Allan Savory & Dr Ron Ehrlich: Holistic Management & The Fate of Civilisations

SHOW NOTES 

Guest: Allan Savory

 Allan Savory, co-founder & president of the Savory Institute. 

Holistic Management: A Commonsense Revolution to Restore Our Environment (Third Edition) (2016) by Allan Savory & Jody Butterfield — “Textbook” covering the foundations and “why” of holistic management.

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Allan Savory & Dr Ron Ehrlich: Holistic Management & The Fate of Civilisations

• 00:05 –06      Introduction: The Future of civilization depends on holistic thinking.
• 00:04–08 –Holism: Nature works as interconnected wholes; synergy > competition.
• 00:12–14 – Reductionist Management: Narrow decision-making causes global issues.
• 00:14–21 – Global Challenges: Desertification & climate change driven by poor management, not livestock/fossil fuels.
• 00:18–23 – Soil Loss: U.S. loses soil equal to a 116-mile train daily; ~75 billion tons lost globally each year.
• 00:26–33 – Livestock Role: Essential for healthy grasslands and reversing desertification.
• 00:42–46 – Holistic Management: Decisions guided by long-term values and environment.
• 00:46–52 – Organizations: Resist change, protect themselves, often lack common sense.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:05.294)

Hello and welcome to Unstress Health. My name is Dr Ron Ehrlich. Now today’s subject is a big one, but in all honesty, I don’t believe I’m overstating the case. The fate of civilization. And even more specifically the fate of our own individual health. It all depends on a word we all need to become a lot more familiar with. It’s largely what this program is all about. It’s certainly what my book is about.

It’s the way our bodies work, it’s the way the world works, and you already know the two are inseparable. That word is holistic. Now my guest today is Allan Savory. Allan is an ecologist, a livestock farmer, an environmentalist. He’s president and co-founder of the Savory Institute, which facilitates education programs and supports the realization that we all depend on the enduring returns from the land.

From the very soil we grow our food in and on. Hence, the title of this podcast, The Fate of Civilizations, because you and I and all the generations that follow us will depend on those enduring returns of the land. That is, the nutrient-dense food we need to be healthy. Allan has developed and championed holistic management with a particular focus on agriculture.

His is a way of thinking when managing resources and as he points out it’s not a resource like animals or fossil fuels that of themselves cause the problem, it’s the way resources are managed, that is the real problem. The thing I have found so interesting in the 10 or 12 years I’ve been aware of Allan Savory’s message is the similarity and the relevance of what he talks about, a holistic way to manage resources, to the issues facing us as individuals as we try to manage our own health, arguably our biggest resource. Also, the difference between the holistic or a holistic view of the world and health and a reductionist view. Allan refers to the importance of holistic context, the importance of a mission statement. And I want to share an example of one of those mission statements with you at the end of the interview.

Also listen out for the shocking statistic in what is actually the biggest export, not just in the USA, but globally. And it’s a resource that isn’t even factored into any management system. And yet it’s the very resource we and future generations need to survive. The topic of what goes on on the land is a recurring theme on this podcast series in the first season in our second episode.

I spoke to the world’s most famous regenerative farmer Joel Saliton in an episode called This Ain’t Normal, But It Could Be, or rather It Should Be. And in episode 8 with Charles Massey inviting you to join the revolution, the issue of managing our land, of regenerative agriculture. It’s inseparable from the other topics we cover. As we explore health, wellness and disease from a nutritional and environmental perspective, and importantly, looking at food from soil to plate. At the risk of stating the obvious, we need healthy soils for healthy food. Look, there’s so much in this episode. Allan is certainly a hero of mine and an inspiration. And I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Allan Savory.

Welcome to the show, Allan.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:03.440)

Well, thank you, Ron.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:03.50)

Allan, you I know have written a book called Holistic Management and the word holistic conjures up all sorts of ideas for people, surprisingly. I wonder whether you might share with our listener what you define as holistic.

Allan Savory  (00:04.10)

I go back to Smuts who coined the word, had to go back to Greek because there was nothing in English and he explains that in his book in 1926 when he wrote the book Holism and Evolution and I never met Smuts, I saw him but I understand that Einstein said there were two constructs that he believed would have a major impact on the future of humanity and one was obviously his own theory of relativity, but the other was Smuts’ concept of holism. So I just go back and credit Smuts. I don’t have any theory or anything really as his. And in what Smuts said was that this cliche isn’t right. You know, the sum of the parts, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. There are no parts in nature. You have no parts in your body. You are a health professional and you don’t have a single part in your body, that’s a mechanical concept. Your whole body is made up of cells, blood cells, sinew bones, etc. Whole cells, whole atoms, whole molecules, whole cells, whole organs, ultimately a whole human, and you function as a whole. And every step up that way, and you can go right into the universe, beyond a human. Everything in nature functions in whole with no boundaries and no parts, those mechanical concepts. So for example, you know it, if you feel emotionally upset, you don’t feel it in your brain, you feel it in your gut, right through your body, you just feel emotionally drained and you’re not feeling it in your brain. Now, if I was to say to any of your listeners,

Alright, you are a human being, you’re made up of all these atoms, molecules, whole cells, etc. functioning on electrical currents and more that we don’t understand. Now what is the next hole in nature beyond you and me, or any other human? people automatically say, well, my children or my family, and it’s not. Surprisingly, it’s not, because we can’t even talk to each other now.

