Holistic Grazing (split from Cliven Bundy thread)

[Red Baron Farms]

My example: If managers were educated in the scientific experimental method then they would be more likely to agree with the scientific evidence.

Since the only published scientific study on HMPG managed land is the Teague study, I would agree that they already do agree with the scientific evidence, being it does not differ from their own hands on experience, both measurable positive results.

Savory's statement is about the impossibility of ever replicating HM results no mater how many studies are done.

I have already stated 3 times that was an poorly phrased statement. What he probably should have said is that it is impossible to replicate HM in studies that exclude the "human variables" that Briske talks about. But he generally uses the more generalist phrasing that reductionist science can't be used to replicate the holistic context of HMPG.

Bottom line is they are effectively saying the same thing, but Savory's comment was an off the cuff unprepared statement over the phone, whereas Briske's was a carefully crafted and considered statement as part of a published review of the state of the current published (reductionist) science.

because it derives from experiments that intentionally excluded these human variables.

 

[Reality Check]

I have already stated 3 times that was an poorly phrased statement. ...

No, Red Baron Farms, you cannot read Savory's mind and state what he meant to say ! You can only read what he wrote and state that it shows ignorance about the scientific process.
I have already stated this in various forms several times.

You also need to read the sources - it is a PDF on his web site.

 

[Red Baron Farms]

No, Red Baron Farms, you cannot read Savory's mind and state what he meant to say ! You can only read what he wrote and state that it shows ignorance about the scientific process.
I have already stated this in various forms several times.

He didn't write it. And I can say because I have heard him say and write it much better in many prepared interviews as opposed to this off the cuff unprepared phone interview.

 

[Reality Check]

He didn't write it.

This is the heading for the PDF on his web site:
Updated March 6, 2013
Response to request for information on the “science” and “methodology”
underpinning Holistic Management and holistic planned grazing.
Allan Savory.
What is the Savory Institute, Red Baron Farms ?
Who is Allan Savory, Red Baron Farms ?
Does the third paragraph in the PDF look familiar, Red Baron Farms ?

Because each and every managed situation involving land (people, land, money) is totally unique, and also unique every year just as one cannot step into the same river twice because it is flowing, Holistic Management does not permit replication. Because of this fact we can only validate the “science” used and monitor or document “results achieved”.

What about this quote from Eat more meat and save the world: the latest implausible farming miracle, Red Baron Farms?

Savory referred me to a paper he’d written, which he said, explains the science and methodology of holistic grazing. This paper (again apparently unpublished except on his website) explained the lack of scientific support for his claims as follows:

Holistic management does not permit replication. Because of this fact we can only validate the ‘science’ used and monitor or document ‘results achieved’...​

Now what did Allan Savory not write?

 

[Red Baron Farms]

Does the third paragraph in the PDF look familiar

Sure it does. And in the context of the PDF it becomes quite clear you are using an equivocation. I already noted your comments were taking Savory's phone interview out of context, (as was that "science writer" BTW) and with the full context it becomes clear. And Savory says the same thing you said. You can do a study, but only to "validate the ‘science’ used and monitor or document ‘results achieved'". How similar is that to what you said before? "You can compare cases using HM against cases not using HM"

Obviously you can study the system as a whole, (Teague did) but try and break it down by intentionally excluding the human variables and it is impossible.(Briske noted that limitation)

All saying the same thing in different terminology and with different emphasis. But what Savory is absolutely NOT saying is that it can't be studied by science at all. Unlike the improper comparison you made to the truly woo homeopathy which has no scientific basis whatsoever.

 

[Reality Check]

Sure it does. And in the context of the PDF it becomes quite clear ...

that the text is what Savory wrote, Red Baron Farms, no matter what fantasies you make up about what he meant.
The context was never what he said in his phone interview. The context was always what he wrote (and directed the reporter to).

What is writen in the PDF is clear:

Because each and every managed situation involving land (people, land, money) is totally unique, and also unique every year just as one cannot step into the same river twice because it is flowing, Holistic Management does not permit replication. Because of this fact we can only validate the “science” used and monitor or document “results achieved”. Note: This point is critical to understanding the great difficulty reductionist scientists are experiencing trying to comprehend holistic planned grazing – because no two plans are ever the same even on the same property two years running, planned grazing cannot be replicated which reductionist scientists do to try to understand the ‘science.’

