Final report for ES20-154
Project Information
Interest is growing in practices that utilize grazing management to rebuild the health of degraded soils. The National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT) will host four two-day workshops for educators and mentor farmers in Arkansas, Texas, and Mississippi to provide information and hands-on training on regenerative grazing, soil health, and monitoring. NCAT will collaborate with partners at NRCS, extension service, conservation districts, and local farmers to create curriculum and a compilation of resources for participants, which will also be shared on-line.
The target audience includes NRCS, conservation district, and non-governmental organization employees; extension agents; and mentor farmers. We will equip participants with the tools and information needed to confidently help producers understand soil health and regenerative grazing management. There remains lack of clarity among our target audience surrounding the definitions of terms “regenerative grazing” and “soil health”, and what they look like in practice. How is “regenerative” different from “sustainable” or “organic”? Through conversations NCAT has had with key collaborators and farmers across the region, we have observed a lack of understanding of key principles surrounding this topic.
Using research-based information and farmer examples, we will clarify what regenerative grazing means and its impacts on soil health, productivity, and profitability. Teaching soil and pasture health monitoring techniques is also a critical part of this project. Regenerative grazing is an area of study where location-specific research is scarce; on-farm monitoring is an important way producers get quantitative information that can inform their management.
We will equip our target audience with the tools and information needed to confidently help producers understand the principles of soil health and master holistic, regenerative grazing management practices. We will achieve this by completing these objectives:
1) Train 120 professionals and mentor farmers on principles of regenerative grazing, soil health, and soil and pasture health monitoring
2) Develop at least five videos explaining regenerative grazing, soil health, and monitoring practices
3) Create educational materials to be shared with participants and other educators across the nation through jump drives and NCAT’s ATTRA website
4) Create and distribute resources to support the formation of local farmer-led grazing groups
As a result we expect participants to:
- a) understand and be able to articulate the impacts of regenerative grazing on soil health,
pasture health, water management, and livestock health and productivity;
- b) understand potential economic benefits of regenerative management strategies;
- c) gain hands-on experience in monitoring methods to quantify the impacts of regenerative grazing;
- d) be equipped to assist in developing local grazing groups; and
- e) share information gained from these workshops with producers in their region through field days, newsletters, one-on-one technical assistance, and/or on-line distribution of educational materials, exponentially increasing the reach of this project beyond the 120 workshop attendees.
This project will build a network of educators and mentor farmers who will be able to provide information and trainings to producers about regenerative grazing, soil health, and monitoring. We estimate this network of workshop participants will reach over 5,000 farmers directly, with even more producers accessing educational materials on-line. The NCAT Project Team will provide continued technical assistance and support to educators and farmers beyond the life of this project through NCAT’s ATTRA program.
Cooperators
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- - Producer
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Education
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we had to adapt our original plan of hosting four two-day in-person on-farm workshops. We took a hybrid approach instead, hosting one-day virtual workshops and one-day in-person workshops in each of the four previously identified locations. We hosted one on-farm workshop with Dr. Allen Williams at BDA Farms in Alabama, two on-farm workshops in Arkansas (at Crunkleton Farms and Windset Ranch), and one with Travis Kraus on his ranch in Texas. We hosted three virtual workshops that included each of the four producers whose farms/ranches we visited, which were recorded and shared on NCAT's websites and YouTube channel. We were able to reach even more people than originally planned with this approach, since virtual events are easier for people to attend no matter where they are located, and thousands of people have accessed the recordings since they were posted.
The educational materials we originally planned to create were completed as planned. We have produced five instructional videos on pasture and soil assessment and monitoring. Jump drives with these videos and extensive information on regenerative grazing, soil health, monitoring, and grazing networks were created and shared with partners in the southern region.
Though it was a challenge to recruit participants for in-person events during the pandemic, we adapted our educational approach and provided information and training to thousands of ag professionals, farmers, and ranchers.
Education & Outreach Initiatives
In-Person and Virtual Workshops
These workshops presented information on regenerative grazing, soil health, monitoring, and the importance of peer-to-peer learning.
