Commentary: A critical assessment of the policy endorsement for holistic management

Short communication

Commentary: A critical assessment of the policy endorsement

for holistic management

David D. Briske

⇑

, Andrew J. Ash

, Justin D. Derner

, Lynn Huntsinger

Ecosystem Science and Management, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA

CSIRO, Sustainable Ecosystems, St. Lucia, Queensland, Australia

USDA-Agricultural Research Service, High Plains Grasslands Research Station, Cheyenne, WY, USA

Society and Environment, University of California-Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA

article info

Article history:

Received 18 August 2012

Received in revised form 18 November 2013

Accepted 2 December 2013

abstract

This commentary summarizes the evidence supporting holistic management (HM) and intensive

rotational grazing (IRG) to demonstrate the extent to which Sherren and coauthors (2012) have over-

stated their policy endorsement of HM for rangeland application. Five major points are presented – dis-

tinction between HM and IRG, insufﬁcient evaluation of the contradictory evidence, limitations of the

experimental approach, additional costs associated with IRG, and heterogeneous capabilities and goals

of graziers’ to manage intensive strategies – to justify why this policy endorsement is ill-advised. The vast

majority of experimental evidence does not support claims of enhanced ecological beneﬁts in IRG com-

pared to other grazing strategies, including the capacity to increase storage of soil organic carbon.

Ó 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

1. Introduction

The objective of the paper by Sherren et al. (2012) was to eval-

uate graziers’ perceptions of landscape features and the relative

importance placed on speciﬁc features by contrasting perceptions

of graziers that have adopted holistic management (HM) with

those who have not. However, they move beyond this evaluation

and conclude with the policy recommendation that HM should

be broadly adopted to provide public beneﬁts through either the

removal of current barriers or the development of government

interventions to accelerate adoption. We acknowledge that man-

agement strategies based upon adaptive capacity, sound ﬁnancial

planning and recognition of ecological constraints, as broadly

espoused by HM, are important in achieving sustainable grazing

strategies. However, we ﬁnd the authors’ endorsement of HM dis-

concerting given that only minimal qualitative data is presented in

support of this policy recommendation. Further, their endorsement

is based largely on the purported beneﬁts of intensive rotational

grazing (IRG), a grazing strategy that is widely advocated by HM,

without either investigation or an assessment of the evidence asso-

ciated with this grazing strategy.

We wish to comment on the evidence addressing HM, and espe-

cially IRG, in a more comprehensive and systematic manner to

clearly identify the extent to which a policy endorsement of HM

and the purported beneﬁts of IRG have been overstated by Sherren

et al. (2012). Intensive rotational grazing (syn. cell grazing and

time controlled grazing) involves the subdivision of individual

paddocks into multiple units – often eight or more – that are

grazed successively with a single herd or ﬂock of animals to pro-

duce short, intensive periods of grazing followed by longer periods

of deferment (Heitschmidt and Taylor, 1991). Successive periods of

grazing by livestock concentrated in a single pasture to produce a

high grazing pressure (animal demand per forage availability) fol-

lowed by rest periods – when supported by adaptive management

as prescribed by HM – are assumed to provide the ecological ben-

eﬁts attributed by the authors to IRG. We acknowledge that IRG

represents one of many viable grazing strategies (Briske et al.,

2008; Tanaka et al., 2011), but insufﬁcient evidence exists to

support the occurrence of consistent ecological beneﬁts relative

to other less intensive grazing strategies.

The debate regarding the relative ecological beneﬁts of IRG

compared to other less intensive grazing strategies has been

prolonged by misinterpretation of concepts and terminology, eval-

uation of different response variables, and bioclimatic variability

among regions, in addition to inherent intra- and inter-annual

variability of rangeland systems (Briske et al., 2008). Rotational

grazing or deferment from grazing can be confused with IRG, and

grazing management can be considered synonymous with grazing

strategy, which obscures the importance of adaptive management

(Fazey et al., 2007; Teague et al., 2013). In this regard, the beneﬁts

of strategic rest from grazing within a growing season and grazing

at different seasons among years on grassland vegetation and soils

can be implemented in the absence of IRG (Ash et al., 2011). The

beneﬁts ascribed to IRG are often confounded with more effective

0308-521X/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2013.12.001

⇑

Corresponding author. Address: Department of Ecosystems Science and Man-

agement, TAMU 2138, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-2138, USA.

Tel.: +1 979 845 5581.

E-mail address: [email protected] (D.D. Briske).