* Holistic Management does not permit replication
* Savory has his own personal definition of "science" and "results achieved" !
* Science does not do self-validation. Science works through checking the predictions of theories against the real world.
Newton did not say F=ma, that looks reasonable and science stopped there ! F=ma was tested.
* Science is not just monitoring results.
* Science is not just documenting results.

It is the last three points that show ignorance of the scientific process.

What I said about Savory's statement:

What Savory is saying is that HM can never be replicated because each trial is unique. This is analogous to the homeopathy claim that because every treatment is customized for an individual, no clinical trials on homeopathy can be done.
Savory is just wrong. You can compare cases using HM against cases not using HM and it does not matter that each HM case is differently implemented.

That does not support Savory's ignorance about how science works and that no studies on HM are possible.

(really should be "repeatable studies")

Savory's statement is about the impossibility of ever replicating HM results no mater how many studies are done.

 

[Red Baron Farms]

Nice house of cards you built there, what you going to do when Teague's results are replicated? Hide your head in shame because you purposely misrepresented the meaning of Savory's words?

Savory is a scientist, his results have been replicated by Teague, another independant scientist, and other studies are being done as we speak. It is only a matter of time before those results are confirmed in more published studies. (I know that because thousands of ranchers world wide have already gotten positive results, but hadn't had their ranches as part of a scientific study) So far not one single negative study on HMPG. Whether that changes who knows?

But will you ever admit YOU are wrong in your equivocation of Savory's words? Extremely doubtful.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

Nice house of cards you built there, what you going to do when Teague's results are replicated?

They can't be. Ever. That's the problem we have with it.

 

[Red Baron Farms]

They can't be. Ever. That's the problem we have with it.

And there you have the equivocation. Replication of the exact conditions of the Teague study can never be repeated exactly. But replication of HMPG being an improved land management system over current land management practises, including ecosystem services such as erosion prevention, water infiltration/retention, and carbon sequestration etc... is easily and consistently repeatable. The key to the equivocation being the sense or context of the word replicate.

 

[Reality Check]

Hide your head in shame because you purposely misrepresented the meaning of Savory's words?

Savory's words are quite clear:

Because each and every managed situation involving land (people, land, money) is totally unique, and also unique every year just as one cannot step into the same river twice because it is flowing, Holistic Management does not permit replication. Because of this fact we can only validate the “science” used and monitor or document “results achieved”. Note: This point is critical to understanding the great difficulty reductionist scientists are experiencing trying to comprehend holistic planned grazing – because no two plans are ever the same even on the same property two years running, planned grazing cannot be replicated which reductionist scientists do to try to understand the ‘science.’

There is no misrepresentation of them, this is stating exactly what is in red and bold above:

Originally Posted by Reality Check
Savory's statement is about the impossibility of ever replicating HM results no mater how many studies are done.

As I said:

What is written in the PDF is clear:
* Holistic Management does not permit replication (as I have said a couple of times)
* Savory has his own personal definition of "science" and "results achieved" (or why the double quotes?) !
* Science does not do self-validation. Science works through checking the predictions of theories against the real world.
Newton did not say F=ma, that looks reasonable and science stopped there ! F=ma was tested.
* Science is not just monitoring results.
* Science is not just documenting results.

It is the last three points that show ignorance of the scientific process.

(added text for clarification)

 

[Reality Check]

They can't be. Ever. That's the problem we have with it.

I would put it another way - Savory says that HM results cannot be replicated and that is a problem "Because of this fact...".
That implies that the only paper on HM (which actually supports HM!)
Grazing management impacts on vegetation, soil biota and soil chemical, physical and hydrological properties in tall grass prairie
is probably wrong according to Savory because it is not validating the "science" or documenting “results achieved” - it actually scientifically analyses the results .

Red Baron Farms implies he thinks that Savory is wrong, i.e. states the position that the scientific community has:
However science can handle cases where each experiment is deemed to be unique in some way. The classical example is the homeopathic claim that every treatment is unique to an individual and so clinical trials are impossible. But all you do is allow homeopaths to administer their remedies to a group of patients with the same illness and compare the results to a control group.

