENT
The four key insights brought to light by Allan Savory and discussed at length in Holistic
Management: A Common sense Revolution to Restore Our Environment (Third Edition), are
the foundation of Holistic Management. Once you understand these key insights you
will be better able to see how your actions can be designed to enhance the land’s health
and productivity. The first insight makes the argument for why a Holistic Management
framework was needed and the form it should take. The next three insights enable us
to understand why some environments rapidly deteriorate under practices that benefit
others, and add pieces to the new framework that proved vital for completing it.

FIRST KEY INSIGHT

A holistic perspective is essential in management—Nature functions in wholes
You are probably familiar with the phrase, ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts’
as a way to describe holism. A more telling description would be that nature (including
humans) functions in wholes and patterns. In other words, what we view as ‘parts’ of
a whole are merely different aspects of that whole. To view it as a part suggests we can
remove it or replace it and the whole will remain the same—like a machine.
In taking a holistic perspective, we recognize that we must pay attention to the
relationships that exist between these different aspects of the whole. In this way we can
build or make use of those that are symbiotic, or mutually-beneficial, which is necessary
for effective management. We now realize that no whole, be it a family, a business, a
community, or a nation, can be managed without looking inward to the lesser wholes that
combine to form it, and outward to the greater wholes of which it is a member.

“Individual parts do not exist in nature,

only wholes, and these form and shape each other.”
Allan Savory

If you want to effectively manage your land resources, improve biodiversity status,
increase production, create profit, and lead your desired quality of life, it is important to
understand that you cannot change or control one thing in one area without having an
impact on something else in another. In this way, each whole is unique because of the
different variables and relationships at play.
Allan Savory says, “Not only is the world more complex than we understand, it’s more
complex than we can EVER understand. For centuries humans have tried to manage land
with little success because on its own land is not manageable. The land is so tied to the

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 culture of the people and to the economy that all three need to be managed indivisibly, as
we do when managing holistically.”

SECOND KEY INSIGHT

The brittleness scale and how it affects the land’s response to the influences upon it
The second insight overturns the belief that all environments respond in the same manner
to the same influences. They don’t. Resting an environment, for instance, can restore it—
in some places—but it can lead to desertification in others. The difference depends on
how ‘brittle’ the environment is.

THE BRITTLENESS SCALE

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

According to the brittleness scale, a rainforest

would be a 1 and a desert would be a 10.

Environments can be classified on a brittleness scale that ranges from 1 (evergreen tropical
forest) to 10 (true desert) based on how well humidity is distributed throughout the year,
and how quickly dead vegetation breaks down. All environments appear at some point
along this scale, as represented in the diagram above, and will respond differently to some
of the same influences, depending on the degree of brittleness.
At the nonbrittle end of the scale, humidity is perennial and dead vegetation breaks down
rapidly and biologically because the microorganisms of decay are present throughout the
year. The main herbivores in such environments are insects. Larger herbivores tend to be
solitary as well as their predators.
At the very brittle end of the scale humidity is seasonal and precipitation erratic even
within the growing season. Dead vegetation tends to break down slowly through
chemical decomposition (oxidation) and weathering in the absence of large herbivores,
which would otherwise trample dead leaves to the ground or graze them and break them
down through digestion. Prior to human intervention, the main herbivores in these
environments were large herding animals that were kept bunched and moving through
the influence of pack-hunting predators.

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Toward the nonbrittle end, dead grass leaves and stems are soft, moist and crumple when
squeezed in your hand. At the brittle end, dead leaves and stems are brittle, dry, and
shatter when squeezed in your hand.
The brittleness scale is not about the quantity of precipitation that falls but the constancy
of humidity at the soil surface. If you have dry and wet seasons, then both humidity
and precipitation are seasonal and the environment is brittle—the briefer the periods of
humidity and/or the more erratic, the more brittle it is. When humidity is present year
round, the environment would be nonbrittle. The longer and more stable the period of
humidity, the less brittle the environment.
In nonbrittle environments decay occurs
rapidly, whether or not large herbivores are
present. Decay in these environments is
achieved biologically through the activities of
billions of small organisms—from bacteria,
molds and fungi to insects in high populations
—which thrive in the year-round humidity.
In brittle environments decay is much slower
and almost always needs large herding animals
to facilitate decomposition by getting plant materials in contact with the soil surface
through tromping and dunging. Regardless of atmospheric humidity these large herding
animals maintain a constant internal humidity in their gut. Here they sustain very high
populations of microorganisms capable of processing mature, fiber-rich plant material,
such as seasonally dormant or dead grasses, that grow vigorously during the growing
season, and stop when the rainfall ceases.

