Contradictory Ideas on Managing Land Lauresta Piper-Ruth :: Savory Essays

Contradictory Ideas on Managing Land Lauresta Piper-Ruth Who is Allen Savory? At Goshen College, a small liberal arts college, Land Management is one of the courses required for Environmental Studies majors. The main book required for this class is Holistic Management by Allan Savory. Savory is a well-known ecologist and author. His books cover his theories on how to take care of land. His work is so well recognized that he is known as the founder of holistic management principles. The teacher of this Land Management, Bill Minter, draws most of his lectures from the information in this book. One might make the assumption that the information in a book approved for a class such as this would not contain controversial material. Both the teacher and the students in the class assumed just this, the material within the book had subsequent evidence to back up the theories. However, this is not the case. Allen Savory’s holistic management ideas on grazing and resting the land do not work in the basic ways that he claims they do. In fact, research has been done that disputes his theories. Therefore, it has been given a great deal of criticism by other scientist. Holistic Management Theories There are two theories that holistic management advocates swear by. One is that grazing can be beneficial if preformed in the correct way. The other is that resting land is not good for it. Both theories basically state that land can and should be grazed. To understand these theories some background information must be given as to how land works. Land can be identified on a scale of how hydric or xeric it is. Every piece of land falls between those two points. Hydric lands get a great deal of rainfall and have high humidity. As a result they have much more vegetation on the ground and therefore many more organisms to break things down. Xeric lands are just the opposite; they are much drier. They have less rainfall, less humidity, less vegetation, and fewer organisms. When vegetation dies in hydric system, the great numbers of organisms quickly decompose it. When vegetation dies in a xeric system the decomposition is a much longer process. Savory also compares these landscapes using t he terminology of brittle and nonbrittle environments. The more brittle the land is, the more xeric it is. Oppositely, the more nonbrittle the land is, the more hydric it is. Contradictory Ideas on Managing Land Lauresta Piper-Ruth :: Savory Essays Contradictory Ideas on Managing Land Lauresta Piper-Ruth Who is Allen Savory? At Goshen College, a small liberal arts college, Land Management is one of the courses required for Environmental Studies majors. The main book required for this class is Holistic Management by Allan Savory. Savory is a well-known ecologist and author. His books cover his theories on how to take care of land. His work is so well recognized that he is known as the founder of holistic management principles. The teacher of this Land Management, Bill Minter, draws most of his lectures from the information in this book. One might make the assumption that the information in a book approved for a class such as this would not contain controversial material. Both the teacher and the students in the class assumed just this, the material within the book had subsequent evidence to back up the theories. However, this is not the case. Allen Savory’s holistic management ideas on grazing and resting the land do not work in the basic ways that he claims they do. In fact, research has been done that disputes his theories. Therefore, it has been given a great deal of criticism by other scientist. Holistic Management Theories There are two theories that holistic management advocates swear by. One is that grazing can be beneficial if preformed in the correct way. The other is that resting land is not good for it. Both theories basically state that land can and should be grazed. To understand these theories some background information must be given as to how land works. Land can be identified on a scale of how hydric or xeric it is. Every piece of land falls between those two points. Hydric lands get a great deal of rainfall and have high humidity. As a result they have much more vegetation on the ground and therefore many more organisms to break things down. Xeric lands are just the opposite; they are much drier. They have less rainfall, less humidity, less vegetation, and fewer organisms. When vegetation dies in hydric system, the great numbers of organisms quickly decompose it. When vegetation dies in a xeric system the decomposition is a much longer process. Savory also compares these landscapes using t he terminology of brittle and nonbrittle environments. The more brittle the land is, the more xeric it is. Oppositely, the more nonbrittle the land is, the more hydric it is.