Center for Regenerative Agriculture

Project Title: Metrics, Management, and Monitoring: An Investigation of Pasture and Rangeland Soil Health and Its Drivers

In grazing beef cattle operations across the US, grazing management, soil health, profitability, and producer wellbeing are all connected. Scientific research to quantify these connections has lagged, despite growing challenges facing beef producers in recent years. For decades, farmers and ranchers who have implemented soil health principles have improved the overall health of their land, experienced more profitable operations and lived happy, healthy lives. These observations have — to this point — been largely anecdotal. Our project ‘Metrics, Management, and Monitoring: An Investigation of Pasture and Rangeland Soil Health and its Drivers’ will measure soil health, environmental outcomes, profitability, and wellbeing across a range of grazing management strategies in Michigan, Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado and Wyoming. By determining relationships between management decisions and ecological, economic, and social outcomes, this research will create tangible benefits for farmers and ranchers, including improved monitoring tools to more easily evaluate pasture and rangeland health, and decision support tools to help producers make informed decisions to benefit their operations. 

Project website: https://www.noble.org/3m 

This research is supported by the following:

Project Title: Values and Adoption in Regenerative Grazing Practices and Associated Wellbeing Outcomes for Cow-Calf Producers

Our research and education project, ‘Values and Adoption in Regenerative Grazing Practices and Associated Wellbeing Outcomes for Cow-Calf Producers’ will create knowledge, awareness, and skills for 15-20 cow-calf producers by training them in regenerative grazing. In order to explore suspected barriers and conduits to adoption, a long-term approach is proposed including training in self-monitoring of economic, social, and ecological wellbeing and values. Understanding barriers and conduits to adoption will allow us to tailor education materials, fostering increased adoption of regenerative grazing in the medium-term benefiting stakeholders such as Extension and the beef and regenerative agriculture sectors, but in the long term benefiting wider society through a more sustainable cow-calf sector. 

Project Website: https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/grant-awarded-to-explore-holistic-wellbeing-of-livestock-producers

This material is based upon work that is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, under award number 2020-38640-31522 through the North Central Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program under subaward number LS20-437. USA is an equal opportunity employer and service provider.