HOLISTIC COWBOYS AND CARBON FARMERS - MEAT: A Benign Extravagance - page 234

as part of her patter for selling weedkiller. Cheatgrass spreads because it doesn't 'cure'. 24
Most native American grasses remain nutritious and palatable to livestock once they have
dried on the stem, whereas Bromus tectorum , and most other European grasses don't - that
is why cattle farmers in Europe make hay, whereas bison graze throughout winter on nat-
ive grasses (unlike European cattle, they know how to scrape the snow away with their
muzzles). 25 Moreover, cheatgrass seeds have sharp awns that injure the mouths of cattle,
making it still more unpalatable. A stand of cheatgrass inadequately grazed in spring be-
comes a blanket of tinder-dry vegetation which is six times more likely to cause a wild-
fire than native sagebrush. After a fire, the following spring, the fast growing cheatgrass
germinates with enthusiasm and smothers slower-growing native plants, progressively es-
tablishing its own private fire-assisted monoculture. 'There are no biological controls for
cheatgrass,' the BASF consultant advises; but Dagget is supported by most of the academic
literature in his contention that timed, intensive grazing is the best way of controlling cheat
grass, whereas non-intervention allows it to spread. 26
On the one hand, Savory's theories seem to make sense: why shouldn't humans be able
to imitate with cows what nature achieves with buffalo? On the other hand, many of Dag-
get's findings sound too good to be true (an impression reinforced by the folksy journ-
alese by which they are described). And neither's case is helped by an analysis of pulse
grazing carried out by New Mexico University agronomist Jerry Holechek, and published
in a 1999 edition of the journal Rangelands . 27 None of the 13 research studies reviewed
by Holechek showed that 'short duration grazing' offered any advantages over continuous
grazing: there was no evidence that it could support a higher stocking rate, and the assertion
that it improved the species mix was 'strongly rejected by the authors'. Holechek attributes
the enthusiasm for short rotation grazing in the late 1980s and early 1990s to a fortuitous
abundance of rain, remarking 'history shows that it's human nature to pursue a good story
rather than pursue the truth'. The article elicited a debate in the letters pages of Rangelands ,
but only a weak reply from Savory; the Holistic Management website has no rebuttal of
Holechek's criticisms and Dagget's book makes no mention of them. 28
Another paper by Briske et al, published in 2008, analysed 28 different different studies
and came to the same conclusion as Holechek, that 'these experimental results conclusively
demonstrate that rotational grazing is not superior to continuous grazing across numerous
rangeland ecosystems'. 29 Briske did, however, suggest some reasons for the wide gulf
between the perceptions of ranchers who used rotational grazing methods, and the findings
of scientists. He acknowledges that in experiments, 'grazing treatments are often applied
on a more rigid schedule to ensure experimental integrity and repeatability compared to
commercial systems that are adaptively managed'. Briske provides a diagram with a grid
showing equal periods of grazing time allocated to paddocks throughout both wet and dry
periods in the grazing season, from which he concludes that rotational grazing cannot adapt