Demystifying Regenerative Grazing and Soil Health

View the project final report

Commodities

Practices

• Animal Production: grazing management
• Education and Training: extension, mentoring, workshop
• Soil Management: soil quality/health

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:

1. a) understand and be able to articulate the impacts of regenerative grazing on soil health,

pasture health, water management, and livestock health and productivity;

1. b) understand potential economic benefits of regenerative management strategies;
2. c) gain hands-on experience in monitoring methods to quantify the impacts of regenerative grazing;
3. d) be equipped to assist in developing local grazing groups; and
4. 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.