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Are you interested in holistic resource management?

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Our summary today works with the book chapter titled The Foundations of Holistic Management from 2023, part of the Holistic Management e-book by the Savory Institute.

This is a great preparation to our next interview with Allan Savory in episode 356 talking about holistic resource management and contexts for collaboration.

Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see how holistic management can be utilised as a decision-making framework. This chapter establishes holistic management as a comprehensive approach and introduces four key insights to underpin this framework.

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Welcome to today’s What is The Future For Cities podcast and its Research episode; my name is Fanni, and today we will introduce a research by summarising it. The episode really is just a short summary of the original investigation, and, in case it is interesting enough, I would encourage everyone to check out the whole documentation. This conversation was produced and generated with Notebook LM as two hosts dissecting the whole research.

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Speaker 1: Today we’re drawing from the foundations of holistic management by the Savory Institute. And honestly, this is more than just farming techniques. It feels like a completely different way to think about managing land resources, maybe even aspects of our own lives. Reframe success.

Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely. And what’s really compelling about holistic management is it works. It has a track record. We’re talking over 40 years of solid, documented results all around the world. Real improvements in land, health, better productivity, profitability, and importantly, quality of life. And that’s for everyone involved. Farmers, ranchers, big environmental groups, government folks, and even us as consumers who wanna make informed choices. It’s a really comprehensive whole system way of thinking. Aims for a sustainable future.

Speaker 1: That focus on results is key, especially when you think about the scale of the problems we’re facing, which brings us straight into our first big area, the global challenge and well, the Promise Holistic management offers. Look at what resource managers are dealing with. It’s a lot land productivity going down, costs going up, whether getting more extreme. And then the huge global stuff with climate change. Agriculture systems, failing these terrible droughts and floods, soil erosion, hunger, poverty, it’s daunting. And the source material points out rightly. I think that a lot of this is fuelled by economic models based on infinite growth. On a finite planet. It just can’t last.

Speaker 2: Exactly. And these aren’t isolated problems, are they? They often connect back to what the Savory Institute calls old ways of thinking. You know, that reductionist approach. Trying to fix one thing here, but then pausing three other problems over there without realizing it. Holistic management, which Alan Savory, the Zimbabwean ecologist, started developing over 40 years ago. It offers a genuine paradigm shift, a totally different way to see things.

Speaker 1: It really stands out compared to older approaches, doesn’t it? Like the Green Revolution, we heard a lot about its successes growing up, boosting food production dramatically, but you’re suggesting there’s a hidden cost there?

Speaker 2: There definitely was. While it did increase yields, yes, it often came with severe long-term consequences for our ecological capital. Our social fabric too. Think about the massive soil erosion it triggered in places. Those infamous dead zones and coastal waters from fertilizer runoff, biodiversity plummeted. Plus a huge amount of soil carbon got oxidized, just released back into the atmosphere. Not great.

Speaker 1: Okay, so that paints a pretty grim picture. The big question then is, can we reverse any of this or are we just stuck managing decline?

Speaker 2: That’s the critical question, isn’t it? And the answer thankfully seems to be yes. In most cases, land degradation can be reversed, which leads to this idea of a brown revolution. It’s all about. Regenerating soil covered, rich and organic matter. Biologically alive, healthy soil, healthy plants out the animals. And interestingly, it often means people getting back involved in producing food. Regeneratively, sometimes literally returning to the land. The potential impact is enormous, especially for grasslands. Most people don’t realize they cover two thirds of the Earth’s land mass. Regenerating those areas could sequester gigatons of carbon safely, boost water retention, make landscapes way more resilient to drought. It’s a vision of healing really.

Speaker 1: Okay. That’s a powerful vision. But how does savory coming from wildlife biology arrive at these ideas that seem to flip so much conventional thinking? This is where we get into foundational insights, right? The core breakthroughs,

Speaker 2: insight number. Nature functions in holes. We hear phrases like the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and that’s part of it. But savory went deeper. He saw that nature operates in interconnected holes and patterns. What we think of as separate parts are just aspects of an indivisible hole. His phrasing is quite direct. Individual parts do not exist in nature only holes and these form and shape each other.

Speaker 1: So that’s not just philosophy, it’s a practical warning. It means messing with one thing will affect something else. Somewhere else, always Savory’s quote really hits home. Not only is the world more complex than we understand, it’s more complex than we can ever understand. So the takeaway is you can’t just manage the land, you have to manage the land, the culture of the economy altogether, it’s one indivisible system.

Speaker 2: It’s precisely it can’t separate them.

Speaker 1: Okay, now the second insight. This brittleness scale, the idea that resting land, just leaving it alone can sometimes make desertification worse. That seems totally backwards. What’s going on there?

Speaker 2: It does seem counterintuitive based on what many of us learned, but the key difference is how brittle an environment is. Think of a scale from one to 10. One is like a super lush, humid, tropical forest. 10 is a true desert. And crucially, it’s not just about how much rainfall, it’s about how consistent the humidity is throughout the year and how quickly dead plants break down. That’s what determines how land responds.

Speaker 1: Okay, break that down. Non brittle, like a one to three year round humidity. What does that look like?

Speaker 2: So in those places, decomposition is fast and biological microbes, fungi, insects, they’re working constantly. Dead leaves are soft. They just crumple moss decaying logs, melting back into the soil. Lots of visible soil life. Think jungle floor

Speaker 1: makes sense. And the other end, brittle seven to 10. What are the signs there

Speaker 2: in brittle areas? Humidity is seasonal. Maybe erratic decomposition is slow. Mostly chemical oxidation weathering, especially if there aren’t large grazing animals around dead leaves are dry. They shatter. Tall stands of dead gray grass, just sitting there for ages, logs barely change year after year. Lots of bare ground between plants. And here’s the kicker. Over 60% of the world’s land is brittle to some degree. So understanding where an environment sits on this scale is absolutely fundamental for managing it effectively. You can even think about your own area. Are dead leaves soft or do they shatter? Are fallen branches decaying quickly or just sitting there? It tells you a lot.

Speaker 1: 60%. That’s huge. So does that imply that a lot of standard conservation practices, like just fencing areas off to rest them, might actually be counterproductive in most places?

Speaker 2: It’s a really important point. Yes. In many brittle environments, simply removing grazing animals or disturbance without mimicking the natural ecological processes can actually speed up degradation and decertification. Which leads us perfectly to the third key insight, predator prey connection, and land health. Savory. Watching wildlife in Africa notice something critical about those huge herds, wildebeest, zebra, buffalo. When predators were around, they bunched up, tightly moved, constantly milled around, and this behaviour driven by fear wasn’t just offensive. It was actually essential for keeping those brittle grasslands healthy.

Speaker 1: That constant movement. And bunching, yeah. What was it doing?

Speaker 2: Well, their hooves were constantly chipping the soil surface, breaking up, capped earth. They trampled down old dead plant matter pushed seeds into the soil and then they’d cover it all with dung and urine, which provides moisture and nutrients. This physical action returned dead plants to the soil surface where decay could happen, plus a key detail. The microbes needed to break down that tough dry plant material, often missing on the dry soil surface. Plentiful in the animal’s rumen and digestive tracts. So they were essentially inoculating the soil as they went. It was a perfect system,

Speaker 1: and savory realized humans broke that cycle.

Speaker 2: Unintentionally. Yes. By removing predators or reducing their numbers significantly, the herds relaxed. They spread out. Their impact wasn’t concentrated anymore. That vital disturbance, the trampling, the ding in one place before moving on was lost, and land health started to decline. So holistic plan grazing was developed specifically to mimic that natural beneficial herd effect using domestic livestock.

Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense. Which brings us to insight number four. Another one that challenges common ideas. Time, not numbers, governs, overgrazing. The usual thinking is too many animals overgrazing. Leading to destocking policies.

Speaker 2: Exactly. That was the standard view. And savory initially accepted it too. His observations didn’t always fit. He saw incredibly productive landscapes carrying huge numbers of wild animals thriving, and then he’d see research plots nearby protected with far fewer animals, but the land was degrading. The numbers alone didn’t explain it.

Speaker 1: So if it wasn’t just the number of animals, what was the missing piece?

Speaker 2: A French scientist, Andre voa, provided a crucial clue. He showed that overgrazing isn’t really about the number of animals, but about the time plants are exposed to being grazed. If animals bite a plant, then stay there long enough to bite its regrowth or come back too soon before it’s fully recovered. That’s overgrazing even with just a few animals. The same principle applies to the physical impact the trampling. Too much time is the problem,

Speaker 1: and savory connected this back to the wild herds.

Speaker 2: He realized they didn’t just move because of predators. They also moved because they’d foul their own grazing area with dung and urine. Animals naturally avoid grazing near their own droppings. So they’d hit an area hard, intense grazing, trampling, ding urinating, but only for a short period, maybe a day or two. Then they’d move on, allowing a long recovery period before they might return. Disturbance is vital, but it needs to be short-lived, followed by adequate rest.

Speaker 1: Okay, so those insights. Brittleness, the predator prey effect and the time factor. They really explain why things went wrong and point towards the solution.

Speaker 2: Absolutely. They form the ecological bedrock. They explain why environments degraded and provide the logic for how to fix them, mainly through planning the movement of concentrated livestock.

Speaker 1: So how does this all come together in practice? How does someone actually use these insights to make better decisions day to day? What’s the framework?

Speaker 2: It starts with defining the whole under management. Basically figuring out clearly what you’re actually managing. Is it just you, your family, a farm, a business division? You need to identify who the decision makers are, what resources you have, land people, skills, money, the whole picture that sets the boundary

Speaker 1: and then comes the holistic context. That sounds like the guiding principle.

Speaker 2: It is. It’s your north star. The decision makers get together and define very clearly the quality of life they truly desire. What does wellbeing look like for them? And then they define what the resource base, the land, the community, the business needs to look like in the future to sustain that quality of life potentially for generations. This isn’t just a fuzzy mission statement. It becomes the filter, the constant reference point for every single decision.

Speaker 1: Okay, so you have your context. Yeah. How do you make sure your actions actually align with it? That’s what the context checks come in

Speaker 2: before you commit to an action, you run it through seven checking questions. They act as a filter. To weed out decisions that might seem good short term, but could undermine your holistic context ecologically, socially, or financially down the line.

Speaker 1: Can you give an example or two that sounds incredibly useful for avoiding unintended consequences? Definitely.

Speaker 2: Questions like, does this action address the root cause of the problem, or is it just treating a symptom? Is it addressing the weakest link in the chain, maybe biologically, socially, or financially? Will this lead us toward the future resource base we described, or away from it? And a really important one, how do you actually feel about this action? Gut check. How will it affect your quality of life and others? These checks force you to look beyond the immediate fix and consider the wider, longer term ripples they prevent. Those seem like a good idea at the time. Regrets.

Speaker 1: That makes so much sense. And this isn’t a one-time thing, right? It feeds into that continuous loop plan, monitor, control, replan that 24 letter words you mentioned earlier.

Speaker 2: Yes, it emphasizes the ongoing nature. Planning isn’t static. You make a plan, then you monitor progress closely. But here’s the key. You monitor assuming your plan might be wrong because nature and life is complex. You look for the very earliest signs that things might be deviating. That allows you to take corrective action, the control part quickly before things go seriously off track. Then you replan based on the new reality, keeps you proactive.

Speaker 1: And this isn’t just for grazing plans, is it? This loop applies everywhere.

Speaker 2: Everywhere. Holistic financial planning uses the same loop. You don’t just check the bank balance at your end. You monitor income and expenses against the plan within categories, controlling deviations early. You monitor your quality of life indicators, your relationships, your stress levels. Are they aligning with your holistic context. The goal isn’t just to watch what happens as the Savory Institute puts it. You monitor to make happen what you want to happen. It’s about being intentional and adaptive.

Speaker 1: So drilling down a bit further, how do these core ideas, the context, the checks, the loop. Translated to specific planning tools people use.

Speaker 2: Over the last 50 years, several key planning procedures have been refined. Holistic financial planning is a big one. It flips traditional budgeting. You plan your profit first, then allocate expenses to achieve that profit. Always checking against your holistic context, it pushes for that triple bottom line. Financial, environmental and social health. All integrated

Speaker 1: planning profit first. That’s a shift. What about planning the land itself?

Speaker 2: That’s holistic land planning. It helps figure out the ideal infrastructure, fences, water, roads, the process encourages, brainstorming, the ideal layout without being limited by what’s already there. You imagine the perfect setup first, then figure out how to get there often leads to huge efficiencies and you can phase it in letting the improving land help pay for the developments

Speaker 1: makes sense. And the grazing part

Speaker 2: that’s holistic. Planned grazing, probably the most well-known procedure for livestock managers. It’s the tool for putting animals in the right place, at the right time with the right behavior. It’s how you actively mimic those natural herd movements to heal land. Maybe integrate livestock with crops or wildlife. Keep animals healthy. You typically create a grazing plan twice a year for the growing season and the non-growing season, and critically, especially in brittle areas, you always plan as if a drought is coming, building in resilience and reserve feed.

Speaker 1: All these plans, financial, land, grazing, they all follow that same plan, monitor, control, replan cycle.

Speaker 2: Absolutely. Continuous learning, continuous adaptation.

Speaker 1: Okay, so let’s try to wrap this up. What we’ve explored today with holistic management feels like a fundamental shift, moving from managing isolated bits and pieces to seeing and managing complex holes, using these really powerful insights about how nature actually works, the interconnectedness, the brittleness scale, that predator prey dynamic. The crucial role of time, and it’s all held together by this practical framework. Setting your holistic context, using those context checks and staying in that constant feedback loop.

Speaker 2: Exactly, and the potential impact of making that shift is profound. We’re talking about regenerating soils on a massive scale. Boosting biodiversity, actually reversing desertification in places, sequestering huge amounts of carbon fixing water cycles, building resilience to drought. It’s about creating real lasting wealth derived from sunlight, working with nature, not against it. True abundance.

Speaker 1: How could applying a bit of this holistic perspective, maybe even just one or two of those context checks, change how you approach a whole in your own life. Could be your family routines, a decision at work, maybe even just your garden plot. Next time you’re outside. Really look around. Remember the brittleness scale? Are those leaves crumbling or shattering? What does that tell you about the environment right where you are and how everything connects?

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Episode and transcript generated with ⁠⁠Descript⁠⁠ assistance (⁠⁠affiliate link⁠⁠).