How do you filter all the ‘noise’?
When I first started being a landowner, my mindset was to be a homesteader while I worked my corporate job. I wanted to show my children a simpler, more natural life (versus living in suburbia in front of a game or TV). I was a city girl too far removed from ranching grandparents in Argentina. I didn’t have a clue what to do, but I had an ideal dream of having a self—sufficient farm.
With no knowledge, I researched. Twenty-two years ago, YouTube wasn’t as resourceful as it is now, so I subscribed to magazines (Acres USA, Mother Earth News, MaryJanesFarm, Countryside, Stockman Grass Farmer were some of them). During lunch breaks at the office and in the evenings, I would peruse the internet for how-to articles. I purchased Joel Salatin, John Seymour, Pat Coleby and many other books and built quite an extensive library on topics from gardening and preserving to grazing livestock and making cheese and improving the soil.
I thought I was going to do it all. While still working a full-time job and raising two children as a single parent (oh to be young and inexperienced).
As you can imagine, the information overload was huge! A whole lot of ‘noise’ regarding a topic. And much of the information was (and still is) contradictory. One guy recommends doing things one way, and another suggests doing things another way.
How do you filter all the ‘noise’ so you know what you need to do?
There are four things you should consider to filter all the ‘noise’:
✔️The first thing you need to do is understand that works for them, might not work for you.
Everyone is unique, with their unique values, unique goals, unique financial situation, unique familial situation, unique environment, unique land health, unique future vision and community. Your journey as a land steward and farm/ranch operation will be much easier and less costly (in time, money, frustration and consequences) if you understand what you value, what quality of life you desire, what you need to have in place to have that quality of life and your desired future vision (known as a holistic goal) when you start your land ownership journey. If you have a spouse or a partner, it would behoove you to formulate a holistic goal that you both can agree on so that you’re both on the same page as you manage your land and operation.
This holistic goal will evolve throughout your journey. Experiences, realizations, and life will influence your holistic goal. It’s a living document and should be updated as needed. As it’s a document, placing it in a visible location will remind you of what’s important to you as you make decisions throughout your journey.
Why is a holistic goal important? It’s the filter for you to sift through the noise to determine what will work best for you. As an example, if you have determined that you want to work with nature instead of against nature, then any advice or suggestion that requires the use of chemicals that destroy nature will be discarded. Another example might be that you’ve decided on a policy based on your holistic goal to follow a certain accredited program because it supports your values (ie American Grassfed Association), then any advice or recommendation that doesn’t honor those standards would be discarded.
✔️You should understand your environment and the four fundamental ecosystem processes.
Owning and stewarding land is more than putting up fences, using equipment to clear undesired landscape, placing livestock to graze and raising crops.
Your environment will play a large role in how effective your management is. Not all environments are the same. Practices that benefit one type of environment damage the other. Environments may be classified on a continuum from nonbrittle to very brittle according to how well humidity is distributed throughout the year and how quickly dead vegetation breaks down, known as the brittleness scale. All environments lie at some point along the scale of 1 to 10, where 1 (less brittle) is a tropical rainforest and a desert is a 10 (more brittle).
The brittleness scale
Everything you do on the land affects the four fundamental ecosystem processes: water cycle, mineral cycle, biological community (succession), and energy flow (photosynthesis).
water cycle- the circulation of civilization’s life blood- fixed amount of water on the planet that constantly cycles from the atmosphere to the surface and back to the atmosphere. It is constantly on the move becoming liquid, ice and vapor affecting plant, animal and human life.
mineral cycle- the circulation of life-sustaining nutrients and minerals and how it affects plant, animal and human life
energy flow- conversion of solar energy to a usable form that takes place through plant material on land and in water (almost all life requires energy that flows daily from the sun).
biological community (succession)- the ever-changing patterns in the development of living communities- change begets change as the organisms interact with one another and with their microenvironment. Notice the species composition, numbers and age structure are in constant state of flux.