You can’t even listen to me and process it in your brain without your connection to plants and the energy that you’re getting from sunlight through plants or animals who have eaten those plants. So you’re eating animals that have eaten plants or you’re eating plants and your connection is closer to them than to your family. And then if you look at the tree, you’d have the same story. The tree is made up of atoms, molecules, cells, flown cells wood cells, bark cells, etc. 

And the next hole in nature outside of that tree is not the seedlings and the other trees in the forests, it’s its connection to the soil and all the microorganisms and the life in the soil and so on. And so this is how nature is. We don’t have competition in nature, that’s another human construct we’ve brought into it.

What we have is rather a massive amount of synergy. So even when you’re looking at a population of creatures, whatever they are, plants or animals or anything, that population is never in isolation. It’s part of a community and that community as a whole and there’s greater synergy in that community than there is competition. So I think you get the idea.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:07:55)

Yeah, yeah. It’s interesting, you know, I read a book about evolution and I’d never considered evolution theory to be a political construct either, but the theory, the idea of the survival of the fittest is one that fits very well into our kind of Western approach to things, because I know in Russia, for example, synergy is a really important concept in the evolutionary process. And so this idea of synergy versus well, what’s the alternative to holism? I mean,

I know you’ve used the term, what’s the alternative view? Well, how are most of us thinking about things?

Allan Savory (00:08:31)

Many people do think fairly holistically and I think we would be arrogant if we said we were the first in history to see our connection to nature, the soil and everything. There are stories in North America of Native Americans trying to think seven generations ahead because they see this connection. So how we think varies with different cultures.

Certainly in cities now and in Silicon Valley, etc., we’re massively disconnected from it all. But the more you get into rural communities, farmers, etc., they’re pretty connected and they think that way. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t help us because what matters is that humans are, whether they think they are or not, every day they are managing. They’re managing their lives, their families, their businesses. And management really means you’re taking actions to improve your life. Almost every action we take is ultimately to try to improve our lives. And it’s in that management that we are reductionist. And all cultures, as far as I can ascertain, have always managed in a reductionist manner. that needs explaining. If I was to say to you, Ron, I’m going to light a fire, you would have no idea whether I should or I shouldn’t because I could burn the place down. You would have to ask me what is my reason? What is the context of my wanting to light a fire as a management action? And when you knew the context, you could decide if it was wise or not. Now, humans have a context or a reason for every action we take. And if you think about it, it is always to meet a need. So we’re buying clothing or a car or anything to meet a need, a desire, or it’s to solve a problem. So to make a profit, run your business, buy a car, get an education, it doesn’t matter what you look at.

Your management actions are meeting a need or a desire in some way, or you’re solving a problem. And then when you look at governments, they are almost entirely forming policies to solve problems or prevent problems. Now, if you think about society and our families and all that we deal with, it involves a web of social, cultural, economic, and environmental complexity that we just cannot avoid. It doesn’t matter what you do, it’s the nature of how the world functions in holes and patterns as Smuts outlined. When you take a management action, you are dealing with a web of complexity, social, economic, etc. Now, what happens to us and has happened to all humans, all tool-using animals in fact, is when we take a management action, that reason, desire, whatever, we have taken that web of complexity, social, cultural, economic complexity, environmental complexity, we’ve reduced it to a need, a desire we want to meet, or a problem we’re trying to solve. That’s why the only name that fits the universal management by humans is reductionist management. So I use the term reductionist. 

Dr Ron ehrlich (00:12:26)

Yes. I know your area of interest, well your area of interest is leadership and management really, but you focus very much on the environmental issues and mine is health and yet there is so much overlap. Mean the terminology, the way you’re describing this has so much relevance. As you say, it’s a very holistic way of looking at things.

Allan Savory (00:12:51)

Yeah, the connection between what you’re doing with health and what I’m talking about is, as you say, it’s total. It’s the health of any human being, and I’m not a medical person at all, but just using my common sense and my own experience in life. I don’t fare well when I’m stressed, so if I’m emotionally or physically stressed, that brings on problems. Diet is critical.

I am what I eat virtually. And then of course the air you breathe and everything else. So these are critical. And when you look at that diet, we co-evolved with microorganisms and plants and animals over millions of years from slime originally going back a billion or so years. And our whole system increasingly we’re learning that even the bacteria in our gut can control our moods and all sorts of things. So as technology advances and we gain more knowledge, I think we’re finding that we’re totally tied to the soil.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:14:07)

Yeah. Now having defined a holism and I love that and I’ve got to go back and read this Smuts book, Holism Evolution. Having defined that and reductionism, what do you, what in your assessment are some of the challenges we face in our world because of this reductionist approach? You’ve mentioned environmentally, social, political, cultural. You know, what are some of the challenges you’re seeing?

Allan Savory (00:14:30)

Well, the biggest one is culminating in global desertification and climate change. So there are many, many problems, ultimately that’s where they’re ending. And so you have the massive desertification of Australia that began 50,000 years ago when aboriginals arrived and started replacing animals with fire. So that’s a global problem.

That’s what we’ve got to solve, otherwise we’re not going to survive as a species. The world will go on, but without us. Now, why I concentrate so much on management is because that’s what is causing the problem. So if we look at all the issues facing us, it doesn’t matter whether you look at conflicts, the mass immigration to Europe that’s changing the political face of Europe.

Whatever you look at these things that are happening as I say are culminating in global desertification and climate change. Now if you take our best minds in the world, top scientists etc and look at what they blame the two things that are blamed most for what is happening is livestock they are blamed for global desertification, methane etc etc.

And all the conflicts and floods and droughts that leads to. And then the other thing that is blamed is coal and oil. Now, if we sit and say, all right, we’re not brilliant scientists, we’re not Nobel laureates, we’re just ordinary people, let’s just use our common sense. You would realize that livestock are a resource and we’ll need them for another 10,000 years for wool, hair, leather, meat, milk, cheese, whatever. And when you think of coal and oil, these are just fossil resources that we’ll need to make aspirin or furniture or whatever for thousands of years. And our common sense tells us that no resource can cause a problem. How can a resource cause a problem? So when we look at that and say, well, what is causing all the ill health in the world that we are experiencing?

The violence and floods and all these things, what is causing it? You just come to management. It is management that chooses to run livestock as we have with various grazing systems and pastoralists herding them, mob grazing as some people call it, for thousands of years that created the great deserts of antiquity. And then when we look at the coal and oil, fossil resources, it’s management that causes them fossil fuels and burns them at a rapid rate contributing to climate changing. clearly, I believe unarguably, management is what we need to be looking at.

Dr ron Ehrlich (00:17:42)

Now I do want to get into management because this is such an important message that I know that you’re very passionate and such an important message to share. But I just wanted to come back to desertification because I know you mentioned this term and I know it rolls off the tongue very easily, but a lot of people may not be familiar with the extent of the problem and the impact that this kind of approach is having on something as precious as our soils, for example. So just explain or expand for our listener a little bit about the extent of this problem.

Allan Savory (00:18:15)

Okay, desertification, it’s an, as you say, just a glib word, an unfortunate word, it really is just describing the extreme form of land degradation when land eventually becomes desert with sand dunes, etc., as you have in parts of the world. Now you have natural deserts where there’s no rain like the Namib and there are a couple of natural deserts like that but most of the deserts we’re seeing in America, Australia, all over the world are man-made. Now, what is happening there is this is only occurring in about two-thirds of the world’s land. About one-third of the world’s land, no matter what you do, no matter how badly you manage, it does not turn into desert. Now, that one-third of the world that’s like that, is a lot of England, Europe, East and West Coast of America, coastal areas of Australia, etc. tropical forests. These are the areas where it’s humid almost every day of the year. There aren’t long periods of extreme dryness because of the precipitation or the altitude or the proximity to oceans. So that’s about a third of the world and that’s why England never turns to desert no matter how badly they manage it or New Zealand for that matter right now two-thirds of the world which is most of Australia, most of Africa right across North Africa up into China etc. that is seasonal rainfall and so the rain can be high it can be a thousand millimeters of rain but it all falls in four or five months and then there’s six seven eight months of no rain or can be low rainfall. can be 50-25mm of rain, but again it falls in one or two months and then you get 10 months of no rain. So these areas of seasonal rainfall or humidity, those are the areas that cover most of the world’s land and they are turning into desert no matter what humans do. 

So I listened to one speaker once, a woman gave a very nice talk in California and she showed a picture of the Earth from space and she just said if you had looked at Earth from space over the last 10-15,000 years you would describe humans as a desert-making species.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:20:57)

Yes, but they live mainly in those humid areas and that’s part of the problem, isn’t it? It’s easy to easy problem to ignore.

Allan Savory (00:21:02)

It is easy because most of our universities and big capitals, know, whether you look at Brussels or Paris or, you know, Moscow or London or Washington, they’re in the humid areas and people just do not get it that the seasonal areas are turning to desert.

