HMI completed our fourth online course as part of our Whole Farm/Ranch Planning Program for Agricultural Educators funded by The Western Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (WSARE) Professional Development Program. The Biological Monitoring course began in July 2014 with 28 participants from 9 different states. The instructor for the WSARE Biological Monitoring course was Holistic Management Certified Educator Phil Metzger. Phil Metzger is a natural resources development consultant having recently retired from a 32-year career as a resource conservationist for the USDA – Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).
This course provided key biological monitoring principles and practices to help facilitate conversations with producers about soil fertility and how production practices are influencing that fertility. Monitoring techniques for rangelands, pastures, and croplands were discussed. Participants mastered a simple approach to natural resource issue diagnosis based on monitoring data, past production practices, and potential new production practices that will address the resource issue profitably. The purpose of the course was to help agricultural educators and producers have a viable way to collect data and analyze their land. The participants learned to recognize the impact of prior decisions on the land and to observe and use ecosystem functions to increase land performance.
After surveying the participants in the WSARE Biological Monitoring course, a high number of participants experienced knowledge and behavior changes as noted below.
HMI thanks WSARE for their funding of this program.
Knowledge/Behavior and Confidence Increase % Increase How to inventory your farm resources 80% Ability to integrate social, economic and environmental factors into your decisions 82% Your ability to understand ecosystem health 82% Your ability to assess ecosystem health 100% Intend to develop a whole farm goal 100% Overall satisfaction of the course 100%
Behavior Change % of Participants Increased confidence in ability to monitor your farm's ecosystem health 100% Increased confidence in ability to improve the ecosystem health on your farm 100% Increased confidence in how to build organic matter in your soils 89% Do you intend to conduct biological monitoring as a result of today's session? 89% Do you intend to change any management practices as a result of this session? 89% Overall Satisfaction of the course (good to excellent) 100%
What the Participants Said:
“I am able to better organize strategies for implementing a more thorough monitoring system on the farm.”
“I loved the hands-on monitoring and want to learn more about monitoring and to practice it more!”
“Overall the course was excellent, very interactive with participants really participating. The feedback on assignments from Phil was very useful, and in some instances inspired me to “re-do”, or at least go take another look.”
“I think this [knowledge] will be very useful when I am working with producers and even just small acreage land owners that are looking to have better land stewardship practices.”
“[Most useful thing I learned was] how to monitor ecosystem processes, and the importance of observing the soil surface.”
“The monitoring is something that I have never learned about before. I think this will be very useful when I am working with producers and even just small acreage land owners that are looking to have better land stewardship practices.”
“I liked the actual methods for monitoring.”
“I really liked that the holistic process was tied into the monitoring; helped to reinforcing the subject matter.”
“Biological Monitoring is a huge subject and I thought this was very well-presented and succinct.”
Featured Participant
Julie Elliott
“I commented to Phil that I could not do 100 points of the Range Monitoring and he congratulated me for sticking it out to 50 as he usually only does 25! It’s actually quite a relief to learn that it’s o.k. that I don’t collect tons of data- I can use my experience and judgment to determine if more points will garner a wider variety of information. Also, I like the range monitoring sheet and looking at insect and rodent activity on a ‘micro’ scale. What happens on the micro level may tell me more about the condition of the ecological processes than looking at the range on the macro level.”
Adelene is a resident of Arkansas and loves exploring the state’s natural trails. Her passion for education and technology led her to earn a master’s in learning systems technology from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. With her professional experience managing student/client databases and instructional design, Adelene will bring skill and understanding to her role as Office Manager & Instructional Designer at HMI. Her focus on making education more accessible to diverse communities is evident through her volunteer work as an board member for a scholarship program. Adelene is devoted to creating educational opportunities that align with HMI’s mission to promote healthy, resilient lands and thriving communities.
Seth Wilner has been a Holistic Management International Certified Educator since 2005. For 22 years he has worked as an agent educator with University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension where he specializes in farm business management with an emphasis on whole farm planning.
Dana was first introduced to Holistic Management in the 1990s while working in the Texas Hill Country. She strongly believes that Holistic Management can positively impact families that are on the land, the communities they are a part of, and larger landscape resource regeneration efforts.
Sarah Robertson grew up in Taos, New Mexico and has always been passionate about land stewardship, growing things, and nurturing others. After completing a BA in Communication from the University of New Mexico and working with local non-profits, she started her journey as a first-generation farmer. Since 2015, she has been learning and growing alongside her husband on various leased properties in Albuquerque, NM and running a small market farm with goats, chickens, and a CSA. In her role as Programs Assistant at HMI, Sarah brings her enthusiasm for regenerative agriculture, devotion to supporting others, and drive for lifelong learning and growing.
Jozua Lambrecht is from South Africa and divides his time between their home in Somerset West and their family farm in Sutherland, one of the coldest places in South Africa, where they farm with sheep. He is married to his wife Therese and they have two daughters.
Alejandro Carrillo is a fourth-generation rancher, and he is quite familiar with the challenges of running a profitable cattle ranch in the Chihuahuan desert. Because annual precipitation seldom exceeds nine inches, every drop counts when it comes to growing more grasses. Grazing year-round with only sea salt as an input, he is not willing to waste any water in such a brittle environment.
Jared L Talley was born and raised in Southwestern Idaho and now seeks to help rural communities adapt and thrive in a rapidly changing world. He is an Assistant Professor in the School of Public Service at Boise State University, earning his PhD in Philosophy from Michigan State University and his MPA in Environmental Policy and Natural Resource Management from Boise State University. An environmental philosopher by training and an interdisciplinary scholar in practice, he seeks to better understand how communities relate to the land and how this relationship poses obstacles and opportunities for collaboration and governance. In doing so, he studies the role of science in collaborative policy, the role of place in environmental identity, and the role of the imagination in mediating both. Specifically, he studies grazing management and public land permitting, community-led conservation programs, rural education and entrepreneurship, place-based environmental governance, and the imaginative experience of our natural and built environments — all in the contexts of the intermountain American West.
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