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 Worldwide, more than 60 percent of environments are brittle to some degree. Some low-
rainfall environments are quite low on the brittleness scale, because humidity is present
through most of the year. Conversely, some high-rainfall environments are high on the
brittleness scale because for long periods during each year the atmosphere is very dry.
It is not crucial to pinpoint the exact number on the brittleness scale. What is important is
to determine where you are approximately so you can ensure that the actions you take to
improve your land produce the results you intend.

SOMETHING TO OBSERVE
Think about where you live, the level of humidity in the air, and how it is distributed
throughout the year. Think about how long it takes vegetation to break down. For
example, when you look around, do you see moss growing on brick buildings,
recently fallen logs already partially decayed, living organisms moving about on the
soil surface, etc.? All of these are signs of a nonbrittle environment.

On the other hand, perhaps you see tall stands of dead, gray-colored grass, logs that
have been lying in the same place for years but have not changed significantly in
appearance, large bare spaces between plants, etc. These observations indicate a
brittle environment.

Based on the brittleness scale, would you say you live in a nonbrittle (1–3), or less
brittle (4–6) or very brittle (7–10) environment? Remember, the extremes are: 1 =
Rainforest and 10 = True Desert

THIRD KEY INSIGHT

The predator-prey connection and land health in brittle environments
During his time as a wildlife biologist in Africa, Allan Savory watched the movements of
large herds of game animals. He noticed how they behaved when a predator was in the
area—they bunched together for safety and milled around, trampling the plants and soil
beneath them. In that process, they broke up the soil, trampled down old, gray stems and
leaves, scattered seeds and covered them over with soil, dung and urine. They essentially
returned dead plant parts to the soil surface where they could decay and helped plant new
grasses, simply by their behavior. In addition, the microorganisms missing from the soil
surface in brittle environment dry or dormant seasons could be found in the stomachs of
the herding animals. Thus, the third key insight was that in brittle environments, relatively
high numbers of large, herding animals concentrated and moving as they naturally do
when pack-hunting predators are present, are vital to maintaining the health of the
grasslands we once thought they destroyed. In practice, herding animals may also have a
role to play in maintaining nonbrittle grasslands as well.

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The predator-prey connection maintained vast regions of brittle environment grasslands in
sound condition for millions of years. Humans broke this connection when they removed
the predators and caused the behavior of their herding prey to change: herds relaxed and
spread out; unbunched, the animal hooves no longer trampled down plants or chipped
and aerated soil surfaces. Land health and productivity began to decline, often rapidly.
Using Holistic Planned Grazing, we can now manage livestock in a way that mimics the
behavior produced by the predator-prey relationship and begin to restore the grasslands.

FOURTH KEY INSIGHT

Time rather than numbers governs overgrazing and overtrampling
A common belief throughout the world is that overgrazing and overtrampling, and the
land destruction that ensues, is caused by the presence of too many animals, and virtually
all land improvement schemes call for the reduction or removal of animals. Allan Savory
also accepted this common wisdom, but later found too many situations where it didn’t
seem to apply or didn’t make sense. Why, for example, was some of the healthiest most
productive land located in the areas where wildlife herds were enormous? Why was some
of the worst land degradation occurring in protected research plots and preserves where no
herds were present?
The research of French pasture specialist Andre Voisin provided a vital clue. He had
established that overgrazing bore little relationship to the number of animals but was
based instead on the time plants were exposed to the animals. If animals remained in any
one place for too long or if they returned to it before plants had recovered, they overgrazed
plants. Savory realized that the same held true for trampling. The disturbance needed for
the health of the soil became an evil if prolonged too much or repeated too soon.

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 Hereford herd managed using Voisin’s principles in the less brittle Pampas of Argentina.

So how had time figured in the grazing and trampling of the vast wild herds of the past?
Savory reasoned that animals that bunch closely to ward off predators also dung and
urinate in high concentration and thus foul the ground and plants on which they are
feeding. No animals normally like to feed on their own feces, as anyone who has kept and
observed horses will know. Thus, to be able to feed on fresh plants the herds had to keep
moving off the areas they had fouled. And they could not, ideally, return to the fouled
area until the dung and urine had weathered and worn off. This meant that plants and
soils would have been exposed to massive disturbance in the form of grazing, trampling,
dunging and urinating, but only for a day or so, followed by a period of time which gave
the soil and plants an opportunity to recover.

Overgrazing of plants and damage from trampling had

less to do with the number of animals on the land, and
more to do with the amount of time the plants and soils
were exposed to animals.

Together the last three insights provide an explanation for why so many environments
have continued to deteriorate under human management and how we can rectify this.
The discovery of the brittleness scale and the vital role of herding animals and their
predators in maintaining the health of the more brittle environments, showed why these
environments were prone to desertification. And the discovery that overgrazing and
overtrampling were not a result of too many animals, but rather how long plants and
soils were exposed and re-exposed to them, led to the development of a grazing planning
procedure that enabled us to use concentrated livestock, constantly moving, to provide the
same benefits to plants and soils once provided by wild herds.

