Episode 150: Grazing Beyond the Mainstream with Jim Elizondo

Hi, friends, this is John. Welcome back to the Regenerative Agriculture podcast where we have all kinds of fun conversations related to producing healthy soil, healthy feed, healthy livestock, and ultimately healthy people, which is the foundational purpose and reason of agriculture. If we miss that objective, then what are we here for? Exactly. So this conversation today is one that I've been looking forward to for some time. I met Jim Elizondo a long time ago. He just told me 11 years ago. And one of the things that I was intrigued with Jim, years ago we had a conversation around the untapped yield potential of forages and some of the work that C.J. fenzow was doing. I dropped the ball and we never followed up on making some of those experiments happen. But I've always been intrigued. You are in a, in a slightly different ecosystem and climate from many of the popular grazing gurus. You've become a little bit of a grazing guru of your own. You've had a lot of impact on the way many people approach grazing management. And you've developed your very, perhaps a very original perspective on how you approach grazing management. Tell us a little bit about that, about your journey and how your perspective is different from perhaps, perhaps the mainstream view, if the contemporary or the, the not, not necessarily the mainstream view, but the fringe mainstream view. How about that?

Yes, yes. Well, let's start with conventional gracing management, which was in 1953, mostly continuous grazing. And that's when Kreider made his famous experiment of the take half, lip half, where he cut with scissors, potted plants, young seedlings, up to every other day and every two weeks and so on. And he found that over grazing or cutting too often a young plant will stop the root from growing from there. Somehow those grazing girls that you mentioned got the idea that whenever we graze now with rotational grazing or non selective grazing, which should take no more than half of the plant. And that's a very bad conclusion from an experiment not done for that.

Right.

So since then, a lot of people have been behind the black eight ball by trying to focus on taking half when livestock do not graze like a mower, but take down to the ground the preferred species and leave behind the ones that they don't like. And that has created most of the problems that we have today.

So let me just clarify, when you say what has created most of the problems we have today is giving them the opera, are you referring to giving them the opportunity for selective grazing or.

Okay, yes, because when they try to, to make livestock graze like a mower up to 4, 5, 6 inches, whatever flavor of the month, rotational grazing system they come up with, they will always create selective grazing, which always converts into overgrazing, which is the main cause of long lived soil carbon being lost to the atmosphere.

So what is the, what is the solution? What's your solution? To, to graze it hard, not give them the opportunity to take half and leave half.

Okay, that's, that's a good point. And, and it needs to be clarified. Yeah, total grazing, which is what I teach, is taking down the grass plant to 1 to 2 inches from the soil surface. But well recovered grass plants, not young plants, which will be overgrazing. Overgrazing is when we regrade a plant while it is too young, and that's what shortens roots. That's what Kreider demonstrated, and that's what creates a hardpan 4 inches deep where the roots is always created by a lack of strong roots.

All right, now, Jim, I had no idea of the conversation we were going to get in, but this is, this is, this is so intriguing because over the last couple of years, grazers have been reaching out to me with this exact problem. They, they're being instructed to take half, leave. Well, they're getting instruction from many leaders in the grazing space and they for many years have. They've been trying to do the right thing, and yet their soils become more compacted over time. They are no longer building soil carbon, they're no longer building organic matter. And there's a variety of contributing factors. I've also come to the conclusion that a part of it is that their grazing patterns favor grass dominance and they lose out on their forbid populations because they're not stressing the grassroot systems enough by simply grazing half and taking half. But you, you mentioned, I want you to elaborate. You said this creates a hard pan. Let's just expand a little bit. How is a hard pan created when you're grazing?

By. When overgrazing, you create short roots. The hard pan develops because strong roots is the way to avoid a hard pan from, from reforming after it gets wet. Yeah, that's it.

So overgrazing the way that you're describing it, in essence is grazing a plant before it's matured or when it's still immature.

No, I didn't say mature before it's well recovered in its energy reserves, which are in roots and grounds. You see, there are two theories of what makes a plant regrow after grazing. One is the one that I follow and nature follows. The regrowth is filled by energy reserves in Roots and ground. That's it. The other theory, which is wrong, says that regrowth is filled by green leaves left behind. But that would be true if livestock graves like a mower. But because livestock do not graze that way, they take all the green material which creates energy by photosynthesis and leave behind the stems that consume energy by respiring. So that gives us a much lower energy plan for growth for livestock and for improving the soil with the root exudates. Yeah.