Dr ron Ehrlich (00:21:23)

Yep, and at the risk of stating the obvious, Alan, why does that matter?

Allan Savory (00:21:25)

Well it medicine because of all the symptoms when land begins to degrade like that then you read experience poverty violence social breakdown usually abuse of women and children blaming of minorities these are all common symptoms drops and floods increased dramatically and the genuine dry years and genuine high rainfall years become catastrophic floods and droughts. leads to war, violence, as I mentioned, the mass emigration to cities as we’ve experienced in America and Europe is now experiencing with this flood of refugees from North Africa. Basically, they’re fleeing from desertification and it leads to war and it leads to climate change.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:22:18)

Yeah.Now I did hear you in a recent talk and I’m going to have links to this talk because I really think people should hear this in more detail but I heard you talk about the USA to put this into perspective that people get a feeling for because you mentioned we’re connected with the soil we need the plants we need the animals we need the food to keep us going. You mentioned in one of your talks that the biggest export in America at the moment was represented

Go on, share with our listener. think it was you. You used the analogy of a train. This shocked me and I know about it.

Allan Savory (00:22:57)

I got the figures, I was quoting figures I got from the Soil Conservation Service when I came to America about 35 years ago. And I often ask Americans what is the biggest export of America and people will name various things and I say no, no, no. And then they say what is it? And I say it’s just dead eroding soil. The figures I got from the Soil Conservation Service that I say was years ago was that it was the equivalent of a train load of rail cars filled with soil 116 miles long leaving the country every day.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:23:35)

Wow, I mean,I that just blew me away when I heard it. 116 miles long worth of soil every day and that was 30 or so years ago.

Allan Savory (00:23:45)

Yes, but the global figure is even worse. That’s the American one, which is pretty average. If you look at globally, it’s over 75. I think it’s I’ve quoted it in my book. I’m relying on memory here. I think it’s like 75 billion tons of soil erosion. And that’s mostly from the croplands. It’s ignoring the desertifying land, which is greater. And if we look at the published figures of soil erosion global figures, to to get humans to grasp it, I brought it down to food, equating it to food. And the amount of soil, dead eroding soil, is actually 20 times as high as the amount of food we need for every human alive today.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:24:32)

Wow. Wow. That’s just it’s just well, it bears repeating over and over again. The other thing that I heard you say, it’s and people do also think that farming organic farming being nurturing of the soil is some kind of a new concept. It’s not really a new age philosophy as it’s been going on for a while.

Allan Savory (00:24:52)

Well, it’s been going on for over 10,000 years. know, so people today are rightly wanting to move to organic, sustainable permaculture, various types of agriculture that are all better practices because they’re based on the biological sciences. And they’re talking as that as the ideal and sustainable. And I always remind them and I say, well, look, I agree 100 % that we’ve got to go to organic, sustainable, regenerative agriculture, grass-fed animals, factory-fed, everything that we talk about and want. But that is exactly what we had for 10,000 years. Every farm was organic. We hadn’t yet discovered coal and oil or exploited them for all the chemicals and machinery of today.

All livestock was grass-fed until really recently after Second World War and yet that organic so-called sustainable agriculture led to more than 20 civilizations failing.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:26:06)

Yes, that’s intriguing. And that was because of management. Yes. So historically, while we have been following organic farming, historically with bad management, even with organic farming, we can fail. And history has shown that.

the management, which was reductionist.

Allan Savory (00:26:25)

Well, yes, 10,000 years of history and many civilizations.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:26:30)

Now one thing that you mentioned also was that in Australia for example the indigenous people replaced animals with fire and this is something that a lot of people that is counterintuitive about your argument only counterintuitive because we’ve been indoctrinated to it but livestock rather than being part of the problem are actually part of the solution can you explain that to our listener?

Allan Savory (00:26:53)

Yeah, they’re not part of the solution. The solution is impossible without them. So it goes deeper than you’re saying. Yes. You see, look at it this way. Humans have to use a tool. You and I, Ron, can’t even drink water now without using technology. If I wanted you to drink water, how would you do it if I said you can’t use technology? You would have to go to the nearest river or spring and drink with your hands and your mouth. Even to drink water you’re using a cup, tap, pipe, boil, dam, something. We cannot make furniture, we cannot do anything with all the creativity in the world, with all the labor in the world, with all the money in the world. You cannot do a single thing until you pick up a tool. All right, so we’re a tool using animal. Our first tool was technology. That was simple sticks and stones.

And could chip the stones and sharpen the sticks and we could not change our environment. And we had that for nearly a million years. And like any other tool using animal, we could not change our environment. Then we got a second tool and we learned how to use and make fire. Then we could melt the stones and go into the copper, the bronze, the iron age and make all the technology we have today that you and i can be speaking around the world on a computer all the clothes you wearing right now even though i can’t see you i can tell you where you could not have made without fire almost everything we do became possible because of fire and our technology advancing to the computers and rocketry and space exploration and everything we have today so we’ve had two tools now.