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NURTURING OUR PLANET THROUGH HOLISTIC MANAGEMENT

ECOSYSTEM PROCESSES: UNDERSTANDING THE LANGUAGE OF THE LAND

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 Many people will focus on a certain species of plant or animal as an indicator of
ecosystem health, wanting a noxious weed gone or a certain animal species to dominate
the landscape. With Holistic Management, our first priority is to cover the soil and keep
it covered year-round.

TOOLS FOR MANAGING ECOSYSTEM PROCESSES

As ebook #3 explains, we have four categories of tools to consider: technology, the first
and most used tool; fire, the most ancient tool; rest, the most misunderstood tool; and
living organisms, the biological tools, which now include animal impact (for regenerating
soils and shaping landscapes) and grazing (for enhancing soil, plant and animal health
and productivity). However, none of these tools can be applied except through the use of
human creativity, money and labor.
When people think of tools they usually think in terms of technology and the many
forms available: computers, machinery, equipment, etc. But with Holistic Management,
when we refer to tools we mean all of the categories listed above. Wherever you are on the
planet, every management action you take will involve at least one of the three primary
tools of human creativity, money, and labor, and one or more of the secondary tools of
technology, fire, rest, and living organisms.
Until recently, people have not recognized animal impact and grazing as biological
tools that can significantly influence the healthy functioning of ecosystem processes—
probably because for centuries humans have vilified livestock for causing those processes
to malfunction. Fire is often considered natural, but no fire lit by a human is natural, nor
is resting land from any form of disturbance (such as that provided by livestock) natural.
However, no tool should be regarded as good or bad, outside the context of the whole you
are managing. Only when the holistic context (covered in the next section) and the degree
of brittleness are known can we begin to judge whether a particular tool is suitable or
unsuitable in that particular situation, at that time.

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CORE COMPONENTS OF HOLISTIC MANAGEMENT
WHOLE UNDER MANAGEMENT: CLARIFYING WHAT YOU ARE MANAGING
Key to understanding holistic decision making is remembering the first insight: the world
functions in wholes. Each of us is responsible for managing at least one whole—ourselves
as individuals. And beyond that first whole, there may be several larger wholes—a farm, a
family, or a business. As ebook #4 explains, when clarifying the whole you are managing,
there are three key things you need to identify the following:
>> The decision makers—those directly involved in its management.
>> The resource base, which refers to the physical resources—land, buildings, equipment,
and other assets—from which you will generate revenue or derive support, plus the
people who influence or are influenced by your management.
>> The money available or that you can generate from the resource base.
Knowing who and what your whole includes helps you determine who makes
management decisions, who merely influences the decisions made, and it helps put
boundaries around what you will or will not be managing.

HOLISTIC CONTEXT: CREATING THE CONTEXT FOR YOUR MANAGEMENT

The decision makers identified in the whole you have just described now create one all-
embracing holistic context (covered in detail in ebook #4). You will refer to it often when
making day-to-day management decisions, and when developing strategies that have
traditionally been framed within a much narrower context. It has two aspects:
>> Quality of life—an expression of the way you want your lives to be within the whole
under management.
>> Future resource base—a description of the environment and behaviors that will sustain
that quality of life for your successors.
If you are managing an organization formed for a specific purpose, then prior to
creating your holistic context, state that purpose because it will inform the context
and your management.

ACTIONS AND DECISION MAKING: SELECTING APPROPRIATE TOOLS

AND ACTIONS
As you move forward with management you will create many plans involving a variety
of goals and objectives and the tactics, strategies and policies for achieving them. Just as
before, the actions you plan will address your immediate needs or desires for improving
your lives or your business, and for addressing any problems that stand in the way. But, in
doing so your holistic context reminds you to not lose sight of what is meaningful to you

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 in both the short and long term. It will lead to the inclusion of what you plan to do to
create the quality of life your holistic context describes and the environment and behaviors
that will sustain it. This generally necessitates considerable thought, assessment of current
actions and development of plans to achieve yet further goals that will bring about the
lives you desire and, if an organization, to meet your stated purpose.
You decide which actions to take and tools to use to achieve your goals and objectives
based on the same commonsense criteria you’ve always used: past experience, expert
advice, research results, cultural norms, peer pressure, expediency, compromise, cost, cash
flow, profitability, intuition, laws and regulations, and so on. Then you run the actions
you plan to take through seven checking questions to ensure they are in line with your
holistic context.

