Soil degradation. Desertification. Invasion by alien flora. Erosion. To a great extent these words sum up the sorry state of the South African veld.
In little more than a century, the huge swathes of fertile grassland that covered much of the interior of the country have all but disappeared. In their place one finds, at best, areas of patchy, poorly grassed, heavily capped soils; at worst, tracts of barren land gouged out by erosion.
Some of the grasslands have been planted under water-guzzling pines and eucalyptus trees. Some have been planted with wattle, which has usurped huge tracts of grassland, slurping up massive quantities of water, choking waterways and spreading across the veld.
Is anything being done to avert the crisis in our veld and grasslands? Is there anything that can be done to put a stop to land degradation?
Plenty, says environmental land management consultant Harry Collins, who is based at Wegraakbosch farm in Limpopo, an organic dairy and cheese farm owned by Louis Thomson. Thomson runs mostly brown Swiss cattle, but he has recently brought in some Pedi cows which, he hopes, will add a new dimension to his herd with their extra stamina and resistance to disease.
Collins, who has been practising environmental land management for the past eight years, stresses that with correct planning and wise decision-making, much can be done to reclaim the verdant veld that once supported millions of head of game — herds of springboks, zebras, impalas, wildebeests, elephants and buffalos.
“It is common knowledge,” he says Collins, “that much of the game was shot out or moved into protected reserves, with modern agriculture taking over the land for crops and pastures. The fields were ploughed, artificial fertilisers scattered and domestic animals introduced. So began the cycle of degradation.”
The degeneration of the land has not gone unnoticed over the years. Alarm bells started ringing decades ago and agricultural scientists have been theorising on the causes and what they believed would solve the problem since the 1950s.
The most popular theory was that overgrazing and overstocking were to blame. Farmers were advised to reduce their stock and to allow the veld to rest for longer periods. Many of them followed the guidelines on stocking laid down by the experts and agricultural scientists — but to no avail. If anything, the situation worsened.
Collins says the key to restoring the land can be found by going back to the times when the grasslands were home to abundant game. In the early 1800s, explorer and botanist William Burchill spoke about “seas of grass four foot high” in the Karoo. Other travellers describe lush grasslands teeming with game in areas now classified semi-desert.
Says Collins: “In a process of mimicking the behaviour of the wild animals, we can do much to restore our veld using domestic stock.”
On a walk through the pastures with him, he points out a clear division between an area where he has put environmental land management to practice and an adjacent area where the land has been left ungrazed for several months.
On the one side, the new growth of grasses and palatable plants is clearly visible. The other side is notable for its feeble growth of palatable grasses, interspersed with patches of dead-looking, capped soil. Thickets of pioneer species and black wattle are threatening to take over. Unpalatable turpentine grass is rampant. These invasive species indicate a deterioration of the soil, says Collins.
The first section is an area where planned grazing has been put into practice. The second is where the animals have grazed selectively, overgrazing selected plants and not disturbing unselected plants.
Collins tweaks a grass plant from the second section. Using no effort, he pulls it from the soil and points to the roots. “Almost nothing there. It’s a result of continuous overgrazing. The plant has used all its energy trying to regrow leaves. There is nothing to hold the grass in the soil, or to supply it with nutrients and water.
“If grass is grazed too low, the root system suffers as the plant spends most of its energy trying to restore the leaves, to the detriment of the roots. Without secure roots, it is unlikely the plant will survive.”
As we walk on, Collins explains the way in which the behaviour of wild game species can be copied by dairy or beef cattle to restore degraded land. The process can also be used on crop farms.
He says most herbivore species co-evolved with predators and grasslands so that the predator-prey-food-source relationship gives a vital clue to the dynamic that keeps the soil and the grassland habitats healthy.
“By extension, the health of the animals is interlaced within the dynamic and there is a wonderful interactive web of life that is responsible for the continual recycling of nutrients, water and energy which is essential to sustain all life.”
Herd animals — buffalos, impalas, etc — tend to bunch together in groups as protection against predators. As herds move through an area, they graze heavily and move on. In the process, the soil is broken up by hoof action while dung and urine are deposited and trampled into the soil.
Grass seeds are distributed and litter — dry grass, leaves, etc — is broken down, leaving a layer of mulch which will, in time, decay and replenish the soil. Because of the covering of litter and the crumbly surface of the soil, rain is able to filter through the soil surface and penetrate it without running off.
“As the animals move on — possibly pursued by predators, perhaps to find fresh grazing or on their annual migrations — they leave behind areas of friable, fertile soil. In between this flowing saga, micro-environments are created by dung deposits, urine, churned-up soil and soiled vegetative matter, in a continuous recycling process.”
