I am a huge fan of Allan Savory’s work and the Holistic Management Framework. It has been a game changer for our operation throughout the past ten years. Developing a Whole Farm/Ranch Plan is a step by step process that is invaluable for maintaining a quality of life and ensuring profitability. My goal for today’s blog is to introduce you to the basics of the framework and give you two real world examples of successes and failures with our operation.

Purchase Holistic Management, Third Addition: A Commonsense Revolution to Restore our Environment. The book will introduce you to the concepts and guide you through the process. The following is a concise, step-by-step process for developing a Whole Farm/Ranch Plan.

There are two guiding principles: 1) nature functions as a whole (system) and 2) understand your environment. The process of developing a Whole Farm/Ranch Plan is simply laid out, step-by-step.

1) In step one you define who the management decision makers are and your resource base from which you will derive revenue and support.

2) Step two is to determine your holistic context. This is essentially your statement of purpose in which you create a context for management actions of the whole you are managing. The holistic context will define the quality of life we want, your future resource base and the behaviors that will sustain that quality of life for future generations.

3) Step three is understanding the four ecosystem processes including the water cycle, mineral cycle, community dynamics and energy cycle, which I wrote about in a earlier blog and how our management decisions effect those.

4) Step four is deciding if and how you are going to utilize the ecosystem management tools. These tools include technology, fire, rest, animal impact, money and labor.

5) Step five is establishing the planning and monitoring processes including land planning, financial planning, grazing planning and biological monitoring.

6) Step six is using the context check. This is a relatively simple set of questions that enable you to determine whether an action or decision meets your triple bottom line of social, financial and environmental goals?

7) Lastly, step seven is analyzing the feedback loop of plan, monitor, control and replan if necessary. Within each of these steps are greater details that guide you through the decision making process. It does no good to develop a plan that you will not monitor and control.

One of our failures with the holistic management framework was our financial planning in 2018. We did a poor job of monitoring our month to month financial data and a virtual “train wreck” occurred because of our lack of monitoring and ultimately we lost control. First off decisions were made without using the context checks. We ultimately failed to monitor the financial plan that we had established at the beginning of the year. If the plan would have been monitored an effort would have been made to institute a control or replan if necessary. The better we control the plan, the less we will need to replan.

Our greatest achievement thus far with the holistic management framework has been our grazing planning and biological monitoring. By utilizing selective biological monitoring techniques we have been able to monitor the grazing plan in ways I didn’t imagine possible ten years ago. In real time we can determine if our grazing and other management techniques are achieving our desired goals for the land. A good grazing plan is invaluable to our livestock enterprises. We use a grazing chart and PastureMap software to plan and monitor our grazing. The plan is visually monitored daily as we move through the pastures and paddocks. Our long-term biological monitoring includes soil analysis, infiltration rates, vegetation surveys and more. The records and data recorded from the monitoring process help us make short and long-term decisions (using context checks). These decisions have allowed us to double our stocking rate, improve ecosystem services, and effectively double our financial bottom line.

As Allan Savory says “remember that a plan, no matter how sound, serves little purpose unless its implementation is monitored and deviations are controlled.”

Please feel free to post questions or comments below.