by Kathy Harris
In early February, 15 ranchers gathered at JE Canyon Ranch in southeastern Colorado for a three day class on Holistic Management. The class was facilitated by HMI Certified Educator Kirk Gadzia, who has over 25 years’ experience teaching the concepts of natural resource management worldwide. The class was comprised of ag agency professionals, a veterinarian, and area ranchers. Together, they manage about 1.85 million acres and influence another 3.1 million acres.
In addition to going through the steps to create a Grazing Plan and learning the basics of Holistic Financial Planning, the group went through a real-life decision testing example using JE Canyon's holistic goal and spent time out on the ranch to practice forage assessment.
Thanks to sponsorship by The Nature Conservancy, participants had the opportunity to stay on this beautiful and unique 50,000 acre ranch and learn Holistic Management.
Results from the training evaluation showed:
Along with specific requests for support going forward with Grazing Planning and Holistic Management in general, participants noted that they intend to implement the following management practices:
Goal Setting
Monitoring the grass
Planning/record keeping/recording goals
More cross fencing
Organized goal setting
Pre-grazing planning
Engaging more with the ranching community
And students reported the following as the most useful things learned in the training:
How to plan for long term sustainability
The importance of taking time to plan and monitor
Range management
Financial planning
Plant recovery and rest time
Grazing planning
Communication with team
Identifying the Weakest Link and Root Causes
Goal setting and decision making
Grazing planning using the ADA system
Looking at un-grazed and grazed pastures to estimate ADA and then monitor ADA on the grazed land
Thank You
We are grateful for The Nature Conservancy's generous sponsorship of this event. Future plans include continued collaborative training events and a possible Management Club to support application of what the students learned.
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