The Farm as Natural Habitat 207And last, practitioners consider the effect of any proposed action or choice of
enterprise upon quality of life for the community as well as for themselves. They
understand that their land is part of a larger whole and how they manage it will
affect the landscape around them and the lives of people in the community. Holis-
tic management has become an effective tool for those who want to be good stew-
ards of the land and earn a living on it at the same time.
Though holistic management has been used on all kinds of farming opera-
tions, it was developed by Allan Savory in connection with rotational grazing.
Farmers in the Upper Midwest often began using holistic management and man-
agement intensive rotational grazing approaches simultaneously. Cattle grazing on
public lands in western states has been considered such a disaster by environmen-
talists that many have a negative view of grazing anywhere. However, at the land-
scape level in the Midwest and in parts of the Great Plains and the South
management intensive rotational grazing provides visible environmental improve-
ment in farming, especially where field crops have been converted to permanent
pastures and livestock eat more grass than grain. Fewer acres of corn and soybeans
also mean fewer applications of chemical pesticides, herbicides and fertilizer, which
decreases the potential for contamination of surface and groundwater. When corn
and soybeans are replaced by perennial grasses, there is less soil erosion (Cam-
bardella and Elliot, 1992; Rayburn, 1993).
Dairy farmers have widely adapted management intensive rotational grazing.
Between 1993 and 1997, the number of Wisconsin dairy farmers using variations
of this grazing method increased by 60 per cent (ATFFI, 1996). Milk cows on most
conventional dairy farms are confined in ‘loafing barns’ or corrals between milk-
ings and are never allowed out to graze. On very large operations of 500–1500 or
more cows, feed is brought to the cows and all of their manure is pumped out of
manure pits or scraped and hauled out of the barns to be spread on fields. Conven-
tional dairy farmers work hard to produce the corn and alfalfa to feed the dairy
herd, and capital costs for equipment and barns are high. In contrast, grass-based
dairy farmers usually move cattle daily but claim that their work load and costs of
production are much less because the cattle walk around in the paddocks, get most
of their own food, and disperse their own manure (ATFFI, 1996). With more feed
produced in pastures, a farmer uses less machinery and fossil fuel (Rayburn, 1993).
Some grass-based farmers ‘don’t have much iron’, as they say, because they have
sold most of the machinery they formerly needed for large fields of corn. With
fewer acres planted for feed, they can share machinery with neighbours, employ
custom harvesters to bring in their crops or even buy feed from other farmers. For
these dairy farmers, management intensive rotational grazing is a farming practice
that benefits them as much as it benefits the land and the water.
Poultry and hog farmers also use management intensive rotational grazing.
Hogs can be put on pasture to graze, at least for part of their food, and spread their
own manure in the grass. Hogs can spend most of their time outdoors and farrow
in pastures. Farmers in the Upper Midwest often combine outdoor and indoor pro-
duction systems by bringing hogs into open-ended metal hoop buildings covered