Agricultural Systems 125 (2014) 50–53

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Agricultural Systems

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/agsy

animal distribution within paddocks, which can also be accom-

plished with paddock subdivision, herding, distribution of water

points, and patch burning, in addition to rotation of concentrated

herds or ﬂocks of livestock (Briske et al., 2008; Teague et al., 2013).

Monocultures of forage grasses and grass-legume mixtures

grown in high precipitation regions, in contrast to rangelands, do

show consistently greater plant production (mean of 30%) and per-

sistence of highly palatable species, but not improvements in for-

age quality or livestock production, in a majority (85%) of

comparisons between IRG and continuous grazing (Sollenberger

et al., 2012). The mechanism(s) contributing to the distinct re-

sponses of IRC in pasture and rangeland systems remains unclear,

but these highly productive forage systems are comparable to

those investigated by Voisin (1988) who initially developed the

concepts supporting rotational grazing in France and Western

Europe. Variables in addition to total annual precipitation may

contribute to these distinct responses, because investigations in

mesic rangelands (800 mm precipitation/yr) have shown both

positive (Cassels et al., 1995; Teague et al., 2011) and negative

(Gillen et al., 1998; McCollum et al., 1999) plant production and

livestock responses to IRG compared to continuous grazing. The

important distinction regarding the application of IRC in mesic

compared to arid and semiarid systems has been previously

identiﬁed and addressed (Briske et al., 2008; Teague et al., 2013).

The study region investigated by Sherren et al. (2012) had a mean

annual precipitation of 600–866 mm which represents a mesic

rangeland by global standards, but the wheat-sheep belt region

has a mean annual precipitation as low as 300 mm on the dry

end. Paddocks in this region have been created through clearing

of box gum (predominantly Eucalyptus albens and Eucalyptus melli-

odora) grassy woodlands and vary from unfertilized native

grassland to fertilized grassland with exotic grasses and forbs. It

is unclear how broadly Sherren et al. (2012) were directing their

policy recommendations, so here we addresses the purported

beneﬁts of IRG as applied to global rangelands and native

grasslands distributed along wide precipitation gradients.

2. Primary rebuttal points

This assessment highlights ﬁve major points—distinction

between HM and IRG, insufﬁcient evaluations of the contradictory

evidence, limitations of the experimental approach, additional

costs associated with IRG, and heterogeneous capabilities and

goals of graziers’ to manage intensive strategies—that challenge

the policy endorsement of HM by Sherren et al. (2012), and we

conclude with a more comprehensive, evidence-based interpreta-

tion of HM and IRG. First, it is essential to draw a clear distinction

between HM and the closely associated grazing strategy of IRG. A

clear contribution of HM is the emphasis on adaptive management

– a form of structured decision making that uses measured out-

comes of management actions to inform subsequent management

objectives and strategies (Allen and Gunderson, 2011). We have

previously hypothesized that strong testimonials in support of

IRG from some HM managers may have originated from enhanced

adaptive management – strategic planning and goal setting, ﬁnan-

cial rigor, and regular assessment of management outcomes -

rather than from the promotion of beneﬁcial ecological processes

by IRG (Briske et al., 2011). This hypothesis reconciles, as least in

part, the continued support of some managers for IRG, even though

a large amount of experimental research has not found IRG to in-

crease plant or livestock production compared to other grazing

strategies. The hypothesis that IRG may promote more effective

adaptive management requires rigorous evaluation following the

comparative approaches of Jacobo et al. (2006) and Teague et al.

(2011), but initial ﬁndings suggest that adaptive management

may be an important component of these divergent interpreta-

tions. We are not aware of any reason why emphasis on adaptive

management as espoused by HM is speciﬁc to only IRG. Adaptive

management would appear to beneﬁt all grazing management

strategies and more broadly all activities associated with ecosys-

tem management, although these beneﬁts are poorly documented

(Fazey et al., 2007; Briske et al., 2011; Teague et al., 2013).

Second, a policy endorsement of HM seems ill-advised when

Sherren et al. (2012) explicitly acknowledge ‘the lack of conclusive

evidence on measurable beneﬁts of HM grazing’. We agree that

HM, and more broadly adaptive management, have not been

experimentally evaluated in rangeland systems because the hu-

man dimensions of ecosystem management have only recently

been emphasized (Fazey et al., 2007; Briske et al., 2011). The lack

of information regarding the effectiveness of HM is sufﬁcient rea-

son to restrain a policy endorsement. Recent research does suggest

that the effectiveness of adaptive management does provide a clear

and perhaps overriding contribution to the success of grazing strat-

egies (Jacobo et al., 2006; Pinchak et al., 2010; Teague et al., 2013).