Because there is non-selective feeding, the palatable grasses are not grazed down to a level where the grass plants are threatened. The grasses and plants that have been grazed have a chance to regrow and the seeds that have been trampled into the soil, fertilised by dung and urine, start germinating.
This is the ideal scenario for healthy veld. But modern humankind has largely destroyed the vast herds of game and marched in with ploughs and tractors. In their greed to produce more and more from the land, humans have added chemical fertilisers and pesticides to the equation. With invasive plant species, herbicides were also introduced.
Collins explains that with correct management, cattle (and other animals) can be used as tools to restore and regenerate the land.
The animals are used to replicate the “bunching” effect of the game. The most convenient and cost-effective method is to use portable electric fencing to keep the cattle confined to a small area where they graze for anything from a few hours to a day or two, depending on the rate of growth of grasses in summer or non-growth in the dormant season.
While portable electrified fencing is an easy and comparatively inexpensive option, an alternative is to employ herders to maintain the cattle in a bunching and moving cycle. Portable water troughs can easily be carried from camp to camp.
Timing, says Collins, is vitally important — both in respect of grazing time and resting time. If the cattle remain in one area too long, they will contribute to soil degradation through overgrazing and soil compaction. If they are moved off too soon, there will be too little animal impact on the area.
Grazing time depends on the season, the rainfall and the state of the veld, and on the cattle themselves. For instance, Thomson has a milking herd and a dry herd. Each herd has different needs. A dairy herd and a beef herd also have different needs.
“This is just one area where official stocking recommendations fall apart. There are so many variables it is impossible to lay down rules.” He maintains that management “by process rather than prescription [as in the case of conventional management]” is the core of this new approach.
In essence, the environmental land management process involves meticulous planning of the grazing — whether herds are large or small — and very close monitoring of the grazing plan.
Collins points out that environmental land management can be extended or adapted to crop farming. Instead of spending a fortune on tractors, ploughs and other heavy machinery, dairy or beef cattle can be brought into the fields when the crops have been harvested. They will break up the soil, create a layer of litter or mulch and fertilise the soil with dung, urine and saliva.
Besides the huge cost of farm machinery, tractors and ploughs cause a great deal of damage to the soil, not the least being impaction (or plough pan). He also criticises expensive artificial fertilisers, which not only have the effect of leaching soil but are a serious pollutant when they seep into rivers streams and aquifers. Nitrogen dioxide, Collin points out, is a particularly serious pollutant.
Environmental land management is especially exciting for emerging farmers. It not only reduces the costs of setting up a small-scale farming operation, but the principles can easily be applied where the land has been over-grazed. It is not always necessary to use large stock. Donkeys, goats and even pigs can serve a purpose in the process.
Collins has developed a contraption dubbed the “piggerator”. Measuring about 12 square metres, it is a mobile enclosure for pigs that can be moved every few hours.
Thomson, owner of Wegraakbosch farm where Collins is applying his system, is quick to comment on how much his farm has improved. “August and September were always the worst months for milk production, but after just one year I am seeing a very different situation in the condition of my cows and their milk output,” he says.
It is essential that the farmer or manager adopts a hands-on approach to the farming operation. One advantage of the cattle bunching and moving system is that the herder, manager or farmer is always in close contact with the animals. Any illness or injury can be spotted at an early stage.
The benefits of careful planning and close monitoring are that someone is always in close touch with the general running of the farm. Problems are picked up immediately and replanning can take place. Collins calls this the “feedback loop of planning: plan, monitor, control. Replan, monitor, control.”
After a year of following the environmental land management principles, Thomson says he can already see an improvement in his veld and his grazing lands have changed visibly. Pointing to areas that were previously overgrown with turpentine grass and invasive aliens, he says the veld is showing signs of vibrant new growth, with pioneer grasses advancing.
Soil capping is now negligible. He points to the manure pats where dung beetles are working. “I hardly ever saw a dung beetle on my farm before, but just look at them now.” He lifts the crust of a cow pat. A thin concave shell is all that remains. The rest of the dung has already been worked into the soil.
Environmental land management has also helped him to run Wegraakbosch along organic principles. Tick infestation, for instance, is always a problem for cattle farmers. The chemical dipping route robs cattle of their ability to build up immunity to tick born-diseases.
Effective management and a knowledge of the parasite’s lifecycle can go a long way to controlling parasites, says Collins. “Bloated ticks living off a herd fall off the animals within a day. If conventional land management methods are followed, the ticks will quickly find new hosts and continue to breed. However, if the herd is quickly moved off to ‘clean’ veld, the parasite’s lifecycle, which is dependent on finding a new host, will be broken and the tick problem diminished.”
Environmental land management does not offer a quick fix to farming problems, he adds. “Rather, it offers the farmer a new approach to problem-solving and the incentive to pursue creative farming that focuses on sustaining the viability of the land and the environment on which the land depends for health.”