Workshops:
8/24/21
Virtual workshop with Dr. Allen Williams. This event had 43 attendees in the live workshop. It was recorded and posted on our NCATATTRA YouTube channel and the ATTRA website, and has to date (2/8/23) had over 13,000 views.
8/27/21
In-person workshop with Dr. Allen Williams and NCAT Ag Specialists Felicia Bell and Linda Coffey at BDA Farms in Alabama. This farm is co-owned by Dr. Williams. We had 25 total participants in this on-farm workshop, with 3 veterans present. Educational materials were distributed to all in-person workshop participants.
10/7/2021
Virtual workshop with Arkansas graziers Jeremy Prater and Rick Crunkleton and NCAT Ag Specialists Nina Prater, Justin Morris, and Linda Coffey. This event had 40 people attending the live workshop. It was recorded and posted on our NCATATTRA YouTube channel and the ATTRA website, and has to date (2/8/23) had over 1,300 views.
10/12/21
In-person workshop at Windset Ranch in Cedarville, Arkansas. Twelve people attended. Educational materials were distributed to all in-person workshop participants.
10/14/2021
In-person workshop at Crunkleton Farms in Everton, Arkansas. Eight people attended this workshop. Educational materials were distributed to all in-person workshop participants.
9/14/22
Virtual workshop with Texas grazier Travis Kraus. This event had 20 attendees to the live workshop. It was recorded and posted on our NCATATTRA YouTube channel and the ATTRA website, and has to date (2/8/23) had over 350 views.
9/27/22
In-person workshop in Magnolia, Mississippi in partnership with Mississippi State University Extension. Thirty people attended this workshop, including 20 farmers and 10 agriculture professionals. This workshop focused on small ruminants, risk management, and soil health and grazing.
10/21/22
In-person workshop at Pajarito Ranch with Travis Kraus in Pandora, Texas. Twelve people attended this workshop. Educational materials were distributed to all in-person workshop participants.
Participants in virtual and in-person workshops gained knowledge on the subject of grazing management, soil health, and learned from real-world practitioners who are working toward regenerative grazing and soil health goals.
Evaluations from these workshops showed a change in knowledge from an average of 2.8 before the workshops (on a scale from 1 to 5, 1 being little knowledge, 5 being very knowledgeable) increasing to an average of 3.7 after participation in these workshops.
Of those who completed evaluations of these workshops (58 total responses), 79% said they would make changes to their operations based on skills or knowledge gained from these workshops. 17% said they were not sure, and 4% said no, or did not answer.
Of those who completed evaluations of these workshops (58 total responses), 86% said they gained useful information, 45% said they gained useful skills, 53% learned new techniques, 81% gained awareness of new resources, and 33% said they gained new relationships or networks with other workshop participants. Of those 33%, the vast majority of yeses were from in-person workshops, showing the power of in-person events to build networks.
When asked "How often will you use the skills and knowledge gained?", 21% said Always, 59% said Often, 21% said Sometimes, and 0% said Rarely or Never.
Virtual workshop recordings were shared on the NCAT ATTRA YouTube channel and have reached thousands of viewers.
Creation of Online Deliverables
NCAT created five videos and shared them through NCAT's media channels as well as on jump drives. These were created to teach trainers and mentor farmers ways to assess and monitor soil and pasture health.
They can be seen on the NCAT ATTRA YouTube Channel in a playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDu0ElBiEy9xOc28j4PXdgvpBbsWfGsXG
The video titles are:
- Soil Aggregation and Assessing Pasture Soil Structure with a Simple Field Test
- Measuring Water Infiltration in Agricultural Soils
- Pasture Composition Monitoring with the Point Step Method
- Rainfall Simulator: How Farming Practices Affect Soil Stability and Water Infiltration
- Slump Test for Assessing Aggregate Stability in Agricultural Soils
These videos have been viewed a total of 768 times to date (2/8/23) in the three months they have been available. Individual video view rates are as follows:
- Soil Aggregation and Assessing Pasture Soil Structure with a Simple Field Test (146 views)
- Measuring Water Infiltration in Agricultural Soils (88 views)
- Pasture Composition Monitoring with the Point Step Method (228 views)
- Rainfall Simulator: How Farming Practices Affect Soil Stability and Water Infiltration (161 views)
- Slump Test for Assessing Aggregate Stability in Agricultural Soils (115 views)
The videos will be available in perpetuity, and we believe they will continue to be a useful resource to ag professionals and mentor farmers.