In contrast to HM, IRG has been rigorously evaluated, primarily

in the US, by numerous investigators at multiple locations and in a

wide range of precipitation zones over a period of several decades.

Collectively, these experimental results clearly indicate that IRG

does not increase plant or animal production, or improve plant

community composition, or beneﬁt, soil surface hydrology com-

pared to other grazing strategies (Briske et al., 2008, 2011). A re-

cent assessment report commissioned by Meat and Livestock

Australia (2011) to evaluate grazing strategies in northeastern Aus-

tralia similarly concluded that no discernible differences in plant

species composition or soil surface characteristics existed between

IRG and continuous grazing. This assessment was undertaken in

sub-tropical and tropical grasslands of north-eastern Australia,

rather than in temperate grasslands of south-eastern Australia,

but the ﬁndings of this assessment are entirely consistent with

the conclusions of Briske et al. (2008).

However, recent research has provided evidence of improved

plant species composition and, to a less extent, some indication

of improved soil quality for IRG compared to continuous grazing

in mesic rangelands (Jacobo et al., 2006; Teague et al., 2011). Inves-

tigation of a 4- and 8-paddock rotational system also demonstrated

improvement in vegetation composition, but not livestock produc-

tion, and the ability to accumulate fuel so that ﬁre regimes could

be incorporated within grazing strategies (Pinchak et al., 2010).

Teague and coworkers provide a valuable interpretation of the po-

tential limitations of the results generated by previous grazing

experiments and suggest hypotheses that may support greater in-

sight into the effectiveness of grazing strategies (Teague et al.,

2013).

Sherren et al. (2012) incorrectly state ‘‘The perennial pastures

that are encouraged through HM practices have been shown to

hold more soil carbon (Sanjari et al., 2008; Teague et al., 2011),

contributing to the carbon sequestration that is becoming increas-

ingly important for averting severe climate change.’’ The majority

of experimental evidence indicates that grazing strategy has a min-

imal effect on carbon sequestration, especially in arid and semi-

arid rangelands where rainfall is a major driver of sequestration,

and rangelands act as weak carbon sinks in wet years and weak

carbon sources in dry years (Svejcar et al., 2008; Ingram et al.,

2008; Zhang et al., 2010; Booker et al., 2013). Further, the authors

failed to recognize that Sanjari et al. (2008) did not ﬁnd more soil

organic carbon (P value was 0.16, not statistically signiﬁcant) with

time-controlled grazing compared to continuous grazing at the

same stocking rate. Similarly, Teague et al. (2011), working in a

mesic rangeland with a mean annual precipitation of 820 mm, only

observed an increase in soil organic carbon when soil depths from

0 to 90 cm were pooled, there were no statistical differences

D.D. Briske et al. / Agricultural Systems 125 (2014) 50–53

between the grazing strategies (continuous at light stocking rate

and multi-paddock at heavy stocking rate) at any individual soil

depth (0–15, 15–30, 30–60 and 60–90 cm).

Data comparing soil organic carbon between IRG and continu-

ous grazing in south-eastern Australian are limited, but Badgery

et al. (2013) undertook a comprehensive survey of soil organic car-

bon across different management histories in grasslands of south-

eastern Australia (600–900 mm annual precipitation) and found no

difference between set stocking (akin to continuous grazing) and

rotational grazing in 36 comparisons. They found that pasture pro-

ductivity was a more important driver of soil organic carbon than

grazing strategy. Similarly, recent research in the Northern Table-

lands of New South Wales (Cowie et al., 2013) and in northeastern

Australia ( Allen et al., 2013) found no clear evidence for greater soil

organic carbon in IRG compared to continuous grazing. Allen et al.

(2013) identiﬁed a small, but signiﬁcant decrease in soil organic

carbon in IRG compared to continuous grazing, while Cowie et al.

(2013) identiﬁed several indicators of biological soil function that

suggest the potential for increased soil organic carbon in IRG com-

pared to continuous grazing. The prevailing view is that manage-

ment should seek to ﬁrst conserve existing soil carbon to sustain

soil quality and ecosystem function, mitigate for conditions that

may accelerate carbon loss from soil into the atmosphere, and

sequester additional carbon from the atmosphere as opportunities

present themselves (Ingram et al., 2008; Booker et al., 2013). This is

particularly the case in Australia where infertile and highly weath-

ered soils and low annual precipitation reduce carbon sequestra-

tion rates to the point that they may not offer extensive

opportunities as an abatement measure (Lam et al., 2013).

