Allan Savory v George Monbiot debate | Is livestock grazing essential to mitigating climate change?

Wow. I saw a talk of Allan Savory years ago so I was looking forward to this debate! I was quite shocked so here's my summary: He was introduced as having started out as a biologist, and indeed i checked, he has a degree in biology.He chose the title of the debate himself, 'Is livestock grazing essential to mitigating climate change?'. And yet, he produced not a single scrap of evidence nor any quantitative data. He proudly declared, many time, that he worked with 2,000 scientists (he says he was in charge of them) in the US to study his method. And yet, he claims his method is untestable, he says to ignore CO2, and his argument centred upon completely unrelated claims about the Allies in World War II and that his method, the only solution to climate change, would have been impossible for anyone to come up with if he had himself not been in a war. George responded by explaining how there is absolutely no proof of his method and countless studies have shown in fact the opposite. He also explained how Allan uses photographs and claims proven to be fraudulent. Allan had absolutely no comeback to this except for his rejection of science and the scientific method - strange since he boasted so many times that he worked with 2,000 scientists, and he himself was a biology research graduate. And he didn't even attempt to refute the claims of fraud. This was a disappointing debate. For it was in fact not a debate - only George even engaged with the debate topic, which Allan had chosen. Allan came across as a liar and a fraud, with a gentle voice. Unfortunately, it is likely that people who came to this with the preconceived notion that Allan's position was correct, and have no scientific training or understanding, might have fallen for Allan's soft voice and appeal to romantic emotion and imagery. But anyone with even a passable high school education in science and any sort of grounding in objectivity could not possible have been on Allan's side by the end of this, or even the middle. Allan simply had no trace of being any sort of authentic researcher, nor any sign of being willing to engage in debate in with any authenticity. He did mention that he was a politician, and that makes a whole lot of sense. So now I am left thinking of him as an ex-politician who wrote a memoir (he made sure to mention that too), and is paid for fraudulent work supporting methodology that has been thoroughly disproven by science. Sad, because I thought his work, when unchallenged, sounded nice, and inspiring. That's why it's so important to watch debates, I guess!

Regarding Alans hesitation to talk about carbon emissions in this debate was perhaps his clumsy way of saying that priority number ONE is to stop desertification and save biodiersity because loss of biodiversity is irreversible and will lead to critical failiure regardless of our ability to successfully reduce carbon emissions to zero. Reducing emissions must be priority number TWO and should not be a hinder for priority number ONE. That being said, saving biodiversity and regenerating broken ecosystems like deserts has the benefit of storing carbon in biomass among other benefits like redusing human conflict over resources. Redusing emissions is obviously smart to do simultaneously. George needs to read Alans book (Holistic Management) because he is completely mising the point Alan makes. His point being that the management of enviornments in places with rainfall distributed over long periods of time does not necessarily work in places where it only rains in a shorter timeframe. The semantics and wordy sentances which I am now guilty of making myself may leads to confusion; Which is why Alan classifies these different enviornments into brittle and non-brittle enviornments; brittle meaning dry most of the year and non-brittle mening NOT dry most of the year. The local ecology of places with different brittleness behave differently and therefor requires different management. NB. I highly recommend Alans book!!

I had a 5 1/2 acre permaculture farm. Of that 5.5 acres, 2.25 acres was pasture, 1 acre was aquaculture/duck ponds, 0.25 acre was residence/landscape/herb garden. The rest was mostly orchard, hazel nuts, berries and garden. Only a quarter of the garden was annual vegetables. The rest was a cash crop of hard neck garlic, peppers, etc. We had and boarded some additional horses. We had way more food than we, our livestock, and our friends and neighbors could ever consume. When we started the farm it was overworked depleted pasture and orchard -- the fruit trees had long since been removed. The Carbon content of the soil was essentially zero. There was no macrobiotic life in the soil and minimal microbial diversity. As a direct result of applying our permaculture regenerative ecological farming practices and continuing to add fertility to the soil, the entire property came back to life. The Carbon content of the soil did increase but more importantly the Carbon was sequestered in the stock of BIOLOGY (both perennial trees and shrubs on the property (none of which were present) on the property before we took ownership. There were swallows, nesting birds, woodpeckers, turtles, frogs, foxes, deer, turkeys, etc., etc. etc. If you walked outside and we're not careful you would trip over all the abundant wildlife. In fact, it is not an exaggeration to say that our homestead functioned as an oasis in a vast desert of ecological destruction that originated from decades of apathy, mismanagement, absentee ownership and abuse of the land. In marked contrast, we were functioning in our proper role as the keystone species and steward on the land. If everyone did as we did, the Earth would be in excellent shape. The problem is INDUSTRIAL monoculture agriculture, NOT poly culture agriculture and horticulture. End mechanized industrial monoculture and you will solve the problem.

CDT has a land management experiment taking place in the French Pyrenees. Ex-grazing land and forest has been taken out of the grazing system. After three years the fauna and flora diversity has increased to an extent not imagined by the project team. I once contacted the Savory Foundation to ask why the native wildlife can not take the place of his desired domesticated solution. I recieved no response.

as a cattle rancher in Uruguay and very interested in the subject I was VERY keen on hearing what Savory would say on the topic. I had the nerves to listen to him the first 20 minutes. That was quite painful. With not one single sentence he addressed the subject WHY grazing may mitigate climate change. Was that because of old age.? Was he a more relevant scientist when he was younger?