Provide guidance for ag professionals and mentor farmers on grazing networks and the importance of peer-to-peer support.
We created a publication, Grazing Networks for Livestock Producers, available on the ATTRA website and on the jump drives created for this project.
Topics included:
- Benefits of Local Grazing Groups
- Finding a Grazing Network
- Starting a Grazing Network
- Examples of Grazing Network Activities
- Sustaining a Grazing Network
Available here as an online publication and a downloadable PDF:
https://attra.ncat.org/publication/grazing-networks-for-livestock-producers/
We hope to help people understand the importance of farmer networks in advancing learning about sustainable, regenerative practices, and to provide easy guidance for ag professionals and farmers to be able to create grazing networks in their own locations.
Create jump drives with educational materials for ag professionals and mentor farmers.
We created jump drives to distribute to ag educators, partners, farmers, and ranchers throughout the Southern region with information on regenerative grazing, soil health, monitoring, and grazing networks. Jump drives included:
- 5 videos created for this project
- Links to all the recorded virtual workshops for this project
- Relevant ATTRA podcasts
- Publications on grazing, soil health, and grazing networks
- Links to other related ATTRA videos
We were able to have almost 800 jump drives created. These jump drives will allow educators to continue their own education and to easily share information with their clients, even in areas with poor internet. We expect these jump drives to give ag professionals an opportunity to continue learning about regenerative grazing and soil health, to learn monitoring techniques, and to be able to share that information with farmers and ranchers in their regions.
Educational & Outreach Activities
Participation Summary:
Learning Outcomes
Project Outcomes
This project had to undergo some changes due to it having been written before the pandemic, and then having to be conducted during the pandemic. This meant that some of the impacts and outcomes were different than anticipated and difficult to quantify, but I believe it has still been impactful work.
We worked with partners in Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Texas to host events both in-person and virtual in order to make them accessible during uncertain times.
One impressive outcome is the reach of the recorded virtual workshops we conducted in place of some of the in-person workshops we had planned. We had over 100 people attend the workshops live, which was pretty good reach, but since then those workshops have been viewed almost 15,000 times (at the time of writing this report). The impact of those views cannot be counted in terms of whether they are extension, government, nonprofit, or farmer & rancher viewers, but I think the sheer numbers demonstrate both an interest in the subject and one way this project has had impact.
The numbers reported above (of ag service providers who used this information in their work) are only the ones who completed evaluations and surveys. We believe the actual numbers to be significantly higher.
We have seen an uptick in energy and interest surrounding the power of regenerative grazing to improve farms from the soil to the financial. Our Soil For Water network continues to build on the work this project started, and our Women, Livestock, and the Land project has connected women and provided them with knowledge and skills needed to become adept graziers and soil stewards. The processes around soil building, pasture improvement, and livestock management are multi-year endeavors, so I anticipate we will see even greater impacts going forward in the years after the conclusion of this project. Many of the resources created and distributed will be available in perpetuity, so we hope the project impact will keep widening and deepening throughout the Southern SARE region and beyond.
Another take-away from this project is the value of creating hybrid virtual and in-person events. We had never conducted educational events in that way prior to this. We see a lot of value in offering educational opportunities in both formats. We can reach more people with virtual events, but participants get a different experience with more networking opportunities and hands-on training with in-person events. We foresee using a hybrid teaching model with projects going forward.
Information Products
- Soil Aggregation and Assessing Pasture Soil Structure with a Simple Field Test
- Measuring Water Infiltration in Agricultural Soils
- Pasture Composition Monitoring with the Point Step Method
- Rainfall Simulator: How Farming Practices Affect Soil Stability and Water Infiltration
- Slump Test for Assessing Aggregate Stability in Agricultural Soils
- Grazing Networks for Livestock Producers