You then understand why people keep promoting fire. So in Australia, it’s very common, it’s written by so many people that the Aborigines were wonderful experts of the use of fire to mold their landscape and everything. And that’s absolutely correct. But it was a deteriorating landscape because you have the work of Tim Flannery in Australia and when he wrote that excellent book of his, the future eaters in that book of his he describes how the mangroves increased enormously around the coast of Australia after humans started killing all the animals and replacing them with fire that’s when the desertification of Australia began when you killed off I don’t know the exact thing but it’s between eighty and ninety percent of the genera of animals species replace them with fire.

So for 99 % of human existence, we only had two tools, technology and fire. So that’s why people keep defending fire. Now, the only other tools we’ve ever had was to rest the land, use it positively as a tool and rest the land. And we began doing that as far as I can make out, somewhere in the last 10,000 years probably began with crop farmers rotating their crops to let rest the soil or it may have begun with pastoralists moving their animals to rest the land. And so we had a third tool. Apart from that, all we’ve had is the use of small organisms to make cheese and wine, et cetera, increasingly to use for medical products, et cetera. And now the world is turning increasingly to using technology to plant trees, shrubs or grasses to try to deal with desertification and climate change. But again, it’s using technology to plant the plants which should be growing on their own, they shouldn’t need planting. So with that limited toolbox, you can see that it is simply impossible to stop Australia turning to desert increasingly and continuing to do so or the bulk of the world because technology cannot reverse desertification no matter what you do. technology even imaginable in science fiction could do what is required. Fire causes desertification, it’s rapid oxidation and burning up vegetation which exposes soil. Resting the land from disturbance of large animals etc. leads to desertification. It was the killing off of the animals, the many, many genera of animals in Australia that led to Australia beginning to desertify. And again, Tim Flannery has good evidence on that with the pollen record. As he points out, the pollen record of Australia indicates that most of the country, of the continent, was a fire. And now, as we know, most of Australia is a fire-dependent vegetation.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:32:25)

Yeah, I think within two or three thousand years of human habitation, the of habitation, the megafauna, that is animals over the 50 kilos, kilograms, was basically eliminated. Yeah. Yeah.

Allan Savory (00:32:37)

You killed 85 % or more of the general in Australia. I forget the exact figure.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:32:47)

Yeah, yeah. So we have this limited toolbox.

Allan Savory (00:32:48)

Yeah, and that’s why I keep saying we’ve got to stop vilifying livestock and start vilifying management. If we want to survive and if you want healthy humans.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:33:07)

Yes. Well, it’s a recurring theme, but go on, explain to our listener how and why they are the key to this management process. Because we so much of the opposite, don’t we? mean, we are bombarded by these other messages, but this is lessons from the past. Let’s learn.

Allan Savory (00:33:22)

Yes, you’re bombarded today, literally hundreds of celebrities are putting their celebrity status and their money behind the vegetarian vegan movement. So they’re doing great harm to humanity because without livestock for practical purposes, cattle, sheep, goats, camels, donkeys, horses, water buffalo, etc. Without livestock, you cannot stop desertification.

Now let me explain that. The reason these seasonal rainfall areas desertify is because in those the grass plants provide the main soil cover. So in the bulk of the world with seasonal rainfall, grass plants provide most of the soil stability and cover. Even though there’ll be trees there, could be a deserter’s forest, could be a savanna, whatever.

Now grasses co-evolved with animals removing the top. So if you look at trees, they’re either evergreen or they shed their leaves. They shed their leaves. They drop their own leaves onto the ground at the end of the season to decay and cycle again. Now if you look at grasses, grasses grow green during the growing period and then they change color like the leaves of trees and they go brown and then darker and darker and no grass plant can shed its leaves. They co-evolved with animals that graze the leaves. So if you take the animals away and the grass plant can’t shed its leaf, what happens is that in sunlight those leaves start to go grey and more more dark grey until almost black and it kills the plant.

I live in a thatch-roofed home in Africa and we put this dead grass on the roof to make the roof out of thatch. If you look at the outside of the roof after one year it is grey. After 10-15 years it’s dark, dark grey, almost black. If you come inside where it’s not in sunlight it’s still exactly the same colour it was when we cut it. It’s still yellow.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:35:49)

Yeah. Now, one of the things that I think people, again, it’s worth repeating because I think this, the key here, as I understand it, in preserving soil is to maintain coverage. And for example, if you planted wheat in a square metre of land, the stalks cover the ground, but there’s an awful lot of uncovered ground.

Absolutely.

Around those stalks isn’t there? mean what would you say 70 % at least over that one metre.

Allan Savory (00:36:27)

Yeah, usually it’s more, you know, wheat is a grass. All our grain crops are grasses. And when you look at grass plants, whether they’re crops or wild grasses, the basal area of the stalk or the bunch, the amount of ground that covers is relatively small. So even in very healthy, good grassland, the basal cover of the plants.

I find is usually about four or five percent of the ground, that’s all. Sometimes it’ll be higher to nine percent, maybe ten if it’s exceptional, or if it’s a runner grass then it’ll be higher, but the bunched or rec grasses it’s usually well under ten percent.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:37:09)

Is that why we need diversity?

Allan Savory (00:37:09)

Well, no, that’s why you need animals.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:37:11)

Okay, they come in and they shave the top off.

Allan Savory  (00:37:15)

If you can picture the plants with their basal area covering say 10 % of the ground you’ve got 90 % of the ground uncovered what covers that and the answer is dead plant material that the animals trample to the 

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:37:36)

And ground and their own excrement.

Allan Savory (00:37:37)

Yes, but mostly the litter. So the animals are trampling the litter down. They’re freeing the plant to grow fresh again and not to oxidize and kill the plant. And they’re providing soil cover. And they also lead to a tighter basal cover. So the spacing between the plants, when I was at university, we were taught that the spacing between them was wide because they were competing with each other for water and nutrients and they couldn’t grow close. Well that’s what we were taught. But nothing competes in nature, it’s synergy. And as I started to study it for myself and not just go with what I was taught, I began to find that the spacing between the plants was a function of animal behavior. That if we had no animals on the ground, the spacing became wider and wider. If we had some animals on the ground but but what I call partial rest, they’re just wandering around closely, the spacing would remain wide. If we brought animals onto the land bunched and herding, the plant spacing would become very close.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:38:48)

You are from Zimbabwe, that’s where you’ve lived all your life and the lessons you’ve learnt are actually lessons again from the past. The modelling is there in nature. Can you please share that with our listener what that actually was?

Allan Savory (00:39:02)

Yeah, you’re right. It was all staring us in the face. I often feel stupid, Ron, with how long it took me to learn. But you know, you’re really having to unlearn and then learn. And so I was like everybody, blocked by what I was taught. And when I was in the field tracking game, tracking people for long period in an unfortunate civil war, day after day, tracking on different types of country. I was observing a tremendous lot and then having long nights lying in the bush thinking about it. Why was the tracking easy today? Why was it difficult yesterday? We were on the same type of soil. But the management was different. Yesterday we were in a national park tracking on Kalahari soils. Today we were tracking people through farms on a Kalahari soil but with herding cattle.

And the day before that the tracking was terribly difficult. We were in a communal area with tribal people with cattle all over the place. So I began to see there were enormous differences in the ability to track animals on the same type of soil in the same climate, depending on the management of that land. But still I feel like a dumb idiot that it took me so long to put it together until finally I could understand it.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:40:30)

What was the revelation? mean, what was the lesson you learned from all these different, you unlearned, but then you learned? What was the lesson you learned?

Allan Savory (00:40:33)

The lesson I learned was that the health of the land was totally dependent on the behavior of the animals. That where the animals were bunched and herding and moving, we had closer plant spacing, more soil cover, stable soil, wider variety of species, et cetera. Where animals were spread wide as in Australia with fencing and water points and paddocks and spread, you start to get plants spreading, wider space between plants, more bare ground, fewer species of plants, species start to die out, all of the problems of desertification. So I began to see literally that the behavior of herding large grazing animals controlled the health of the whole environment in seasonal rainfall.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:41:31)

Yeah, yeah, what an aha moment. Yeah. mean, having having seen these huge herds that must cross the Serengeti and the plains of Africa, you know, that we kind of see on the David Attenborough shows, these actually, this is actually informs how we should be managing livestock.

Allan Savory (00:41:51)

Absolutely. That bunching is the key to it. Yeah. Yeah. And that was, again, one of my earliest observations was where we had the most elephants, the most buffalo, know, herds of African buffalo that literally I couldn’t count them. I would just say, well, I think there’s 4,000 just looking around me from horizon to horizon, which is solid black with buffalo. How the hell do you count them when you’re on foot? you know the but my goodness the land was healthy and those were on the move all the time

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:42:32)

Yeah, now if taking a step back now because we talked about the key to the problem being management, not animals. If management is the cause of the problem, what is it about management that needs to change?

Allan Savory (00:42:43)

The management needs to change from reductionist to holistic. right? Now all that means is two things. It means instead of making all our actions to meet a need, a desire, or to solve a problem with the context being the need, the desire, or the problem, what we need to do is to have the people who are doing the management in any situation from family to a nation and governance develop a holistic context, a new concept entirely which just describes, because management is about improving our lives, so let’s describe how do we want our lives to be based on our culture, our values, etc. And so the people who are managing really spell out deeply how they want their lives to be.

