Holistic Management: Development & Holistic Decision-Making Framework

Allan explains how livestock grazing is often demonised as being a major factor behind climate change and desertification but this is incorrect, livestock is not the problem, it is part of the solution. It is our mismanagement of resources and how we graze livestock that is the issue.  

The Four Key Insights For Grassland

During his career as an ecologist in Africa, Allan saw how through the removal of people and grazing animals, including extermination of 40,000 elephants, in National Parks that the former opinion was incorrect because desertification in fact increased in these areas. This finding was also mirrored in many areas in the United States where stock had been excluded.  

Through observations and reflections, Allan, working with others, developed what was termed the four key insights, patterns, that keep grassland in good health, prevent desertification and promote productivity:  

• Nature functions in wholes 
• The brittleness scale 
• Predator-prey connection 
• Plant and soil recovery time 

The brittleness scale (1-10) reflects how well humidity is distributed through the year and how quickly vegetation breaks down. The level of brittleness (1 – evergreen tropical rain forest, 10 – true desert) impacts how an environment responds to influences and management such as grazing.  

What Allan observed in brittle environments was that over-grazing by livestock leads to bare ground, poor water retention and desertification. However equally removing grazing altogether also leads to desertification. This is because in such dry environments, biological decay doesn’t occur without grazing animals, but leads instead to oxidation of dead material in the absence of biological decay. This, in turn leads to deterioration in plant communities and bare ground emerges.  

A Shift Away From Continuous Grazing 

The solution they found was to shift away from continuous grazing to a grazing system that mimics herds of migratory ruminants. This means, periods of short duration high stock density grazing, followed by long rest periods between grazing to allow full plant root recovery. With the animal’s saliva, urine and faeces stimulating biological breakdown of plant matter and greater herd impact creating a strong trampling effect leading to better ground cover and returning organic matter to the soil.  

Allan however recognised that a grazing strategy alone was not sufficient to tackle natures complexity, or the social, environmental and economic complexity required to keep the human population on the land.  

From this observation emerged the development of the Holistic Management Decision Making Framework and the four planning and monitoring procedures for land managers of Holistic-Financial Planning; Planned Grazing, Ecological Monitoring; Land Planning. We’ll discuss these further in the rest of this four part series.  

Part 2: Holistic Decision-Making Framework

As outlined above, Holistic Management is more than just a grazing system, it is a decision-making framework that allows the user, farmers and land managers to simultaneously address the social, environmental, and economic complexities at play to develop soundness in both the short and long term.  

The Whole Is Greater Than The Sum Of Its Parts 

The first key insight found during the development of the Holistic Management method was that nature functions in wholes and patterns, ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts’. Relationships exist between different aspects of the whole meaning removing or altering one aspect will inadvertently impact another, often negatively.  

The Holistic Management Framework, shown in Table 1, moves away from Reductionist Management where decisions are based on only one or few factors to solve short term needs or problems to instead understanding that as above the world functions in wholes and that actions do not happen in isolation.  

Under Holistic Management, before moving to decision making and actions, we must first establish our ‘Whole Under Management’ and ‘Holistic Context’, these are then referred to during decision making to ensure that the social, environmental, and economic factors are all accounted for.  

Table 1. Holistic Management Framework: Savory Institute. Source: https://savory.global/ebooks/ (Image: Savory Institute)

Defining Your ‘Whole Under Management’

Defining your Whole Under Management is to clarify what you are managing. Each of us is responsible for managing at least one whole, ourselves, but there may be several larger wholes such as a family, a farm or a business.  

In clarifying the whole, three key things must be identified: 

• The decision makers – identifying those directly involved in the management of the whole. 

• The resource base -this includes physical and human resources:  
• Land, buildings, equipment and other assets on which you will generate revenue or derive support,  

• 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 determine who makes management decisions, who merely influences the decisions made and it helps put boundaries around what you will or will not manage.  

By referring back to the Whole Under Management when making decisions this ensures that actions are not taken that may impact, for example, the land or people without this being considered. It makes you more aware and thoughtful when making decisions but also more aware of resources available that can be utilised for better management decisions. 

Part 3: Holistic Context

Previously we discussed how, before moving to decision making and actions, under Holistic Management, the user must first establish their ‘Whole Under Management’ and ‘Holistic Context’, these are then referred back to during decision making to ensure that the social, environmental, and economic factors are all accounted for.  

To quickly revisit the concept of ‘Whole Under Management’, defining the Whole Under Management clarifies three key things: 

• The decision makers – those directly involved in its management.  
• The resource base which includes physical resources, such as land, and the people who influence or are influenced by your management.  
• The money available or that you can generate from the resource base.  

The decision makers identified in the whole, must then create one all-embracing holistic context. This will be referred to often when making day to-day management decisions and when developing strategies which traditionally have been framed within a much narrower context.  

