Regenerative Agriculture Expert Darren Doherty on Holistic Management & Healthy Food Systems

savory.global | Click here to see Darren Doherty, founder of Regrarians and RegenAg talk about the importance building healthy local food systems supported by regenerating farms and how the framework of Holistic Management can support all of that and more.
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About Savory Institute:
Loss of grasslands leads to climate change, floods, droughts, famine, and worldwide poverty. It’s our mission to promote large-scale restoration of the world’s grasslands through Holistic Management.
Holistic Management is a process of decision-making and planning that gives people the insights and management tools needed to understand nature: resulting in better, more informed decisions that balance key social, environmental, and financial considerations.

[@gerrygillespie4775]

Excellent interview Darren. In additional to the closing the nutrient cycle, the return of organic waste to agriculture from urban sources also empowers the urban community to participate directly with the farmer in the food cycle and to rebuild their lost, but crucial relationship. It brings with it the social and political power to have input into the sustenance of future generations while creating many new opportunities in the management of the organic materials we currently perceive as waste. In Australia, we have a powerful piece of legislation called the Product Stewardship Act which could be used to direct all organic waste back to agriculture as a clean, source-separated compost. This can be done at less cost than disposal to landfill as an element of holistic management. More strength to your arm!

[@floot6799]

WOW... 20 years ago Darren only wanted to plant trees. Nothing intrinsically wrong with that but he has now grown himself.... Interesting.

[@VasilyKiryanov]

So, finally, what Holistic Management actually is - remains fairly unclear. General words only.

[@ethanyoung6860]

it is several things, but in general a way to understand your context (including environment, finances and quality of life, etc) and make decisions appropriate toward maximizing quality of life indefinitely. You learn to read and understand your situation, you learn to understand yourself (including however you need to define "self"), and the tools available to you, and then create process whereby you apply rigorous test questions to decisions to determine their appopriateness to context, and then create a feedback assessment loop to verify desired results, and/or adjust management accordingly. It is not a toolkit or people giving out farming techniques or telling others when/where to do what, but a framework for making good decisions. It evolved out of the need to save the human species from current self-destructive (and ecologically-destructive) tendencies, but also generally applies to anything. Hope this helps!

[@downbntout]

Get the book by Allan Savory titled 'Holistic Resource Management'. Without that book you just don't have the basic idea. I sure didn't. It's a valuable book to me for making my operation succeed, it's getting better every year and it was getting worse fast. I got that book just in time, no joke.

[@OutRAjious]

VasilyKiryanov I thought is was like the wolves in yosemite video ... herd your herbivores into a small space and move them around the big space bit by bit ... so they excrete on an area and then move on....!?

[@Dave183]

I think we need Ethiopians our there, in our paddocks- changing the nappies on the cows- and putting the poos in the next paddock.

[@antoniom.alabarce7337]

Darren: public enemy #1 ... PSEUDOSCIENCES SICK!