Prince Charles Endorses Allan Savory

Prince Charles comments on Allan Savory and his integrated approach to ranching and farming, and the role ruminants for the health of grasslands. Segment from speech given by the Prince to the IUCN World Conservation Congress. Full video clip is here, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZhep_8aCNQ.

Transcript:

"I have been particularly fascinated, for example, by the work of a remarkable man called Allan Savory, in Zimbabwe and other semi arid areas, who has argued for years against the prevailing expert view that is the simple numbers of cattle that drive overgrazing and cause fertile land to become desert. On the contrary, as he has since shown so graphically, the land needs the presence of feeding animals and their droppings for the cycle to be complete, so that soils and grassland areas stay productive. Such that, if you take grazers off the land and lock them away in vast feedlots, the land dies."

"Ultimately, his form of farming is one that mimics nature by managing domestic livestock to behave more like the migratory wild herbivores that co-evolved with these arid savannas, and thus, does not separate conservation of the land, from the process of farming it."

"It is this kind of nature based approach to finding solutions, that needs to be fostered."

- HRH The Prince of Wales (Prince Charles)