Defining your Holistic Context

The holistic context has two and sometimes three aspects: 

• Quality of life – an expression of the way you want your lives to be within the whole under management. Four areas to consider for this are economic well-being, relationships, challenge and growth and purpose and contribution.  
• Future resource base – a description of the environment/land base, referring to the four ecosystem services, and people behaviours that will be required to sustain that quality of life for your successors.  
• Statement of Purpose – If you are managing an organisation formed for a specific purpose, then state in a single sentence that purpose prior to creating the context as this will inform the rest.  

Once the whole under management and holistic context are defined, decision making can proceed, with selection of appropriate tools and actions. Now when making decisions the holistic context is used to ensure that you do not lose sight of what is meaningful to you in both the short and long term, the quality of life for those within the whole and the health of the environment that sustains it.  

To do this you should run through the seven context check questions to filter out any actions that may not be in context and so not socially, environmentally and economically sound. 

The Seven Context Checks

1 Cause and effect: Does the action address the root cause of the problem? 

2 Weak link: What is the weakest link in the situation? Would this action create a further weak link or does it positively address a weak link in either social, biological or financial goals and objectives? 

3 Marginal reaction: Does it provide a greater return, in terms of time and money spent, than other possible actions? (only used when comparing two or more actions).

4 Gross profit analysis: Which of two or more possible enterprises provides the best gross profit? Which enterprise contributes the most to covering the overheads of the business? (only used when comparing two or more enterprises). 

5 Energy/money source and use: 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? 

6 Sustainability: Will this action lead toward or away from future resource base (environment, economic and social) described in the holistic context? 

7 Gut feel: 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? This must be the final question asked.  

Following the context questions, a process which becomes faster with familiarity, you may then want to modify how you implement the action, abandon it altogether, or in some cases go ahead anyway knowing that sooner or later you will have to deal with some of the reasons it didn’t pass. When going ahead with any plan/action monitoring is essential, and we will discuss that in our fourth and final section article. 

Part 4: Holistic Planning

In the final part of this series we’ll take a look at the four Holistic Planning and Monitoring Procedures.  Allan Savory states that, when these procedures are used alongside the Holistic Decision Making Framework, land managers can regenerate land, improve productivity, increase profitability and improve the quality of life of those who rely on the resources managed.

Managing The Feedback Loop

Key to Holistic Planning, in addition to referring back to your Context, is the Feedback Loop shown below, to ensure through monitoring and replanning that plans and actions are not deviating from the goal or objective with the action.

The Feedback Loop: Savory Institute

Whilst, defining your whole and holistic context can be for anyone or any entity, be that an individual, a family, a farm or a company unrelated to agriculture, the four main Holistic Planning and Monitoring procedures are developed to be specifically applicable to agriculture and land management.

Holistic Financial Planning

Good financial management is essential for any business that seeks to be viable and profitable. This is a simple, easy to use cash based financial planning process which starts by firstly reviewing the current years plan, then forward budgeting focusing first on the income and profit required before planning expenses.

Two key elements of the planning process are enterprise specific budgeting to ensure that each enterprise is contributing and there is not a weak link (often neglected) and checking for context alignment to ensure that social and environmental goals are met alongside financial.

Holistic Planned Grazing, Land Planning, and Ecological Monitoring

Holistic Planned Grazing is a procedure for planning the livestock grazing strategy, moves and paddocks, including the use of a grazing chart, to restore degraded land to health, grow more grass and promote livestock productivity whilst integrating crop, wildlife and other land uses.

Holistic Land Planning is a framework to effectively and economically plan the infrastructure required on that land for livestock to effectively graze. It can also be used for arable cropping.

Holistic Ecological Monitoring has three parts:

1. Monitor the four ecosystem processes (water cycle, mineral cycle, energy flow and community dynamics).
2. Monitor livestock growth rates, water supplies and unfavourable grazing patterns.
3. Monitor your management when trying something new to understand its effects quickly on points 1 and 2. By monitoring we can have an early warning sign that something is wrong.

Whilst the merits of Holistic Planned Grazing in reference to grazing pasture covers much taller and with greater rest periods than conventional grazing systems these approaches are up for debate for many Scottish farms. This is because of potential production impacts and the fact that, in a non-brittle environment, desertification is not an issue. It is clear to me in review that the Holistic Management Framework, defining your Whole Under Management and Holistic Context as well as the Holistic Planning processes could have considerable value for individuals and farm businesses open to trying them.

In particular, defining your Whole Under Management, the resources and people available and that your decision making will impact, and your Holistic Context, your desired quality of life, what you want your future resource base to look like and a statement of purpose has real benefits for the user as by referring back to these during decision making this ensures that all social, environmental, and economic factors are taken into account. That on a quest to produce often more output we don’t lose sight of true profitability or take actions that are socially (e.g. work life balance for you, your family and staff) or environmentally detrimental. 

A free introductory eBook, The Foundations of Holistic Management, is available through the Savory Institute website for those who would like to learn more: Savory Institute - Free eBook  

Daniel Stout, SAC Consulting