Buckminster Fuller Award

So here's an interesting idea: rehabilitate range land and reverse desertification by grazing cattle in small, dense herds on the land that you are concerned about.

This idea is interesting because it pretty much flies in the face of the conventional wisdom about desertification, grazing being thought of as one of the leading causes, not as a fix.  The idea is that grazing pressure crops vegetation too close to the ground, causes habitat homogenization by selecting for/against certain plants, and causes the land to dry out because the short-cropped vegetation does not trap as moisture close to the ground.  Also the trampling effect is thought to kill vegetation, break the soil and cause it to dry, etc.  The result is what we call desertification, or the transformation of prairie into something more akin to a desert.

Enter Allan Savory, winner of the 2010 Buckminster Fuller Award.

The award was given for Savory's work on a grazing method called holistic management in which small, dense herds of cattle are rotated through an area before they cause the kind of damage associated with over grazing.  The cattle still break the sod, which aerates the soil according to Savory, but they are not allowed to graze the vegetation.

The really great part about this award is that it was given to someone who questioned the conventional wisdom.  Call it being independent, thinking outside the box, innovation, or whatever other label you choose.  Any or all of these labels are likely appropriate.  It's time to think about problems like desertification a little different than we have been because the problem is only getting worse.  Even if the newer or alternative ideas eventually fail, we should be able to learn something when we try to discover why or how the idea didn't work.