The Art of Range Podcast

Napier Downs is a million-acre cattle station in the Kimberley region of Northwestern Australia. They export Red Brahman yearlings live to Indonesia, 15-20,000 animals per year, raised in a tropical savanna. We discuss the humanitarian importance of this live export market, the love-hate relationship with fire in this part of the world, land tenure arrangements on pastoral leases, and the distinctives that gave Napier Downs cattle a reputation for being the best in NW Australia. James is an Australian native and Barbara is a transplant from Scotland who has found her niche and her voice. Join Tip in his discussion with James & Barbara Camp.

TRANSCRIPT AND SHOW NOTES available at https://artofrange.com/episodes/aor-115-cattle-raising-kimberley-australia-james-barbara-camp.

This is a re-release of one of the first episodes on The Art of Range. Fred Provenza discusses ideas from decades of research and experience on how animals and environment affect each other. Dr. Provenza calls this interaction a dance, which he has written about in his book “Nourishment”. Discussion includes how domestic animals can be selected or trained to match their environment and how this intersects with ecological, economic, and social resilience of rangeland-based livestock operations.

Full transcript and links to resources mentioned in this episode are at https://artofrange.com/episodes/aor-114-best-aor-fred-provenza-animal-environment-interactions-re-release.

How does your agricultural business compare to similar operations in financial performance metrics? That's the question answered by benchmarking. Megan Shroyer is the president of Montana AgWest Farm Credit Services and she offers guidance on how to properly use benchmarking as one element of understanding and managing ranch financial health. Financial stress is usually what causes a ranch to call it quits. Even though society values the intangible ecosystem services provided by large landscapes, there are still few mechanisms to monetize these services. Megan describes the range of services offered by AgWest Farm Credit to help agricultural business thrive, including low-interest grants for beginning farmers and ranchers.

Find the transcript and show notes at https://artofrange.com/episodes/aor-113-agricultural-financial-benchmarking-megan-shroyer-agwest-farm-credit.

Is environmentally sound livestock grazing more financially viable than overgrazing or just thoughtless grazing? If so, why? Dave Voth is a rancher in Nevada who helps lead the Society for Range Management's Good Grazing Makes Cent$ Program, an effort to take range science directly to those who make a living on the land. At least in rangeland settings, there are no future farmers without stewardship today, because economics are tied to ecology. Listen to Dave describe the intent of this outreach program for land managers of all types.

Learn more about Good Grazing Makes Cent$ at https://goodgrazing.org/. Membership in GGMC includes SRM membership! Don't miss this two-for-the-price-of-one deal.

Transcript available at https://artofrange.com/episodes/aor-112-good-grazing-makes-cent-dave-voth

A new report published by the Society for Range Management, Connecting Nature and People, outlines key ecosystem services provided by rangelands and their benefits to society. Agricultural Research Service scientist Lauren Porensky and Texas A&M Center for Grazinglands and Ranch Management director Jeff Goodwin discuss the report’s origins, framework, and upcoming plans for the project.

A transcript of this interview and the Ecosystem Services report link are available at https://artofrange.com/episodes/aor-111-ecosystem-services-connecting-nature-people-lauren-porensky-jeff-goodwin.

Remotely-sensed data products are not new, but applications using these data that are available and useful to landowners are relatively new. Matt Reeves discusses the current status of forage volume and phenological development across the Western U.S. (midsummer 2023) and the sources of data in useful fuel tools such as FuelCast, Rangeland Production Monitoring Service, Rangelands Analysis Platform, and ClimateEngine. Listen today to add NDVI, ANPP, RAP, RPMS, and more to your acronym arsenal.

For transcript and show notes, visit https://artofrange.com/episodes/aor-110-lots-grass-little-fire-yet-2023-fuelcasting-matt-reeves

Livestock distribution is the key to good grazing, and water is the limiting factor to distribution. What if you could have water anywhere, produced from air? Genesis Systems, a company founded by Dave Stuckenberg, now offers atmospheric water generation devices that could revolutionize grazing management. This sounds like science fiction, but there's no fiction, only cool science.

Check out the company website and our transcript from the show notes page at https://artofrange.com/episodes/aor-109-atmospheric-water-generation-and-rangeland-grazing-david-stuckenberg.

Don Stuart is the author of a new book "No Farms, No Food: Uniting Farmers and Environmentalists to Transform American Agriculture", a history of American Farmland Trust and the origins of national-scale efforts to bring to America's attention the loss of farmland and the need for conservation effort. Don is a former commercial fisherman, lawyer, and Pacific Northwest regional director for American Farmland Trust. Addie Candib is the current PNW regional director for AFT. Addie and Don have been effective advocates for farming and liaisons between farmers and environmental interests for decades.

TRANSCRIPT AND RESOURCES available at https://artofrange.com/episodes/aor-108-no-farms-no-food-don-stuart-addie-candib-farmland-conservation.

Plants and animals and weather patterns do not respect property boundaries, state lines, or national borders. Managing landscapes requires not the obliteration of human-defined boundaries but working across them. In this plenary session from the Society for Range Management's 2023 annual meeting, Tammy VerCautere and David and Holly Ollila describe their efforts to conserve wildlife species, especially grassland birds, in the Great Plains of the U.S. through the Bird Conservancy of the Rockies. Tate Lantz, a NRCS supervisor in South Dakota, moderates the discussion.

SHOW NOTES AND TRANSCRIPT AT https://artofrange.com/episodes/aor-107-srm-keynote-address-working-across-borders-tammy-vercauteren-ollila-family.

Rangeland science is not a single discipline but a synthesis of numerous scientific topics and lived experiences. Successful management of rangelands requires knowledge of soils, water, climate, plants, livestock, wildlife, humans, and much more. It is impossible to master all topics in a rangeland textbook or land management handbook. It takes a unique and confident person to recognize their limitations and reach across disciplines to accomplish the art of rangeland management. A successful example of this discipline mixing is the Rangeland Partnership, a group of rangeland extension professionals and librarians who work side by side to make relevant, authoritative information available to land managers. Accomplishments of the Rangeland Partnership include the Rangeland Gateway and RangeDocs which are searchable databases to help rangeland managers find high quality information. In this plenary we will hear from Tip Hudson, a rangeland & livestock Extension specialist, and Jeanne Pfander, an agricultural librarian, who discuss the value of reaching across disciplines to accomplish collaborative management. Eric Winford, Associate Director of the Idaho Rangeland Center, moderates this discussion. This is a recording from the SRM annual meeting in February 2023.

Links and transcript at https://artofrange.com/episodes/aor-106-srm-keynote-address-working-across-disciplines-tip-hudson-jeanne-pfander.

https://rangelands.org/annual-meeting-2023/