And then we tie that to our life supporting environment. So whatever the land is, whatever the environment is, even if you’re not managing the environment, everything you eat is coming from it, everything you throw out is going back to it. So we describe the environment not as it is today, deteriorating, et cetera, but in the healthy state, it will have to be two or 300 years from now for our descendants to be living a life like we want. And that becomes the context. And we do not compromise. When we’re doing that, there is no compromise. We just keep talking until we have total agreement on how we want our lives to be and what will sustain those lives. Now with that as the reason or context for our actions, we proceed to manage just as we do today but in that context. when we use it, making our management decisions, we’re using all of the science we have, the expert opinion, the laws, regulations, compromise, expediency, friends advice, everything as you do today. And when we’re close to the decision, the management decision, we just check that it is in context. It’s in line with that, that reason that we have.

And we have seven little questions that people learn to use to just quickly check that it’s in context. So that’s really all there is to it there and that sounds difficult but it’s quicker and easier than normal decision making. You can make decisions far quicker, less conflict, far more agreement and then the only other thing is I mentioned the tools.

Earlier we’ve got technology, we’ve got fire, we’ve got resting the environment, and then we’ve got technology plus planting trees. None of those is going to address climate change on its own. So we add to the tools livestock. And two ways, just looking at what they do with their mouths and what they do with their behavior. So we add a tool to the toolbox.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:46:02)

Yes, I look at just the simplicity of it. It’s basically and then we go on to make decisions about our needs, desires and wants, but always in that holistic context. Absolutely. Yeah, brilliant. I just love that because it actually is. And I know I you say that it’s it’s simple, but it’s absolutely so profound. And Allan, there was another thing I remember when we spoke years ago, there was another thing you said that I just has stuck with me since and that is that there is a problem with big organizations. Can you share that with our listeners?

Allan Savory (00:46:37)

If we’re going to manage to save our cities, our lives and everything, we do it at two levels. One is in the family, on the farm. Every one of your listeners is managing their own life. But then we are also managing through organizations. So policies are very seldom, other than in the home, policies are not formed by individuals. They’re formed by organizations or institutions, governments big environmental organizations. So we have to have organizations, we need them and they do what they’re designed to do generally efficiently. That’s why we have organizations. Now, if you study systems science, are what they call wicked problems with complex systems. Human organizations are complex systems, self-renewing, etc.

And they have wicked problems. Now there are three wicked problems and wicked doesn’t mean amoral, it just means they’re extremely difficult, almost impossible to solve. There three wicked problems of human organizations that if we don’t attend to them will be our downfall, I believe. Now those wicked problems, the first is that when we form organizations they reflect the prevailing views of the society in which they formed. And so if you go into any university, government agency, whatever, big environmental organization, society believes in technology. So you will find organizations have the latest software, the latest computers, the latest cell phones, the latest, you name it, they’ve got it. They lead the way. 

Now, when it comes to something that is outside of society’s view counterintuitive paradigm shifting as they call it like Galileo or like a nice semil vice who discovered bacteria before we knew they existed when something new truly new or holistic management comes up then organizations do the reverse they lead the ridicule and rejection and they literally do not change until public opinion changes. it doesn’t matter how many trillions of dollars are wasted, it doesn’t matter how much evidence is produced, how much data is produced, it doesn’t matter how many lives are lost, organizations cannot change until the public shifts significantly. And that’s never changed since Galileo. So you saw how he got persecuted. If you look at the Semmelweis, whom you would know about as a health person.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:49:40)

Yes, he had the ridiculous concept that you should wash your hands. And he ended up in a in mental institution because for 10 years he was being ridiculed by the authorities. But do go on.

Allan Savory (00:49:46)

And I’ve had 50 years of ridicule by everybody you can name universities, governments, organizations, ridicule, opposition and thank God I was insane at the beginning so I’ve never ended in the middle. I was saved. Alright so that’s a wicked problem that we cannot overcome other than through what you’re doing. Podcasts, interviews, getting information out to the public changes.

And that’s why the Ted talk I gave that went to now approaching 5 million people did more than 50 years of fighting authorities to get common sense into society. So that’s one wicked problem. The second one is if organizations do something wrong and they’re criticized or feel criticized, it’s very, very rare for an organization to say, screwed up, we’re wrong, we’re sorry. It just almost doesn’t happen. What happens is they circle the wagons and they protect the organization, even if it means going against their mission in life. So if you look at the Catholic Church, there’s a wonderful organization, a very old organization, full of brilliant and good people, and they have known about pedophile priests for hundreds of years.

And they have not protected children, not protected the innocents, they protected the priests and the church. And only with modern times information getting out enough are they now beginning to smack the priests on the wrist. 

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:51:40)

Hmm, yes.

Allan Savory (00:51:41)

All organizations are like that and that’s why I don’t criticize them because they can’t change until the public does and if you criticize them they just circle the wagons.

