Training Programs

The James Ranch is a working example of success where their extended family, friends, and community joyfully participate in ranch activities and benefit from Holistic Management. It serves as a model and inspiration demonstrating how managing a healthy ecosystem results in thriving regenerative soils, forage, water, livestock, birds, insects and wildlife. It’s also a model for multi-enterprise success which includes grass-fed beef, artisan cheese, whey-good pork, gardens, a nursery, a grill, and a market for their wonderful products. At this 2-day workshop, the James family will share their rich history, invaluable experiences, and lessons learned.

Wayne Knight, rancher and HMI Executive Director, will introduce tools you can use to improve your grazing operations. A mix of workshop and ranch visits will allow opportunities to learn and practice aspects of monitoring, animal performance milestones, and Holistic Goal setting. This event will help you apply techniques to improve your management and realize long-term success by balancing animal density, animal performance, and reduced drought risk.

This two-day Advanced Grazing Workshop is for ranchers and those who want to learn how livestock grazing management strategies benefit rangeland and businesses with a focus on land literacy. Land and livestock managers who practice Holistic Planned Grazing monitor for results and rely heavily on their observations to effectively manage and adapt when conditions require. In doing so, they’re able to mitigate risk and loss.

In this in-depth workshop, we’ll focus on how to:

• Improve the landscape with planned grazing strategies
• Grow enough grass to feed your livestock, even in an arid climate
• Monitor indicators to avoid or lessen the effects of future risk
• Track animal performance to key milestones
• Consider animal density as a key tool for ecological improvement within the context of management
• Use tools to measure forage and how to use forage figures to effectively plan for drought
• Determine adequate plant and pasture recovery time
• Increase profits and ecosystem health (water and mineral cycles) with fewer inputs

After this workshop, you will be able to:

• Become systematic in making observations
• Easily analyze observations to improve management, marketing, and profitability
• Monitor ecosystem health
• Integrate biological monitoring with daily farm/ranch activities

This online workshop will cover:

• Key biological monitoring principles and practices about soil fertility and the influences of production practices
• Monitoring techniques for rangelands, pastures, and croplands
• Addressing natural resource issues with a simple approach based on monitoring data, past production practices, and potential new production practices
• Building resilience and increased productivity by managing for biodiversity
• Incorporating simple monitoring techniques into your daily routine
• Simple and effective monitoring techniques for rangeland, pasture, and crops
• Maximizing dollars from sunshine
• Techniques for quantifying ranch or farm performance

Join us on October 6, 2022 for a special field day at Del Cielo Farm/Picaflor Collective in the beautiful South Valley of Albuquerque, the ancestral home of the Tewa Peoples. Discover how the Del Cielo Farm team has used regenerative agricultural practices and Holistic Management to help them reach their goals for a brighter, healthier future. Learn about farming practices that benefit soil health, principles that support the ecosystem, and how to gain more success by working with nature, not against it. Hear from Del Cielo Farm Owner and Holistic Management practitioner Sergio Schwartz, Grow the Growers graduate and Farm Manager Becca Marshall, plus many others!

Develop a step-by-step farm/ranch transition plan by utilizing Holistic Management.

A carefully thought-out succession plan is essential in shaping expectations to enable a smooth and equitable transition. In this course, we will explore how farm and ranch families have used Holistic Management to develop the trust, vision, and authentic communication required to successfully create transfer plans for their farms and ranches. Participants will learn about the Holistic Goal setting process and how it can be used to create a strong foundation for decision-making. Work in small groups with other land managers to practice using the decision-testing matrix. Leave with your own Holistic Goal worksheet to help you create a strong foundation for effective communication and conflict resolution in creating successful transfer plans.

Few people in the Regenerative Agriculture arena have had broader exposure or more hands-on experience than well-known Holistic Management student, educator, and mentor Kirk Gadzia.

Our 5-day workshop aims to present the Holistic Management curriculum that will ground participants in a complete package with components that depend on and fit together for optimal ranch success. To complement Kirk’s facilitation, ranchers Wayne Knight and Linda Pechin-Long will add to the experience from their knowledge and practice of using Holistic Management in their operations.