Soil for Water

View the project final report

Commodities

• Animals: bovine, goats, sheep

Practices

• Animal Production: grazing management, grazing - rotational, rangeland/pasture management
• Education and Training: farmer to farmer, mentoring, networking, on-farm/ranch research, participatory research, workshop
• Production Systems: integrated crop and livestock systems
• Soil Management: organic matter, soil microbiology, soil quality/health
• Sustainable Communities: partnerships, quality of life

In this systems research project, we studied and promoted regenerative grazing, which we defined as grazing that improves soil health. Despite efforts by many groups to promote regenerative grazing (under various names) over the past 30 years, adoption rates remain low in the Southern SARE region, and studies have often failed to validate the claims of proponents. With an interdisciplinary team that included six universities, three NGOs, and eight farmer cooperators, we investigated barriers and opportunities to the adoption of regenerative grazing in Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia: creating a working group in each state, carrying out on-farm research and controlled studies, and facilitating mentoring and peer-to-peer learning. We put on educational events and featured case studies and success stories in publications, podcasts, and professional-quality videos. We gave special attention to small- to mid-sized, family-owned, underserved and limited-resource farming operations—not only for reasons of fairness but because widespread adoption will depend on showing that regenerative grazing can be done affordably and at any scale.

We learned that regenerative grazing, while still far from mainstream in the South, is gaining traction. We found that the hardest barriers for producers to overcome are not technical ones but psychological and social, requiring a mindset shift and a willingness to experiment and put up with negative peer pressure from neighbors. We confirmed the effectiveness of two main strategies overcoming these barriers: connecting producers to each other for peer-to-peer learning and encouraging low-risk, on-farm experiments.

(1) Identify practical and regionally-appropriate ways of improving soil health and catching more water in soil.

(2) Launch a new multi-state network of landowners who are conducting on-farm trials.

(3) Improve communication and information-sharing among producers and agricultural professionals who are interested in regenerative grazing.