These two were talking past one another. Mr. Monbiot was talking about livestock in general. Mr. Savory was talking about a specific method of livestock management which mimics the way wild ruminants graze and it's application to arid regions of the world to prevent desertification. I agree with the lady who said they were both right. Their different strategies applied to different situations. A creative solution could have come out of this debate. Mr. Savory agreed that the Holistic Method is only one tool in a toolkit. Mr. Monbiot agreed that in limited circumstances livestock grazing could be of benefit. A question for Mr. Monbiot is "How do you rewild a dessert since there is no moisture present to start with?" I suppose the answer might be to plant trees or other vegetation and import water for a time. How about starting with ruminants which as Mr. Savory says create the decomposition in their gut and then moving the livestock on once the vegetation is well established. Mr. Savory might agree because he was not arguing that his method was superior for drawing down carbon, only that it addressed a problem that must be solved and can't be solved in any other way.

This was rather frustrating. Alan Savory apparently set the terms of the debate and then proceeded to ignore the 'elephant' in the room - CO2. It was obvious that George Monbiot had prepared for a different debate based on the premise that it was about livestock grazing mitigating climate change. Not livestock grazing as a tool to reverse desertification. I have read Gabe Brown's book 'Dirt to Soil' where he has demonstrated that regenerative agriculture incorporating livestock in an arable system has increased carbon soil, water filtration and retention, and enabled him to almost do away with artificial fertilizers, herbicides and insecticides. Thus not only storing carbon in the soil but reducing the carbon required to produce food. I thought that this debate would look at such systems and provide some context. A missed opportunity.

Savory kept repeating irrelevant points and never once talked about what his method actually is. Seems like he is just being devious and trying (rather transparently) to fob off Monbiot's objections. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence but Savory didn't even get round to the detail of what his claims are.

NO MORE DEBATES! The truth is what we seek: not a winner. Discussions are what we need. Debates are corrupt: they are contests, assuming right and wrong belong to the speakers, someone is guilty, the other a hero. Debates require speakers to disagree. Read that again. Debates encourage deceit and falsehoods by the pressure to win. Debates encourage our biz-as-usual stupidity. Life as contest. Life as competition. What happened to cooperation? Were we not meant to evolve? We evolved from the jungle, to the concrete jungle. Haven’t learned anything. Why do we insist on having “debates” then? Because they’re good marketing! Yes, it’s about the almighty dollar. In this case, GBP.

1/ It's unfortunate they weren't aligned on the topic, one focusing on carbon as the driver of climate change and the other on reversing desertification in arid and semi-arid areas, which made the debate far less efficient. 2/ The chair should have picked-up on this early and clarified the relevant context in each case by acknowledging the difference between forests and grasslands, their relative location on Earth according to climate, and the relevance of large herds of grazing animals in one but not the other. 3/ Then, in terms of the toolbox Allan Savory mentioned to reverse desertification, he could have mentioned permaculture and the wonderful results of the Greening the Desert project that Geoff Lawton is doing in Jordan without using large herds of grazing animals. 4/ Last, it is very important to keep in mind that desertification and rainfall decline primarily occur because of deforestation and mismanaged grazing, since plants are the key to a healthy water cycle both above and below ground. Once you replant and restore that water cycle at large scale, rainfall will increase again.

I think Alan has lost his focus. His system is a method to address desertification but now he seems to be advocating an increase in livestock everywhere. We don't need waffle we need clear dialogue. Alan's system isn't meant to answer all our problems but a way to return desertified land back to a living organic system will, as he says, be a key weapon in addressing climate change and our future survival on this planet.

The fact is that there has never been so much livestock and the problems are increasing, that forests in Brazil have been decimated for decades, (I remember reading about it in the late 1970's), to feed the fast food trade. Our ancestors didn't eat that way, it wasn't an option ever before, and to eat it at such a scale is unsustainable. Also goats and sheep destroy trees, so I can't understand that argument at all.

So Savory asked these Phds he knows to describe the scientific method, which they did, to then ask them to describe the meaning of science, which they could not. What is he on??

The second question was not answered by Allan Savory. How do you compare Natural Wild land to converted land to grazing?

A poorly moderated debate. The university could do so much better. The key part missing from the debate was the simple tenet which both participants should know, understand and accept is that oxidation of plant matter releases carbon dioxide and as such represents one of the larger contributors to atmospheric carbon dioxide. What Alan Savory should have done was start with that premise and build his opening remarks from that point then George Monbiot would have had something to work with. Sadly this case was not made at any stage in the discussion and shows how little the chair understood the dynamics of the debate. Wasted opportunity.

The most interesting point Allan Savory made was the location of where his technique happens - it's relevant in places where oxidation takes place due to lack of rain for prolonged periods. He also references his technique to desertification not species rich grasslands.

I wish George could have been warmer in this debate, then we could have called it ‘sweet vs savoury’.

21 million hectares of improved soil, and counting, due to regenerative practices. This in just a couple of decades. It is not just BS, literally speaking.

Why does everyone seem to forget that wildlife are present in rewilding. We don't necessarily need farmed animals !!

I think Alan diverts from the point at around 38/39 minutes when he seems to dismiss science as a way of gathering knowledge. I'm sure that was not his intention. But George is putting logic, knowledge and common sense together to find a way of coming to a workable solution.