CONTEXT CHECKS: USING THE SEVEN CHECKING QUESTIONS

As ebook #5 explains, once you have selected which actions are best to take, you now
pose a series of questions to filter out actions that might not be in context, and thus not
socially, environmentally and economically sound both short and long-term.
In brief, the questions are:
>> Does this action address the root cause of the problem?
>> The weakest link in the situation?
>> Does it provide a greater return, in terms of time and money spent, than other
possible actions?
>> Which of two or more possible enterprises provides the best gross profit (if choosing
among enterprises)?
>> Is the energy or money to be used in this action derived from the most appropriate
source, and will it be used in the most appropriate way, based on the holistic context?
>> Will this action lead toward or away from the future resource base described in the
holistic context?
>> Finally, based on the picture that has emerged, how do you feel about this action now
–how will it affect your quality of life and that of others?

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 Rarely do farmers, ranchers, pastoralists,
and landscape managers deliberately
degrade their land. Every generation
genuinely believes it is doing the best it
can. Unfortunately though, on every
continent there are widespread examples
of desertified and desertifying land,
suggesting something serious has been
amiss. It also suggests that after such a
long time, some of the problems might be
predictable if things were viewed through
a different lens. The context checks are
The context checks helped determine that goats would such a lens.
be best for creating the desired landscape.

The context checks are a quick and simple exercise that helps ensure your actions are
ecologically, financially and socially sound relative to your holistic context. They help
bring out both the short- and long-term consequences stemming from your actions,
which is helpful since we all have experienced adverse effects from actions that seemed like
a good idea at the time.

FEEDBACK LOOP: MONITORING PROACTIVELY

In Holistic Management the word plan
(assume wrong with has become a 24‑letter word:
environmental
decisions) plan‑monitor‑control‑replan. In the
PLAN MONITOR illustration, these words are incorporated
into a loop because planning is not an
event but a continuous process. Once a
THE
plan is made, you need to monitor what
FEEDBACK
LOOP happens from the outset because
unforeseen circumstances always lie
ahead. When the feedback from your
REPLAN CONTROL monitoring indicates the plan or action is
causing you to deviate from the goal or
objective you’re trying to reach, you must
act to control the deviation. Occasionally
events go beyond your control and there is a need to replan. The better you control the
plan the less you have to replan. (See Chapter 44 in Holistic Management, Third Edition,
for details).

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 If an action, or a plan outlining several actions attempts to alter ecosystem processes in
some way, then, despite having done your best to select the right action or strategy and
checked to ensure that it was in context, you assume from the outset that, given nature’s
complexity, you could be wrong. Then you monitor, on the assumption you are wrong,
for the earliest possible warnings so you can control or correct the situation before any
damage is done. This keeps management proactive rather than reactive or adaptive.
This proactive monitoring also applies in financial planning and to actions or decisions
involving quality of life and human behavior. In monitoring a financial plan, the key
principle is to control deviations within each income or expense category and not simply
allow deviations between them to balance out. Many people note any differences in
income and expense projections each month and control their plan based on overall
figures. As long as the bottom line comes out all right, all is well. But this leads to sloppy
management and often frequent replanning. Treat each income or expense category
separately and control within each category and you will keep control of your plan.
In day-to-day management it is important to continually monitor the following:
>> Your planned actions for creating the quality of life your holistic context describes.
>> The quality of your relationships with the people in your resource base whose loyalty,
respect and support you need.
In each case, the earlier you detect signs of change the easier it is to remain on track. If,
for instance, your holistic context includes quality time with family and you have planned
a regular activity each month, have you put the dates in your calendar? Monitoring the
quality of your relationships often comes down to monitoring behavior. The earliest signs
of trouble may be reflected in a change in attitude (e.g. loss of enthusiasm) and in body
language (e.g. avoiding eye contact). You would never assume your expectations of the
person’s behavior are wrong, you would want to assume they are right for the obvious
reason that positive (and higher) expectations lead to enhanced performance.
When managing holistically you are not monitoring to see what happens; you are
monitoring to make happen what you want to happen—to bring about changes in line
with your holistic context.

The word plan is actually a 24-letter word:

Plan—Monitor—Control—Replan

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PLANNING AND MONITORING PROCEDURES
Holistic Management has evolved and been refined through nearly 50 years of
observation, practice, and trial and error. It has been used by tens of thousands of farmers,
ranchers, small businesses and non-profit organizations, families and individuals—all with
the aim of helping people make management decisions that are socially, environmentally,
and economically sound. The following planning and monitoring procedures were
developed because Holistic Management enabled us to depart from conventional practice
in key ways. Holistic Financial Planning includes refinements to the best of conventional
financial planning specifically applicable to agriculture. Holistic Land Planning enables
us to effectively and economically plan (and/or replan) the infrastructure on large tracts
of land that livestock will graze. The Holistic Planned Grazing procedure is essential for
planning livestock moves to restore degraded land to health while keeping livestock
healthy and productive and integrating crop and wildlife production and other land uses.
Two additional processes are covered in the Holistic Management textbook: Holistic
Policy Development enables us to reframe policies created in the context of a problem to
ones developed within a holistic context to better ensure their success; and the Holistic
Research Orientation helps us design research projects that meet the needs of management,
including the filling in of critical knowledge gaps.

