You can’t spend much time in agriculture before you hear about the principles of soil health. Some folks say there are five, others say there are six, but I like this version courtesy of Understanding Ag.
You can head over to their website to get more on each principle, but today, we’re going to focus on Number 4: Diversity
In his introduction to the video on this topic, Buz Kloot notes that:
“Natural systems always tend towards more diversity rather than less. Just go have a look at the woodland, the prairie, look at any kind of natural system and you’ll see an abundance of plants and animals. As soon as we try to go against that and impose some sort of monoculture into that system we are goingto have to spend an increasing amount of time, energy and money to keep it in that paricular monoculture.”
Yet, we often seem to forget the importance of diversity, fight to create a monoculture, and then wonder why we’re not doing as well as we’d hoped.
What Does Diversity Do for Us?
First, diversity increases long-term carbon sequestration and as we all know, higher carbon soils produce more forage while slowing climate change.
New Discovery on the Mechanics of Keeping Carbon in the Soil and What It Means For Your Pastures
Diversity also provides resilience in drought, and as one On Pasture author noted, it improves animal productivity.
Diversity in Pasture Plants Has Big Effects on Herd and Flock Health
So, how do we manage for diversity? We can start by making sure we don’t graze the same place at the same time every year. Time grazing to increase what you want, or keep what you need. As an example, check out how these graziers successfully adjusted their grazing to increase warm-season grasses in their pastures:
Like these graziers, you can use your livestock to manage for increased diversity, but it requires ongoing, careful observation. We need to include differences in growing conditions across years as a result of drought or wet cycles, loss of forage to wildlife or insects, and other changing conditions. It means basing our management on the growth of our pasture forages, not a calendar date.
In many cases, changing your grazing management from year-round use to rotating through pastures can also increase diversity. If you’ve ever attended a workshop or presentation by Greg Judy, he’s sure to tell you that simply improving his grazing management dramatically increased diversity in his pastures. Here he shares what’s growing in his pastures now:
Of course, you can always add to diversity by seeding. Here are some ideas for approaching pasture improvement with seeding and pasture mixes:
Growing Multiple Forage Species is Good For Your Pastures and Your Animals
Diversity is great for you too! Check out how to be more innovative and effective here:
