We collaborated with hundreds of livestock grazing management experts to develop a set of evidence-based, adaptable principles tailored for successful management in the semiarid and arid rangelands of the western United States. (below is an excerpt from the publication)
Despite the conceptual panacea of ecosystem service markets as a solution for key challenges to sustainable rangeland food production, why have such markets failed to emerge?
The Balancing Act of Producing Food and other Ecosystem Services on Rangelands
Grazing management practices such as herding, strategic placement of livestock nutritional supplements and drinking water stations, and strategic fencing have the potential to reduce negative impacts of livestock to riparian areas.
As grocery outlets and their suppliers and distributors struggle to keep food on the shelves, farmers and processors upstream are confronted with the challenge of pivoting away from conventional foodservice and restaurant product offerings
The ever-expanding suite of value-added management and marketing programs available to cattle ranchers today creates substantial ranch-level complexity. Cattlemen are faced with the challenge of determining which programs will differentiate their cattle on sale day while maximizing the profitability of their operations. Although all of these programs are likely to add costs, the additional income generated from each of these programs is uncertain.
Grazing lands occupy nearly half the Earth’s land area, provide livelihoods for millions, and mitigate climate change via massive stores of carbon. Maintaining and restoring soil health is essential to ensuring these benefits in our ever changing environment.
Thus, there is substantial global interest in managing livestock grazing to improve soil health. Grazing is promoted by some as a panacea for sequestering carbon and mitigating climate change. In other cases, grazing is depicted as an ultimate driver of soil degradation.
In the western U.S., millions of acres of perennial grasslands, shrublands, and forests are held in the public domain and managed by state and federal agencies for multiple land uses. Although riparian meadows account for a small percentage of this landscape, their ecological and conservation values are substantial. These ecosystems provide a suite of benefits—including clean water, flood attenuation, nutrient sequestration, wildlife habitat, and livestock grazing.
Grazinglands support the livelihoods of millions of people around the world. These working landscapes include livestock-grazed rangelands and pasturelands and occupy an estimated one-quarter to two-fifths of the world’s land surface—making them the largest and most biologically and physically diverse land resources in the world.
