How AMP Grazing on Grasslands Can Offset Emissions

Introduction to Sustainable Grazing

Grazing animals can produce results similar to wild grazing.

Grazing strategies that focus on preventing overgrazing and promoting grass regrowth are gaining new attention as a way to offset carbon emissions. This strategy works to restore grasslands to peak ecological function: where they can work to defer and store potential energy. It also promises new investment and annual payments for aspiring carbon producers.

At a high level rotational grazing is the name of the game.

Rotational grazing describes where pastures are divided into smaller sections and livestock are moved regularly. This strategy allows for rest and recovery of grazed areas & seeks to mimic natural grasslands ecology. Numerous nuanced approaches to managed grazing exist:

Adaptive Multi-Paddock (AMP) Grazing: this system involves adjusting stocking rates and grazing timing based on forage growth and animal needs.

Management-intensive Grazing (MiG): like AMP, frequent and controlled movements of livestock to maximize forage utilization while maintaining pasture health.

Mob Grazing: concentrated livestock graze in a small area for a short period, which can stimulate soil health and nutrient cycling. See also High-Density Short-Duration Grazing.

Holistic Planned Grazing (HPG): Developed by Allan Savory, HPG emphasizes mimicking natural grazing patterns through careful planning and monitoring. Livestock are moved based on factors such as vegetation recovery and soil health.

Silvopasture: Silvopasture integrates trees or shrubs with livestock grazing. This practice can provide shade for animals, improve forage quality, sequester carbon, and enhance biodiversity.

Riparian Grazing Management: Focused on protecting and restoring riparian areas (lands near water bodies), this approach restricts livestock access to sensitive waterways to prevent erosion, water pollution, and habitat degradation.

Targeted Grazing: Specific livestock species are used to manage vegetation in areas with invasive plants or high wildfire risk. This method reduces the need for herbicides and mechanical clearing.

Conservation Grazing: This involves using livestock to maintain or restore natural ecosystems, such as grasslands and wetlands. It can support biodiversity conservation efforts and often implies lower-than-production level stocking rates.

All these grazing methods could also be conducted under an organic paradigm. They matter because they can capture carbon in the soil and add natural capital to the landscape. Many producers already use softwares like PastureMap, Pastoral, Maia Grazing, AgriWebb , and others to help manage cattle across grasslands but more can be done to subdivide paddocks for improved animal rotations.

Kateri advisors help producers develop managed grazing plans that support soil health and plant’s conversion of sunlight in soil carbon.

The Relationship between SOC and AMP Grazing

Soil organic carbon (SOC) is the Earth's largest carbon reservoir. Through carbon supplied by plant inputs to the soil, this reservoir is greatly impacted by livestock grazing activities across 26% of all land on Earth.

Livestock can play a role as a keystone species in grassland ecosystems. Their metabolism, movement, and nutrient cycling capabilities confer a unique ability to push SOC into the soil for storage when paired with grasses - a delicate back-and-forth symbiotic assembly.

Once in the soil, this carbon acts as a natural sponge: holding nutrients and water in place. This change can increase the stocking rate - i.e the productive capabilities - for a grazed area. Though carbon outcomes from grazing do vary, new research shows how managed grazing can be leveraged to improve soil health, trap carbon, and help producers invest in a brighter future.

Interestingly, across all grasslands, net radiative forcing: i.e how much climate impact is absorbed by life in the landscape is close to neutral. Here healthy grasses store water, nutrients, and provide nutrition for graziers

Compaction from overgrazing is one consequence of livestock gathering in one place too often - a problem that rotating animals seeks to remedy.

However, grazed areas have degraded very slowly since the 1960s - in tandem with a decrease in profitability for producers. In short, this means grasslands present a missed opportunity for solar energy to be converted to useful, ecological things (like grasses and SOC). Instead, because of the current state of grazed grasslands, this potential energy is instead released, contributing to climate change.

Some see livestock as a public enemy because of this historical tendency. Especially to those unfamiliar with agriculture, sustainable grazing might even sound oxymoronic. And, though raising livestock has been carbon intensive, it's important to consider that not all livestock supply chains are built the same.

For example, compared to confined animal feeding operations or the row crop farming that feeds them, grazing grasslands can rescue greenhouse gas emissions. Comparatively, confined animal feeding operations in one year produced 13 times as much waste as the entire US population, including emissions from methane and nitrous oxide alongside runoff that have tended to contaminate local water supplies. Row crops use synthetic fertilizer and pesticides and till the soil each year, emitting carbon and nitrous oxide.