BUILDING WEALTH
Holistic Financial Planning: Generating lasting wealth
Good financial management is essential in any business that seeks to be viable and
profitable. Agricultural producers have an additional requirement and that is to ensure
that the means to achieving viability and profit also generate ecological wealth. By
integrating this simple-to-use, cash-based financial planning process into your current
accounting or budgeting systems, you will not only be able to increase your profit, but
also improve your quality of life and your land’s health and productivity.
Holistic Financial Planning, covered more fully in ebooks #6 and #7, was developed
specifically for agricultural businesses, but it can and has provided useful insights and
benefits when adopted by other businesses. Two key principles in Holistic Financial
Planning differentiate it from other methods:
1. Plan profit before planning expenses. Just as work expands to fill the time available,
so expenses often rise to the level of anticipated income. By planning profit first, we
overcome this tendency.
2. Check for context alignment. Which actions are actually moving you in the direction
you want to go—as you have indicated in your holistic context? The context checks
make sure we prioritize those actions that do move us in that direction while ensuring
we achieve a healthy triple bottom line (financial, environmental, social).

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 The planning process includes two parts.
The first is devoted to reviewing the
current year’s plan, gathering information
and figures for the new plan, and running
decisions through the context checks. The
information you gather should include
answers to the following questions:
>> Is there anything blocking the business
as a whole from making progress toward
its goals? If so, how will you address this
‘logjam’?
>> Are there other factors adversely affecting the business as a whole in terms of
productivity and efficiency?
>> Are current enterprises profitable and have you spread your risk?
>> What is the weak link in each enterprise and how will you address it?
When you have completed this first part of the planning you will have identified
all sources of income and estimated the amounts, confirmed which enterprises are
contributing the most to covering the overhead of the business, which enterprises you will
run in the coming year and what they will cost to run, and identified ways you can cut
expenses while maintaining the integrity of the business and your quality of life.
All of the thinking, decision checking, and sorting of the information you compile, then
comes into play in the second part when you put your plan on a spreadsheet. If you’ve done
the first part well and researched the income and costs involved in the ideas you want to
implement, you probably won’t need more than a day or two to put your plan on paper.
The bulk of your time will be spent in planning the income and then preventing expenses
from rising to equal it. This may involve considerable adjustment as you prioritize the
expenses that will have money allocated to them, make sure the plan cash flows, and that
any borrowing you plan to do, or debt you already have incurred, can be serviced.

LAND AND LIVESTOCK MANAGEMENT

Holistic Planned Grazing: Getting animals to the right place, at the right time,
with the right behavior
If livestock are included in the whole you are managing Holistic Planned Grazing is a key
practice to incorporate into your management. It enables you to plan livestock moves and
a host of other factors that will prove key to your success­—financially, environmentally
and socially. Ebook #8 covers the fundamentals of Holistic Planned Grazing and ebook
#9 the instructions for creating your grazing plan. Decisions such as what species and class
of livestock you run, how many, and so on, will be determined as you do your financial

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planning each year. The primary focus of the grazing planning is on getting livestock
moves right.
To plan those moves, you need to divide your land into paddocks (also referred to as
pastures, camps, and a variety of other names). These can be ‘virtual’ paddocks in cases
where fencing is not in context and herding is used to control animal movements. In other
contexts, paddocks are generally demarcated with fencing—temporary or permanent
fence, a single electric wire, or electric netting (for more challenging species to manage,
like goats) or a combination of all of the above.
Planning the layout of new paddocks is something we do as part of Holistic Land
Planning (covered next), but having the ideal layout in place is not necessary before
implementing Holistic Planned Grazing. You can start with what you have. Just measure
the sizes of existing paddocks and note where water is available and how much, as you
will likely be running animals in larger herds that require more water.

The grazing planning procedure enables any farmer, rancher, or pastoralist to produce the
best possible plan at any time by adding value to the knowledge he or she invariably has
already in his or her head. It is an extremely effective way of addressing the full complexity
involved when managing soil, plants, animals, and integrating the animals with any other
activities on that land.
Most people cannot deal with more than a few variables at once and none can plan the
complexity involved in managing livestock to regenerate grasslands and livelihoods using
only their memory, a notebook, or calendar. So the planning is done following simple
steps in a specific order. Every possible consideration is addressed one by one in the steps
and recorded on the grazing chart until a clear picture emerges of where the animals
should and should not be at certain times. The moves of the animals are then plotted,