Third, we have methodological concerns with the manner in

which the participant interviews were designed and conducted.

The participants were divided into HM and non-HM groups for

comparison, but the two groups appeared to possess substantial

dissimilarities other than whether or not they had HM training.

The HM group was much younger and there are suggestions that

they were better educated than the non-HM group, yet all of the

variation in participant responses was assigned solely to HM train-

ing. It is highly likely that HM training accounted only for only a

portion of the variation between groups. In addition, the compari-

sons were made numerically despite the qualitative nature of the

study, with much weight given to small differences, and no ability

to statistically validate these differences.

Alternative explanations based on human cognition and behav-

ior exists for the results presented by Sherren et al. (2012). Theory

of ‘‘cognitive dissonance’’ (Festinger, 1957) holds that people are

motivated to behave in ways that are consistent with their beliefs,

and even when evidence suggests that such behaviors are unhelp-

ful, they tend to reject the evidence, rather than reject the belief

(Tanaka et al., 2011). Research on consumer satisfaction indicates

that once a product has been purchased, the act of having adopted

a new product or behavior predisposes consumers to a more posi-

tive evaluation (Mano and Oliver, 1993; Tanaka et al., 2011).

Fourth, it was inferred by Sherren et al. (2012) that non-HM

managers use higher levels of cultural inputs than HM managers.

More inputs in the form of fertilization and intensive forage-based

systems tend to be used in the higher rainfall sheep-wheat regions

of south-eastern Australia regardless of grazing strategy. In

contrast, such cultural inputs are not common in more extensive

grazing lands in semi-arid regions. Consequently, less intensive,

traditional grazing strategies likely operate with fewer cultural

inputs and lower costs than IRG as evidenced by the author’s claim

that AUD $75 per hectare – to support fencing and water develop-

ment capable of supporting large numbers of livestock – would be

required to convert traditional grazing strategies to IRG. The poten-

tial exists for this additional investment in infrastructure – a form

of agricultural intensiﬁcation – to have the unintended

consequence of encouraging graziers to increase stocking rates to

offset the cost of these investments (Bracy Knight et al., 2011). In

addition, fences and water developments can minimize related

ecosystem services, including wildlife habitat, recreation, and

landscape aesthetics. Fencing is known to cause mortality in grass-

land birds and other wildlife species by collisions with wire, facil-

itation of predation, interference with access to resources, and

fragmentation of habitats (Owen and Owen, 1980; Connelly

et al., 2000; Wolfe et al., 2007).

Fifth, not all managers are comfortable with intensive, multi-

paddock grazing strategies so alternatives must be made available

to accommodate the capabilities and goals of all managers (Teague

et al., 2013). It is generally recognized that IRG requires greater

management commitment and expertise than more traditional

grazing strategies that do not concentrate and frequently rotate

livestock among multiple paddocks. This establishes that IRG

should not be implemented in situations where this managerial

capacity does not exist, or where it cannot be rapidly developed,

because of the risk of exceeding the limits of sustainable livestock

production. For example, ranch scale investigations have indicated

that effective management is essential to the operation of IRG sys-

tems and that it may take up to 2–3 years for both managers and

livestock to transition from continuous grazing to IRG (Pinchak

et al., 2010; Teague et al., 2013). The management complexity

associated with promotion of intensive grazing strategies merits

careful attention in policy development given that potential exists

for unanticipated negative outcomes.

3. Conclusion

We fully appreciate and endorse the emphasis on adaptive

management espoused by HM and that managers may select IRG

as a means to pursue desired management outcomes. However,

our commentary provides a number of sound reasons for why

everyone is not adopting IRG and why HM is a ‘marginal activity’

as indicated by Sherren et al. (2012). A series of viable grazing

strategies exists between IRG and continuous grazing and minimal

evidence exists to indicate that more intensive strategies yield

improved ecological outcomes, including the capacity to increase

soil carbon sequestration. Currently, the preponderance of

evidence does not justify extensive promotion and adoption of

IRG strategies, especially in arid and semiarid systems. We strongly

recommend that the full body of evidence, especially regarding the

controversial value of IRG, should be consulted when contemplat-

ing policy implications regarding HM.

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