All right, so what is the distinction between a plant that is fully recovered and a plant that is mature?

Yeah, there is a. Have you heard about Andrew Vossan rasp productivity back in 1950? Some.

He's. He used four or three or four incredible books with his name on them.

Yes. Well, the one I'm referring to is called Grass productivity.

Yeah.

And it says that there is a best stage. I don't know how to say it in English. Punto optimo de reposo means the optimal point of recovery for a grass to be grace. And that's when the basal leaves start to turn yellow. The tiny leaves that were created first start to turn yellow due to the shade of the taller green leaves shedding the sunlight from the lower basal leaves. That's when little energy is being accumulated due to a more larger canopy of green leaves, not to confuse with yellow basal leaves. In the dry season, that's different. So that would be when the plant has recovered enough. But then we need to consider the livestock, which are ruminants and require a minimum amount of fiber so as not to go scours. So in cool season, grasses, which are low in fiber and high in sugars, their energy is in the form of sugars. We need to wait a little longer so the grassland has enough fiber so the cow or you can chew their cut and not scour. Because we need in our livestock, first health, then maximum performance and then best conversion efficiency, just as you do in soil. The rumen works mostly the same.

Many grazers have they. They listen to Ian Mitchell in US and Alan Williams. I could name a long list of the heroes in the space, the innovators, the pioneers who've done incredible work. And then grazers need to take that information home and adapt it to their situation, figure out how it fits in their context. And one of the things that I've come to realize is perhaps one of the things that's missing is, is not having a good enough understanding of the foundational principles of why we are doing things a certain way. And so the point that you made earlier about sugar reserves in the root system, I think is something that is not well understood. Generally, we don't tend to think. We're not taught to think about how sugar flows and how sugar moves in a plant.

Yeah, but wait, wait, I didn't say sugar. I said energy. Okay, let's not confuse terms because later I'm going to explain how fatty root exudates are so important.

All right, good. So, boy, now, now I want to ask that question, but I'll finish my thought and we'll come back to that. So my thought or my question is the approach that you are describing. Where are the growers? Are there growers in different geographic areas or different climates who have needed to adapt your approach to their climate? And what does that look like?

Yes, yes, yes. I just returned from New Zealand and Australia where I went to teach this at the Total Grazing Academy. And in October I was in Spain and in Italy. And I have students all over the world proving this works everywhere. That green grass grows because the rumen is rumen here and in Iceland. And overgrazing grass works the same here and in the tropics or in Canada. I was in Canada in November last year teaching at the Manitoba Grassland Conference, before that in September in Alberta. So I have students with success in those environments. The same as in South Africa, the same as in South America. It works the same. We need to remember that soil life is the determinant of grass productivity. And the most important determinant of soil fertility is soil long lived crop carbon. So we need to increase that. And we can do that now that we know how it's created and it's not in the green season racing area.

How is it created? How do we create long term soil carbon?

Okay, well, you know all this, but let's talk to the audience. Mineral association. Organic matter or particulate organic matter? One is long lived soil carbon, the other one is short lived soil carbon. Both are important, but the one that we have been mining off soils and we need to replenish because it's our savings account, is a long lived soil carbon. So what I found after years of observing and trialing in different environments around the world is that by stockpiling pastures for over six months, we create standing hay to use for our livestock in the difficult seasons of the year. And we increase sponginess of the soil because the fungi to bacteria ratio improves. We get more fungi. And then I started measuring organic carbon and it went up faster than with any other method. And did you know that soil grows upwards instead of downwards?

Yes. And how much. How much can it grow upwards? I've seen some remarkable numbers.

An inch a year.

An inch a year.

Yeah. You look at pyramids in Mexico, how they were covered with soil after 500 years of nothing. And. Or look at. At the. Alone near a house, how then later on you need to take off some soil because it's coming higher than the. Than the. Than the house.

Yeah.

In my backyard I've seen that. Or on the highway. Or the disappearing boulders in Ireland. Or a picture taken 50 years ago showed the boulders, and now they're covered with soil. 50 years. So it depends on how you manage and how good the environment.