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 to ensure that animals are where they need to be at the right time, and with the right
behavior (based on what you are trying to achieve).
Holistic Planned Grazing has been used for nearly 50 years in a variety of situations—
from the margins of true deserts with almost no rainfall to tropical forests with abundant
rainfall. The secret to its success is nothing more than trusting the procedure, following it,
and recognizing that it, like all planning is a continuous process—plan, monitor, control
and replan.
Holistic Planned Grazing is usually done twice a year—at the onset of the growing
season (growing season plan) and again when growth has slowed or stopped for the year
(nongrowing season plan). The growing season plan is called an open-ended plan because
it is left open toward the end of the growing season, as you don’t know when growth
will slow or end. The nongrowing season plan is called a closed plan because it is carried
through to a specific end date—a month or more after growth is normally expected to
begin in the following season. This additional ‘month or more’ becomes the drought
reserve. In brittle environments you assume every year is going to be a drought, or a long,
hard winter.
The main aim of the growing season plan is to grow the maximum amount of forage
possible. The aim of the nongrowing season plan is to ration out the forage you have
grown so that it feeds both livestock and wildlife until new growth occurs.

An example of a Holistic Grazing Plan for a Ranch in Sonora Mexico.

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Holistic Land Planning: Designing the ideal layout of facilities for a grazing operation
Holistic Planned Grazing and Holistic Land Planning were developed in tandem in the
1960s when Allan Savory first understood the role of time in grazing and trampling. He
knew that animals would have to move continually, but to do that required new thinking
about the way fencing, water points, roads, and handling facilities were laid out—even
more so when dealing with large tracts of land that require a considerable investment in
infrastructure and/or labor.
Most farms and ranches with livestock
already have considerable infrastructure
(roads, buildings, dams, crop fields, etc.).
Generally this was developed using cost-
conscious common sense and in the belief
that different vegetation and soil types
needed to be separated in the fencing
layout. Moreover, on large properties,
existing water points heavily influenced
any fencing development.
Two things changed this. One was the
lowered cost of piping with the advent
of PVC pipe. A greater one was the
realization that vegetation and soil types
did not need to be separated because livestock under planned grazing have the same
beneficial effect on soil and vegetation if adequate recovery time is planned for plants and
soils. As a result, greater consideration could be given to economic factors—reducing road
travel, and the capital and running costs of an operation.
Holistic Land Planning, covered in detail in ebooks #10 and #11, uses several copies of a
‘blank’ map that includes only contour lines and absolutely fixed features, in brainstorming
all the possible layouts people can think of unconstrained by any existing movable feature
or past infrastructure. From the many possibilities that emerge the best is selected based on
many considerations—livestock, weather, capital and running costs, other land uses, wildlife,
conservation goals and more. If through this you find that a layout different from the one
you inherited would eventually be better, adopt that one and gradually implement it.
Implementation (putting in new fences, water, roads, etc.) is generally best done over
time and only when the infrastructure would ‘earn rather than cost money,’ literally
generating the capital from the land. Holistic Financial Planning and the context checks
will help you do this. For instance, if energy conversion is the weak link in your chain
of production this year, then building fence makes sense. But no two new fences can

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 possibly result in the same increased income, so you determine which one to add first
based on marginal reaction per dollar, to generate the income for the next. It can take
many years to implement your plan completely.
You can design your ideal plan at any time. Because the costs are almost entirely time,
pencil, and paper (or consulting internet resources such as Google Earth), and because the
final results can change the entire economic situation, the earlier it is done the better. In
some cases, your holistic land plan might even suggest little improvement on the inherited
design but at least that is confirmed before further development takes place.

Holistic Ecological Monitoring: To keep your land management on track

Monitoring changes on the land occurs at three levels. First, it is important to cultivate
a general and ongoing awareness of the condition of the four ecosystem processes (water
cycle, mineral cycle, energy flow, and community dynamics), the subject of ebook
#2. Second, if you are managing livestock, you must also monitor growth rates, water
supplies, the development of unfavorable grazing patterns, and so on, when working to
a holistic grazing plan (covered in ebook #9). Third, monitoring your management of
ecosystem processes anytime you try something new and need to know its effects quickly,
and annually, using the Holistic Ecological Monitoring process, the subject of ebooks #12
and #13 to help you predict changes and trends.

Early-warning Monitoring:
Testing new ideas
Because of nature’s complexity we must
take the attitude that much of what
we do as land managers may lead to
unanticipated effects. Anytime you are
instituting a new practice, assume you
are wrong, even though the decision, or
decisions, involved have passed all the
relevant checks. Then monitor proactively,
making adjustments quickly if your
monitoring shows they are needed. Start
with a clear idea of what you want to
achieve and then ask yourself, “If I am
wrong, at what point could I get the
earliest possible indication?” That is the
point you need to monitor in the simplest
way you can devise.