Look at the paper's abstract - that is what is basically done!

This study documents the positive results for long-term maintenance of resources and economic viability by ranchers who use adaptive management and MP grazing relative to those who practice continuous season-long stocking

 

[Red Baron Farms]

You insist on the same equivocation? Even when he clearly explains it? You red and bold it, yet boldly display your willful ignorance about the rest of the paragraph? Really?

Savory does NOT say that HM can't be replicated by science. He states quite clearly it can't be replicated by reductionist science. (read the whole paragraph for context and clarification) It is a very clear distinction. Even Briske (who is on record as being critical of Savory) understands this. That's why he notes "because it derives from experiments that intentionally excluded these human variables". He could have added more in my opinion. But at least he understands that there really isn't any way to separate the manager from the management system and make any conclusive claims about the management system.

More than that though, in complex biological systems you normally need to use holism instead of reductionism even when not managed by Man. You can't really reduce it to its component parts and still understand emergence, self-organization, collective behaviour, trophic and ecological cascades, etc..

So on many levels, the more you reduce complex biological systems, the less understanding you have of how they function as a system. On the other hand science most definitely CAN study the system as a whole. You CAN validate the system used and monitor the results obtained. Which BTW is exactly what Savory said, and Teague did. He simply allowed the managers to use the various grazing systems, and monitored the results, as opposed to intentionally excluding variables, he allowed the managers to adapt to the ever changing complex variables.

► Success was due to managing grazing adaptively for desired results.

That should be no biggie to understand. Or do you suppose that any farmer or rancher follows a rigid plan without adapting to things like ever changing weather conditions?

"The first duty of the agriculturalist must always be to understand that he is part of nature and can not escape from his environment." - Sir Albert Howard

 

[Reality Check]

... (read the whole paragraph for context and clarification)

You need to read the entire paragraph, Red Baron Farms:
PDF

Because each and every managed situation involving land (people, land, money) is totally unique, and also unique every year just as one cannot step into the same river twice because it is flowing, Holistic Management does not permit replication. Because of this fact we can only validate the “science” used and monitor or document “results achieved”. Note: This point is critical to understanding the great difficulty reductionist scientists are experiencing trying to comprehend holistic planned grazing – because no two plans are ever the same even on the same property two years running, planned grazing cannot be replicated which reductionist scientists do to try to understand the
“science.” What such researchers also fail to understand is it were replicable as are all grazing systems and rotations, it still would only provide the results and not the “science”. Every study of holistic planned grazing that has been done has provided results that are rejected by range scientists because there was no replication!

This paragraph is about replication. The word reductionist is applied to scientists in a little insult.

The last sentence is just wrong:
Holistic planned grazing is rejected by the majority of range scientists because "the majority of range scientists have not been able to experimentally confirm that intensive grazing systems similar to those at the center of holistic management show a benefit, and claim that managers' reports of success are anecdotal".
But his claim of "no replication" is an extra, small reason to be dubious about Savory (not HM). It does not stop HM from being tested.

One reductionist paper (Grazing management impacts on vegetation, soil biota and soil chemical, physical and hydrological properties in tall grass prairie) does not validate HM by itself, especially given Savory's distain for reductionism .

What validates theories in science is a body of evidence. This means multiple published papers. A single paper is a good start but there are always issues that can be raised about a single paper, e.g. the first paper on a subject usually has a small sample size and so is statistically unsure.

 

[Reality Check]

More than that though, in complex biological systems you normally need to use holism instead of reductionism even when not managed by Man. You can't really reduce it to its component parts and still understand emergence, self-organization, collective behaviour, trophic and ecological cascades, etc.

This is not about understanding, Red Baron Farms. It is about validating that a holistic system works.
The real problem is that you cannot "use holism" and assume that magic happens that turns indifferent farming practices into effective farming practices. You still have to compare results to see whether they are better or not .

For example: Grazing management impacts on vegetation, soil biota and soil chemical, physical and hydrological properties in tall grass prairie is a "black box" study. It does not look closely at how HM works or try to understand it deeply. There are just two sets of black boxes - one where HM is used, one where HM is not used.
And it is reductionist - where are the human factors considered in the paper, Red Baron Farms? Where does it look at "emergence, self-organization, collective behaviour, trophic and ecological cascades, etc."?

 

[blutoski]

Not weighing in on the debate, but probably of interest to the participants:

[Guardian: Eat more meat and save the world: the latest implausible farming miracle]

Excerpt:

I would love to believe him. But I’ve been in this game too long to take anything on trust – especially simple solutions to complex problems. So I went to the library and started reading. A large number of academic papers have been published in response to his claims, testing them by means of experimental and comparative studies. The conclusion, overwhelmingly, is that his statements are not supported by empirical evidence and experimental work, and that in crucial respects his techniques do more harm than good.

 

[Reality Check]

On the same theme there is Cows Against Climate Change: The Dodgy Science Behind the TED Talk

 

[Red Baron Farms]

Not weighing in on the debate, but probably of interest to the participants:

[Guardian: Eat more meat and save the world: the latest implausible farming miracle]

It is a synthesis posted earlier, and not a particularly good one at that. He says, "A large number of academic papers have been published in response to his claims, testing them by means of experimental and comparative studies." Which is false. Only one study has tested his claims, and it confirmed them. The other so called "tests" were simply reviews and/or synthesis' that are not based on any new experimental evidence, supporting or falsifying.

He also says, "The conclusion, overwhelmingly, is that his statements are not supported by empirical evidence and experimental work, and that in crucial respects his techniques do more harm than good." And yet he produced no evidence of this statement at all. So far only one published peer review study and it confirmed Savory's claims at least on the Texas ranches in the study. Obviously more ranches around the world need published and peer reviewed too, so that the anecdotal case studies can be confirmed or falsified scientifically. But that takes time. Again, no evidence whatsoever HM does harm, not even anecdotal evidence. That is purely made up, but based on Joy Belsky's crusade to eliminate all livestock ranches in the western USA.

On the same theme there is Cows Against Climate Change: The Dodgy Science Behind the TED Talk

That's actually a good one, seeing as how the comments section has a well written rebuttal by Teague.

 

[Reality Check]

That's actually a good one, seeing as how the comments section has a well written rebuttal by Teague.

It looks like you ignored the actual contents of the blog to find a comment written by Teague which seems to not be there, Red Baron Farms!
No commenter with a name like Teague.
No comment that is an actual rebuttal of the blog.

On the same theme there is Cows Against Climate Change: The Dodgy Science Behind the TED Talk

The comments section has several commenters with the ignorance about the plural of anecdotes is not data.

ETA: Why mention a comment by Teague and not the comment by AGlatzle wo is critical of Savory's methods?

 

[Reality Check]

It looks like Savory's TED talk inspired a review article.
Holistic Management: Misinformation on the Science of Grazed Ecosystems

Over 3 billion hectares of lands worldwide are grazed by livestock, with a majority suffering degradation in ecological condition. Losses in plant productivity, biodiversity of plant and animal communities, and carbon storage are occurring as a result of livestock grazing. Holistic management (HM) has been proposed as a means of restoring degraded deserts and grasslands and reversing climate change. The fundamental approach of this system is based on frequently rotating livestock herds to mimic native ungulates reacting to predators in order to break up biological soil crusts and trample plants and soils to promote restoration. This review could find no peer-reviewed studies that show that this management approach is superior to conventional grazing systems in outcomes. Any claims of success due to HM are likely due to the management aspects of goal setting, monitoring, and adapting to meet goals, not the ecological principles embodied in HM. Ecologically, the application of HM principles of trampling and intensive foraging are as detrimental to plants, soils, water storage, and plant productivity as are conventional grazing systems. Contrary to claims made that HM will reverse climate change, the scientific evidence is that global greenhouse gas emissions are vastly larger than the capacity of worldwide grasslands and deserts to store the carbon emitted each year.

The "peer-reviewed studies" probably refers to current HM rather than Savory's earlier incarnations of HM and so skips the Zimbabwe trial.

 

[Red Baron Farms]

It looks like Savory's TED talk inspired a review article.
Holistic Management: Misinformation on the Science of Grazed Ecosystems

The "peer-reviewed studies" probably refers to current HM rather than Savory's earlier incarnations of HM and so skips the Zimbabwe trial.

LOL Still hanging your hat on Belsky's failed crusade?