Managed grazing across private and public grasslands is different.

Diverse grasses help the landscape translate weather into productivity.

In the US, 121 Million acres of farmland is in pasture. In the Western US, where much of this acreage can be found, sequestering more than half a ton of carbon per acre per year is possible with well managed grazing. For example, this managed grazing project in Oregon achieved 1.86 tons of carbon sequestration per acre, (validated via soil sampling similar to the kind Kateri undertakes for our partners). Through managing grazing outcomes like these on grasslands, producers can now market unique nature based solutions in offset markets.

The Unique Climate Opportunity of Grasslands

A right-sized combination of animals and diverse grasses in savannah and plains landscape improves ecological health.

Grass is an amazing crop. More resilient to fire than forests, and faster to react to shifting seasons and water availability, it’s the first line of defense for most soil in the American west and other marginal, water scarce environments. Cultivating a diverse set of grasses, legumes, and other plants can also support a host of biodiversity enhancements and help graziers self medicate through their inherent dietary choices.

The faster overall cycle and breadth of grass means that unlike trees - grasses work to quickly cycle carbon into the soil. Living roots, stimulated by graziers, exude carbon back into the soil. Without grazing animals' keystone role, grasslands would cease to function.

Numerous advocates of well managed grazing like the Rodale Institute complement or build off of Traditional Ecological Knowledge to recommend a wealth of grazing methodologies that function in reciprocity with the land and harvest, improve biodiversity, and stimulate positive externalities from managed grazing.

Grasslands like this Western Rangeland can take many years to regenerate: using biodiversity and graziers to strategically enhance their function can speed this process up.

Taking Managed Grazing Beyond Sustainable

Stretching all the way back to the Dust Bowl, land degradation has left reclaimed pasture operating at razor thin profit margins, more recently with a fundamental lack of labor, and with ever diminished biodiversity. Though the benefits of rotational and adaptive grazing have been largely unrealized, Kateri is here to help.

When we work with producers to help them realize the natural capital potential of their properties, we start by marking the legal boundaries of the property - then denoting the key ecological features and their functions.

We begin by assessing landscape potential with geospatial analysis: leveraging models to identify soil and plant health that can support efforts to trap SOC and turn it into payments for producers.

Geospatial models like these help Kateri estimate carbon potential.

Waterways are of particular importance as we recognize that repairing the riparian function of the landscape has cascading effects on the SOC potential.

We work with expert ranch advisors to plan for improved managed grazing. With their help we consider the graziers: their pastures, watering holes, numbers, weight, and rotations through the landscape. We work together to develop a plan and invest in technology like virtual fencing to help mimic natural cycles on grasslands that lead to regeneration and SOC increases. Using this technology, we can track animal movements to verify cause and effect as grassland function is restored.

Virtual Fencing Technology like this Vence Collar can overcome labor issues to help producers use adaptive grazing methods to respond to the landscape & build soil health with graziers

Measuring Soil Organic Carbon Outcomes from Grazing

Soil organic carbon is like water in that it is always in flux. Primarily formed by plants, the precondition of the minerals in the soil and types of plants, animals, and inputs (notably water) that are exchanged at the surface level work together to determine fluxes in soil carbon stock. By modeling and sampling properties we access the crucial feedback required to improve this cycle. Partners like Yardstick help us provide accurate, user friendly soil sampling.

Taking Stock of Grasses potential for building resilient food networks

On farms practicing managed grazing, establishing a baseline carbon flux - and measuring improvements on it - allow Kateri to sell high quality carbon offsets to corporate buyers.

We’ve seen firsthand how these payments help producers invest in their own ecology. By connecting these practices to the financing that offset markets can provide we help make capital flow to realize improved managed grazing.

Kateri also shares sampling, geospatial, and carbon flux information with producers so that they can understand cause and effect as they build biodiversity, water, and soil health in their landscapes.

Exploring Soil Biology as a Catalyst for Regenerative Agriculture: A Deep Dive into Enhancing Soil Health and Accelerating Ecosystem Recovery

At Kateri we believe that by enabling producers with the tools to recognize and build reciprocity in the landscape is a potent way to activate a triple bottom line. For corporations that buy our offsets, our diligence in tracking managed grazing and its positive externalities, means that they can have confidence that their offsetting efforts are additional and impactful.

When we can work to restore grasslands to their optimal ecological function, it’s a win for producers and their communities, environmentalists, and the land itself. Join us!