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Routine Ecological Monitoring: Predicting changes and trends
The Holistic Ecological Monitoring process focuses on the soil surface and the life upon
it, measuring changes in the four fundamental processes: water cycle, and the effectiveness
of available precipitation; mineral cycle, and the cycling of nutrients; energy flow, and the
amount of life-sustaining solar energy captured; community dynamics, and the direction
of change in the biological community.
Ebook #13 includes both a basic and a comprehensive monitoring procedure. Both
procedures have you gather and analyze data to determine the effectiveness of the
management tools used to create your desired landscape. The basic procedure requires
minimal time and effort; the comprehensive procedure can take several days, but it
provides ‘quantitative data’ that may be needed in collaborative management, or public
land situations.
The best time to monitor depends on the environment and when it is easiest to get
meaningful data about the most critical considerations. In many situations the most
active part of the growing season is the best time to monitor. In others the end of the
nongrowing season is best. In the latter case, if your goal is to move from annual to
perennial grass communities and you want to track decreases in bare soil and increases in
perennial grasses, and you are in the tropics, monitoring is often best done toward the end
of the nongrowing season. At this point in the year, the amount of bare ground is most
visible and changes more easily measured.

GUIDELINES FOR USING THE MANAGEMENT TOOLS

The management guidelines reflect years of experience in a variety of situations and will
help shape your plans and actions. They are covered in detail in Holistic Management,
Third Edition (chapters referenced below) and summarized here:

TOOL: FIRE
Burning
While fire is a tool that has a definite and useful role to play in land management, we
always need to question its use. The burning guideline reminds us of the environmental
dangers associated with burning while providing appropriate safeguards. (Chapter 36)

TOOL: LIVING ORGANISMS

Time
When the whole you are managing includes grazing animals for any reason, you need to
make sure that their presence enhances all four ecosystem processes. Timing the exposure

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 and re-exposure of the plants and soils to the animals will be critical to ensuring plants are
not overgrazed or soils overtrampled. The guidelines for managing grazing and trampling
time vary with the level of brittleness, the climate, the season, the types of plants, and the
needs of the animals. (Chapter 33)

Stock density and herd effect

The stock density and herd effect guidelines apply when you are using the tools of grazing
and animal impact to alter soil conditions or vegetation. The biggest challenge in inducing
herd effect, which requires that you produce behavior change in the animals, is inducing it
often enough and over a large enough area, particularly in the more brittle environments.
(Chapter 34)

Population management
The population management guideline applies any time you want to encourage or
discourage the success of a species. The guideline includes suggestions for assessing the
health of a species’ population, for determining the environmental factors that will
enhance or limit that population’s success, and for dealing with predators that become a
problem. (Chapter 37)

Cropping
If we are to sustain our present civilization and its enormous population, we must strive
to create an agriculture that more closely mimics Nature, one that enhances rather than
diminishes water and mineral cycles, energy flow, and community dynamics. There are
several fundamental guidelines that apply in any cropping situation. (Chapter 35)

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In addition to these management guidelines, implementation mastery in the context
of a private, commercial operation, or of a communal, subsistence operation, includes
vocational skills related to low-stress livestock handling, herding, water development
and maintenance, fence building and maintenance, related vehicle and equipment
maintenance, crop production, small livestock production, and the like. People can learn
all of this by embarking on the Savory Institute’s Implementation Mastery Units, which
include internships and bootcamps.
Just as it takes years for someone to master any profession, whether it be carpentry, law, or
medicine, properly managing livestock takes years of experience in pasture and rangeland-
based livestock agriculture, crop production, or small livestock production to learn the
skills necessary to manage these resources holistically.

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 HOLISTIC MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK

WHOLE UNDER MANAGEMENT

Decision Makers — Resource Base — Money

HOLISTIC CONTEXT
(Statement of Purpose) — Quality of Life — Future Resource Base

ECOSYSTEM PROCESSES

Water Cycle Mineral Cycle Community Dynamics Energy Flow

ECOSYSTEM MANAGEMENT TOOLS

Human Technology Fire Rest Living Organisms Money

• Animal Impact and Labor
Creativity
• Grazing

ACTIONS AND DECISION MAKING

Objectives, Goals, Tactics, Strategies, Policies
Customary Selection Criteria (past experience, expert advice, research, etc.)

