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Introduction
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Ray Marxer, manager of Beaverhead
Ranch in Montana, won an environmental award for using grazing
systems to reduce erosion, increase forage quality – and
increase stocking rates by 8 percent.
Photo by Edwin Remsberg |
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The American West evokes images of vast vistas, unyielding independence
and quiet authority, a region that is at once easy to define and
hard to comprehend. Within this awesome world of grass and sagebrush,
which comprises 80 percent of the area from the Great Plains to
the Pacific Ocean, a new kind of landowner is emerging to apply
practical principles to generate profits while renewing the range.
People like Nevada rancher Agee Smith have worked hard to better
understand the complexity of the range so they can coax a living
from the land while leaving the delicate landscape in better shape
after they’re gone.
“I didn’t know the land at all,” Smith recalls.
“I’d never got down on my knees to look. When I did,
I saw insects, different plants, the soil. Everything is interconnected,
and there’s a reaction for every action you take in this interconnected
chain.”
When his 35,000-acre ranch near Elko was being squeezed by economics
and environmental regulations, Smith re-tooled. He began focusing
more on his land base than his herd size.
Now, Smith takes what he’s learned and demonstrates some
of his key strategies to agricultural educators. Smith hosts numerous
training events at his ranch, some of them sponsored by the Sustainable
Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program, and involves
a multi-disciplinary team in overall ranch management.
“Research provides the pieces to the puzzle,” he says.
“I don’t know what the puzzle will look like when it
is finished, but my job as an operator is to take all the pieces
and put them together as a whole.”
Still, Smith faces the same fundamental limiting factor confronting
all business people: environmentally sound management must pay for
itself. So the Smith family and others recommend the following strategies
to create a truly sustainable range management program:
 Set
clear goals
Understand
the plants and their needs
Graze
with various livestock species
Monitor
the vegetation
Protect
soil and water
Work
with other experts
Farmers and ranchers across the American range are testing and
adapting forms of the Smiths’ model on their landscapes. Much
of that experimentation has been spearheaded by SARE-funded research
into range management techniques that pay long-term benefits to
people, their land and their communities. This bulletin from the
Sustainable Agriculture Network outlines some of that research and
recommends strategies that may work on your farm or ranch. See the
end of each section and Resources for
a list of more in-depth materials.
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