When you see cattle grazing in a pasture, what is the first thing that you think about? Is it the cattle? How often do you look out in a pasture and think of the soil? Focusing on soil health can make your land more resilient and increase the carrying capacity, reducing input costs and increasing profit.

But shifting your focus from what is right in front of you to what’s under your feet requires a shift in mindset. If sustainability is a top priority, focusing on your operation from the ground up can yield some eye-opening results.

Mindset Shift

North Dakota rancher Gabe Brown understands better than most how soil health and working with nature can transform an operation – and improve one’s life.

Brown explained that years of traditional farming methods, fixed stocking rates for grazing, and feeding hay in small paddocks resulted in expensive inputs and soil degradation on his operation. In the mid-90s, after several years of back-to-back hailstorms and drought, he was faced with continued crop loss and mounting debt.

Knowing that change was required, Brown began looking to nature for answers. Once traditional farming methods were abandoned, he noticed earthworms in the soil, insects in the air, and birds in the fields. He stopped tilling and began diversifying crops by adding rye and peas to his rotation with wheat. Cattle were rotated through pastures, allowing recovery and rest for the land and forage.

The changes Brown witnessed had him convinced he was on the right path. Now, after 30-plus years focusing on techniques that restore and improve the land, he advocates for a shift toward holistic practices.

“I used to wake up thinking about what I needed to kill–weeds and pests. Now I wake up and try to figure out how to get more life on the farm. It’s much more enjoyable and much more profitable working with nature than it is trying to kill things,” Brown said.

Brown believes the first step to successfully adjusting your mindset and working with nature involves understanding natural cycles and soil health principles.

Natural Cycles

There are four natural processes that Brown emphasized: energy, nutrients, water, and biodiversity.

The energy cycle involves sunlight, plants, and photosynthesis. The nutrient cycle involves plants taking carbon from the air, using some for growth, and pumping the rest into the soil to feed soil life. “It’s the biology, the bacteria consuming those carbon compounds, the protozoa and nematodes consuming the bacteria and releasing excess nitrogen that’s the true nutrient cycle responsible for fueling all life,” he said.

Water is absorbed by soils, taken up by plant roots, and excess is released by pores in plant leaves. Then it eventually falls as rain again. Biodiversity, which happens naturally, compounds and adds more life, driving and fueling the cycle.

Diverse plants with different leaf shapes, root depths, nutrient needs, and growth cycles support diverse insect life and bird life. “Good insects and birds consume the pests and balance each other. When we support these natural cycles and take an ecosystem approach encouraging life, soil health improves and nature balances itself,” Brown said.

All life is tied to the soil, even animals. Understanding what drives soil health enables us to improve plant health, which improves the health of animals that consume the plants.

Soil Health Principles

Soil is composed of minerals, organic matter, water, air and living organisms. Individual soil particles clump together to form aggregates, which give soils their structure, and pores between the aggregates hold water and air. Compaction, tillage and direct rainfall destroys soil structure. And when the aggregate structure is broken down, pore spaces are reduced or destroyed, reducing the soil’s ability to hold air and water. However, living roots and organic matter support soil structure and enhance its ability to absorb and hold water.

Did you know there is more life in the soil than above ground? One teaspoon of healthy soil contains billions of living organisms like bacteria, fungi, algae, microscopic insects, mites, beetles, ants, earthworms and more.

This myriad of underground life interacts with plant roots and nutrients from decaying plant material, and manure, to drive the soil ecology that feeds all life above ground. The healthier the soils are, the greater their ability to support life.

Healthy soils need to remain covered to provide a protective armor. They also need continual plant growth, diverse plant life, livestock integration, and minimal disturbance so their structure remains intact.

Each of these principles plays a unique role. Ground cover helps regulate soil temperature and maintains moisture, providing an environment that supports life in the soil. Continually growing diverse plant life provides roots that hold soils, provide homes for soil organisms, and cycle nutrients in and out of soils. And livestock add nutrients by leaving behind saliva, urine, and manure.

“When we first took over the farm from my in-laws, rain would pond on the soil surface or run off. I learned that runoff was due to management and our poor soils,” Brown said. “Now we have regenerated our soils to the point where water can infiltrate at the rate of 30 inches per hour.”

He explained that for every 1% increase in soil organic matter, the soil will hold approximately 20,000 more gallons of water per-acre, per-foot of the soil profile. This is a game changer in dry years.

By following these principles, soils become more resilient, forages become more nutritious, the health of livestock improves, and your farm becomes more profitable.

Better Soil = More Profitability

“The more soil aggregates we build, the more biology we’re gonna have,” Brown said. “The more organic matter and carbon we have, the more food there is for the soil biology driving the natural nutrient cycle, which encourages diversity. The more nutrient-dense and diverse plant species we have, the healthier our livestock.”

Soil health, forage nutrient density, and animal health and management are all interconnected. Managing forage health isn’t only about the plants and leaves above ground– it’s also about the root systems below the ground that are important.

When plants and leaf area are reduced by overgrazing or mowing, plants lose their solar panels. Plants without leaves can’t photosynthesize and begin to die. The roots also begin to die, negatively impacting soil health and causing a ripple effect throughout the entire system.

“That root biomass is critical, so you don’t want to graze too early or for too long,” Brown said. Overgrazing is one of the most common mistakes livestock producers make, but it’s not limited to harming one plant. Overgrazing disrupts the soil microbiology and impacts the entire system.

However, management adjustments provide simple fixes. Matching the class and number of animals to the forage production, and allowing adequate recovery time, are key to building healthy soils, plants, and animals.

Adaptive Grazing

Brown practices adaptive grazing, moving his herd through paddocks to allow sufficient time for the forages to recover and regrow.

“We adapt to what the environment provides each year. It’s so much less labor and less stress, and much healthier for the animals,” Brown said. Reduced inputs yield higher profits and Brown relies on natural predators to help control pests, rather than using dewormers or insecticides.

“We rarely start tractors or feed hay, even in winter,” he said. “The cattle spread their own manure, feeding the soil biology, which improves the land’s overall productivity and is a much more holistic way of producing beef.”

Brown believes that understanding  when a pasture needs rest, when it’s ready to be grazed, and the amount of forage cattle will consume comes with time and practice. “An animal will eat approximately 3% of its body weight every day in dry matter,” he said. But seeing that in a pasture setting is where the art of grazing meets science.

When moving livestock, Brown considers many factors, including the time of year, how fast forages are growing, livestock nutritional needs, and how much available time there is.

According to Brown, moving into a pasture when most plants are transitioning from the growth to the reproductive phase is ideal for maintaining soil health. “In diverse pastures, not all plant species will produce seed at the same time, but when you begin to see pollen and seed heads, it’s a good time to graze,” he said.

“And it’s not the moving of the animals that’s the key. It’s the recovery and rest time afterwards,” Brown said.

Most of the cattle producers Brown works with overgraze pastures because they try to run too many head at one time. “If forage production and cattle needs are not aligned, they are overstocked,” he said. This mismatch is not only bad for soil health, it also decreases profitability.

“Profitability comes from decreasing your inputs and allowing the cattle to work for themselves,” Brown said.

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