CONTEXT CHECKS
Cause Weak Link Marginal Gross Energy/ Sustainability Gut
and • Social Reaction Profit Money Feel
Effect • Biological Analysis Source
• Financial and Use

MANAGEMENT GUIDELINES
Time Stock Density Cropping Burning Population
and Herd Effect Management

PROCEDURES AND PROCESSES FEEDBACK LOOP

Holistic Financial Holistic Land (assume wrong with

environmental
Planning Planning decisions)

PLAN MONITOR
Holistic Planned Holistic Policy
Grazing Development THE
FEEDBACK
Holistic Research LOOP
Orientation
REPLAN CONTROL

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GLOSSARY
Animal impact The sum total of the direct physical influences animals have on the
land—trampling, digging, dunging, urinating, salivating, rubbing, and so on. Most
commonly achieved with herding animals in high concentration. The larger the herd,
the greater the effect.
Biodiversity The diversity of species and their genetic material and the age structure of
their populations within a given community.
Brittleness Scale All terrestrial environments, regardless of total rainfall, fall
somewhere along a continuum from nonbrittle to very brittle. For simplicity, we refer to
this continuum as a 10-point scale, 1 being nonbrittle and 10 being very brittle.
Completely nonbrittle environments are characterized by (1) reliable precipitation, regardless
of volume; (2) good distribution of humidity throughout the year as a whole; (3) a high rate
of biological decay in dead plant material, which is most rapid close to the soil surface (thus,
dead trees rot at their bases and topple over relatively quickly); (4) speedy development of new
communities on any bare surface; and (5) the development of complex and stable communities
even where they are not physically disturbed for many years. In such environments it is
virtually impossible to produce or maintain millions of acres where the ground between plants
is bare, other than on croplands that are continually exposed by machinery.
Very brittle environments, on the other hand, are characterized by: (1) unreliable
precipitation, regardless of volume; (2) poor distribution of humidity through the year
as a whole; (3) the chemical (oxidizing) and physical (weathering) breakdown of dead
plant material, generally slowly and from the upper parts of plants downward (thus,
dead trees remain standing for many years); (4) very slow development of communities
from bare soil surfaces unless physically disturbed; and (5) algae and lichen covering soil
surfaces for centuries unless adequately disturbed. In such environments it is very easy
to produce millions of acres where the ground between plants is bare or algae- or lichen-
capped, merely by resting the land excessively, burning it frequently, or overgrazing many
grass plants. Such areas tend to maintain biodiversity and stability only when they receive
adequate disturbance periodically.
Community dynamics The development of communities of living organisms. This
process is ongoing due to the constant interplay of species, changing composition, and
changing microenvironment. However, the greater the biodiversity within a community,
the more complex, and thus the more stable, it tends to be.
Desertification A process characterized by a loss of biodiversity, plant mass, and soil
cover. Symptoms include increased incidence of flood and drought, declining levels of soil
organic matter, increased soil surface exposure, and soil erosion.

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 Energy flow The flow of energy from the sun to green growing plants, which convert
the energy (through photosynthesis) to the food that fuels all life. Sunlight energy does
not cycle, it is a one-way flow through our ecosystem.
Holistic Planned Grazing The planning of livestock moves using a step-by-step
planning guide that enables managers to deal with a great degree of complexity, and a
grazing chart. The planning enables you to integrate any type of grazing livestock—taking
into account their behavior and their time on or off any unit of land—with other land
users and uses (wildlife, cropping, forestry, etc.) while catering for many variables, issues
or problems, such as droughts. Holistic Planned Grazing is suited to all environments, to
any size of farm, ranch, or pastoral grazing area, and with or without fencing.
Mineral cycle The cycling of mineral nutrients from soil to above ground plants and
animals and back to the soil again. A healthy and productive environment will promote
the movement of minerals from deep soil layers to aboveground plants with a minimum
of mineral loss from soil erosion or mineral leaching.
Overgrazing This occurs when a plant that has been bitten severely in the growing
season gets bitten severely again while using energy it has taken from its crown, stem
bases, or roots to reestablish leaf. Generally, this results in the eventual death of the plant.
In intermediate stages it results in reduced production from the plant. Overgrazing
commonly occurs at three different times: when the plant is exposed to the animals for
too many days and they are around to re-graze it as it tries to regrow; when animals move
away but return too soon and graze the plant again while it is still using stored energy to
re-form leaf; and immediately following dormancy when the plant is growing new leaf
from stored energy.
Overrest This occurs when a perennial grass plant has been rested so long that
accumulating dead material prevents light from reaching growth points at the plant’s base,
hampering new growth and eventually killing the plant. Overrest occurs mainly in brittle
environments where, in the absence of large herbivores, most old material breaks down
gradually through oxidation and weathering rather than rapidly through biological decay.
Plant litter Dead plant material—leaves, stems, twigs, bark, needles—that has fallen or
been trampled onto the ground. Plant litter, rather than living plants, provides most of the
soil cover in brittle environments.
Water cycle The movement of water from the atmosphere to the soil (or the oceans)
and eventually back to the atmosphere. An effective water cycle is one in which plants
make maximum use of rainfall, little evaporates directly off the soil, and any runoff causes
no erosion and remains clear. Also a good air-to-water balance should exist in the soil,
enabling plant roots to absorb water readily. For the water cycle to be effective in brittle
environments, the soil must be covered with living plants or litter, as vast amounts of
water are lost through the bare, exposed soil between plants.

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