The lack of understanding that management in different environments can improve or destroy the ecosystem processes is what has caused our current climate change and desertification symptoms. Every landowner should be able to walk his/her property and read the land and determine how the ecosystem processes are being affected.
Why is understanding your environment and the four fundamental ecosystem processes important? It’s another filter for you to sift through the noise to determine how you should manage your land. As an example, if you decide to clear the woods on your land with heavy equipment and leave a cleared area with bare soil:
In a non-brittle environment, if you don’t do anything to the cleared area, within a short period of time, vegetation will start growing due to the higher moisture. In a more brittle environment, the bare soil will remain bare much longer due to lower moisture.
You have affected the energy flow because now you don’t have green plans photosynthesizing carbon dioxide into carbon to feel the roots and oxygen for humans and animals to breathe.
You have also affected the water cycle because you have bare soil and any rain that falls will likely cap (create a hard crust) so that water runs off and erodes the land instead of infiltrating.
You have also affected the biological community because you have removed an entire environment that housed animals, insects, and plant species. A new environment will have to be created on the cleared land.
You have also affected the mineral cycle because you have removed plants and living roots from the area that allowed for the circulation of nutrients and minerals.
Understanding the potential impact of any suggestion or advice based on your environment and on the ecosystem processes will help you sift practices that allow for improved ecosystem functions instead of negatively impacting the functionality and allow you to see quicker results with your management.
✔️Remember to look at the whole, not the parts
There are no boundaries in nature so individual parts do not exist, only wholes, and these form and shape each other through patterns of interactions or relationships. (Jan Christian Smuts).
In a holistic perspective, we must pay attention to the relationships that exist between these different aspects/parts of the whole.
Why is remembering to look at the whole, not the parts, so important? We tend to focus on small details or parts and end up missing something more important; we fail to understand the situation as a whole. We are missing the big picture. When we define our big picture (our whole) and bring the suggested advice/recommendation into our whole, we will be filtering the ‘noise’ and sifting it through our whole, our values and goals!
As an example, let’s say you’re researching planting a peach orchard on your land and you get advice from experts that in your region, peach trees tend to get a specific disease and therefore you’ll have to treat them for this disease periodically. This is likely true for operations that are not managing for soil health and functioning ecosystem processes (the norm unfortunately until more understand this concept), but it likely won’t be the case if you are managing for soil health and healthy ecosystem functions! As your management improves the ecosystem functions and soil health, the diseases won’t have an environment where they can cause damage.
✔️You should address the root cause rather than the symptom.
Many doctors fall into the trap of treating a symptom rather than what is causing the symptom. Landowners do the same. They spray for weeds, instead of understanding why the weeds are there. Spraying for weeds becomes a habit and a recurring expense (thereby reducing profits). If you were to understand why the weeds are there, then you can address and solve the problem, improve your management, spend the money once, not have the recurring expense and improve your profits!
Solving the root cause will require research and knowledge, making you a better land steward and manager. By asking ‘Why?’ at least five times, you’ll likely end up at the root cause!
Why is understanding the root cause important? It’s another filter in sifting out the noise of suggestions and advice to address a problem. As an example:
Why do you have weeds?
Because I don’t have grass.
Why don’t you have grass?
Because the livestock ate it all.
Why did the livestock eat it all?
Because I gave the livestock access to all the land at once
Why did you give the livestock access to all the land at once?
Because that’s what the neighbor does.
👉 In this example, the land steward is doing as the neighbor does, and likely doesn’t understand how grass grows, the results of overgrazing and partial rest, and how grazing management (specifically planned grazing) will keep the soil covered with grasses and litter, which will reduce the need for mother nature to cover the soil with weeds.
By considering these four things when trying to decide what your next steps should be, you’ll be making decisions that will be better suited based on your values and desired outcomes, landscape environment and your whole!
If you’d like to dig deeper into these concepts, look for upcoming workshops or I am available for one-on-one consulting.