I’m in the third wicked problem which we’re going to have to address at some time if we’re have healthy humans and cities and everything else. that the matter how sensible the people you can put the best people in the world in an organization the way we can communicate with each other and where do we speak up where do we have the moral courage to speak up or not where do we have fearful of losing our position or offending somebody. We communicate as humans and what comes out of an organization very, very commonly lacks common sense and humanity. And if you want an example of that, it would be ask anybody, for instance, in America, anybody, a child, a gardener, fishermen, does it make sense for America to produce fossil fuels to grow corn? to produce fuel and everybody would laugh and just say that’s stupid and that’s inhumane well America’s doing it and thousands of highly intelligent scientists are going along with it almost nobody is protesting

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:52:59)

Yeah, yeah. Look, I know, and that’s exactly when I heard you say that years ago, I just thought, wow, there it is. The change has to come from the ground up, literally from the ground up, but also metaphorically from you and me and all the people listening to this. I just wanted to finish, Alan, and just ask you this question, taking a step back, and you may, actually have identified some of these things, but what do you think the biggest challenge that people face on their health journey through life in our modern world today. What’s your, what do you think that biggest challenge might be?

Allan Savory (00:53:31)

You’re talking about individuals.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:53:34)

Yes, yes, the listener.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:52:37)

You know, I think that goes for me as well. It’s just having the determination or the self-discipline to keep yourself healthy, to keep watching your diet and being conscious of what you eat, being conscious of the need for good sleep and conscious for the… We get out of balance. And I do at times and I have to pull myself together and say, get back in control of your life.

And maybe it’s just self-discipline, I don’t know. I really don’t know, right?

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:54:09)

I think that’s a great answer because I think everybody, everybody, and that even includes me, can relate to that. Allan, thank you so much. I just love everything that you have to say and I have for many years and I wanted to share that with our listeners. So thank you for joining us today.

Allan Savory (00:54:24)

Well, thank you, Ron, for what you’re doing.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:54:32)

Just love that response of Alan’s. The biggest challenge for us on our health journey through life is the determination or self-discipline to keep yourself healthy. And I also really loved his quoting Einstein’s observation that the two major things in our world were his own discovery of relativity, and that was every atom in the universe is both energy and matter. And we’ve talked about that in our electromagnetic radiation episodes earlier on in this season with Lynn McLean, but we’ll cover that in more detail in future episodes. But the second key was to think holistically. I also love the simplicity of his holistic management message and yet how profound it is. What is the holistic context for making decisions in managing resources? What’s the mission statement?

Over 20 years ago in our dental practice, my partners, my brother, Dr. Josh Ehrlich, and Dr. Craig Wilson attended a workshop where we spent the first day writing a mission statement. Now, we initially felt dismissive of the exercise, thinking, do we really need to be doing this sort of thing? Is it really that important? But in the end, we produced a half page mission statement, just four or five sentences, which we all agree to this day is the most important document we have in our practice.

It’s our holistic context, which to this very day guides us and informs every decision we make and every person who works with us in our practice. The other thing I found amazing, soil erosion. A 116 mile long train of soil in the USA is lost every day. 30 years ago that was, or a more recent and global estimate, is that 36 billion tonnes of soil a year is lost. The equivalent…

And this was an interesting analogy of 20 times the tonnage of food produced per year to feed the soil. So not a great return on investment and particularly when it’s difficult to renew this resource. The observation also about big organisations and wicked problems was a huge aha moment for me when I first heard that years ago. The change has to come from the ground up. Big organisations are just slow to take on new concepts lack common sense and humanity. 

So let me share with you a generic holistic context that Allan has used introducing people to his idea of what holistic means. And I quote, we want stable families living peaceful lives in prosperity and physical security while free to pursue our own spiritual or religious beliefs, adequate nutritious food and clean water enjoying good education and health in balanced lives with time for family, friends, and community, and leisure for culture and other pursuits, all to be ensured for many generations to come on a foundation of regenerating soils and biologically diverse communities on Earth’s land and in her rivers, lakes, and oceans.” Unquote.

Imagine if every government policy or commercial decision was made with that kind of a mission statement, the guiding, overriding principle. Now, wouldn’t you feel excited about the future of our civilization? So what’s your holistic management plan? What’s your mission statement for the decisions you make? Remember, we’re all connected, so we’re all affected. Now, if you’ve just joined this podcast, go back and listen to our first episode the mission statement. outlines what it is all about and some of the subjects that we cover. So with that in mind, until next time, this is Dr Ron Ehrlich, be well.

This podcast provides general information and discussion about medicine, health and related subjects. The content is not intended and should not be construed as medical advice or as a substitute for care by a qualified medical practitioner. If you or any other person has a medical concern, he or she should consult with an appropriately qualified medical practitioner.

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