Building a healthy soil base on your ranch is key to driving profit, increasing grass populations and building plant diversity. Holistic resource management is a decision-making framework to grow regenerative management on your operation.

Josh Dukart, certified holistic management educator and a North Dakota rancher, says that adopting holistic management starts with you. “To me, it really starts with a way of thinking,” he says. “For us, it was a mindset shift to think about things in holes. In each hole is basically three components.”

They are resources, money and people.

“Most cases those are the resources farmers and ranchers manage. The money component for us means profitable enterprises and managing our finances. And the people part is family, community — working towards quality of life,” he says.

“I think what holistic management can bring to a ranch … is just the ability to make sure we’re considering all three aspects of holistic management: the social, the financial and the biological,” Dukart says.

Getting started

When beginning to implement holistic management practices, find a good mentor, says Lance Gartner of Spring Valley Cattle and a 2022 North Dakota Leopold winner. “Don’t be afraid to make mistakes and learn from them. That’s what they’re for,” he explains.

Related:Trying out new management? Find a mentor

Gartner, wife Anissa and their children ranch just south of Glen Ullin, where they have been practicing regenerative ranching for 20 years. “We came from strictly conventional farming and ranching, there’s so much to learn,” he explains. “We switched over to strictly ranching in 2014. We just really enjoy working with the grass and the cattle, improving the nature and improving the soil.”  

Their conservation work has created a low-input ranch that is home to a diverse, no-till cropping system that brings reduced labor and input costs into their beef cattle. Gartner’s innovative grazing strategies allow him to leave taller grass on the pastures, which makes their land more drought-tolerant.

He says their grazing systems consist of cross-fencing and rotational grazing, where they switched from permanent fencing to a poly-wire system for easy reconfiguration of pastures. “We’ve gone from 14 pastures when we started to now having 88,” he says.

ROTATE CATTLE: The Gartners use a poly-wire fencing system to easily rotate their cattle between their 88 pastures.

The addition of solar water developments across the ranch provides water access to cattle.  

“When we built our first cross fence, we went with a pie shape,” Gartner says. “It worked great, so we thought. As time progressed, we moved into lanes and back grazing.”

He says this method surrounded a water source in the middle of the pasture. “One of the biggest things we’ve noticed is that when you let a cow be a cow — no matter what type of management you throw at them — they will adjust.”

Gartner explains that sometimes if they graze in April or May, they will most likely be back out and grazing in late fall or winter. “Typically though in a season, once over is what works well for our operation. You have to find what works for you.”

Better managed grasslands are known to be more ecologically productive, and the Gartners’ focus on holistic management has improved their ranch. “We have a way to go with management of the grass and land, taking care of the resources and being a good steward of what God’s given us to take care of,” he says.

For someone who isn’t currently using a grazing system, Gartner says it just takes some planning to find what works best. “You look at land value prices and can’t afford to just go out and buy more land to graze,” he says. “You need to seriously look at a grazing management system because the cost of cross fencing and water systems are minimal compared to the price of new land.”

Dukart and Gartner are both mentors with the North Dakota Grazing Lands Coalition, where producers can reach out to fellow ranchers to get firsthand advice to try new management on their operation.

“When we were starting out, it was very overwhelming. We had to go look at someone else’s one-wire electric fence to see what they do with it, so I know what the end product looks like,” Gartner says.

“It can be daunting at times,” he says. “But that’s where the Grazing Lands Coalition has mentors. There’s people who have done this. Utilize the people who are already doing it, because I can guarantee somebody within a 100-mile radius of you is already doing it.”  

Grazing benefits

The North Dakota Grazing Lands Coalition shares that returning livestock to the landscape brings with it a host of benefits: