Cattle producers are well aware their ability to provide for their families hinges on being good stewards of their stock and resources. Though regenerative agriculture is certainly not a new concept, more and more producers are searching for cost-effective methods to best manage their pastures and improve their soil health and stocking rates moving forward. To dive deeper into effective land management, our team sat down with Hugh Aljoe, director of ranches, outreach and partnerships with the Noble Research Institute.

A little background

Headquartered in Ardmore, Okla., the Noble Research Institute’s goal is to encourage land stewardship for improved soil health so producers can nurture their land into working for them. To further this goal, Noble is actively involved in identifying potential barriers to widespread adoption of regenerative techniques.

“Here at Noble we’re able to go in and attack things in a big way, where most producers have to move forward with a planned action, so they take on what they can really afford to at any given time,” notes Aljoe. “Our benefit is, we can provide answers early on in the process for producers that we then can tailor to their individual operations.”

Through its team of researchers, consultants, educators and ranch managers, Noble provides farmers and ranchers the skills and tools to care for their land in an economic way — whether a producer is focused on pasture and rangeland, wildlife, pecan production or livestock production. With more than 14,000 acres of working ranch lands, the Noble team can work within a living laboratory to demonstrate and practice regenerative principles that can then be cascaded to landowners across the country.

Why regenerative?

A ranch is its own ecosystem that must be managed for the land to yield a product. Whatever the commodity being produced, focusing on soil health and paying more attention to what’s going on below the surface is the key to long-term success.

“Economics is always going to be important. The livestock are always going to be important. We’re always going to take care of the land. We can always see what’s going on out there visibly, but we don’t always look and see what the changes are below the surface,” Aljoe stresses. “What we’ve learned over the last decade is that your true litmus test of whether you’re really improving the soils or not is the soil itself.”

It all goes back to whether landowners are focusing on the ecological resources available — the water cycle, the mineral cycle, the energy flow and community dynamics — says Aljoe. If producers embrace that concept, they can refer to basic soil health principles to address issues or the weak links within their ranch’s unique ecosystem.

Feeding the soil

While it’s common knowledge it takes rain to grow grass, Noble takes the concept a step further with the idea it also takes grass to grow grass. The more grass producers can manage at any given time means there is additional security in grazing their livestock through difficult conditions while prioritizing the health of their ground.

“We’ve got to feed the organisms that are going to be in the soil as well as the soil surface. If we can take half or less [of the available forage] and then rapidly lay the rest of it down where you’ve got that mat of organic material at the soil surface, there are organisms that will put it into the soil. Then suddenly you begin to build a biology as you build the organic matter,” says Aljoe. “You begin to build the organic matter; you increase your water-holding capacity. You increase your water-holding capacity; you increase resilience. Everybody wants to be able to get through a drought a whole lot easier than what we’re doing right now.”

The producers who have applied these practices for the last two or three decades are the ones coming into this drought with less discomfort, he says.

“The people that went through the 2011 to 2012 drought, they’re looking at it and saying, ‘OK, the adjustments that I made then taught me how to better manage for the future. I have more water-holding capacity in the soil, so the rainfall I do get is effective,’” relays Aljoe. “You begin to talk this type of language to the producers. Everybody wants to be able to capture more rainfall. Everybody wants to be able to grow more grass.”

Editor’s Note: The information above is summarized from the Nov. 16, 2022, episode of  Angus at Work. To access the full episode — including further information on the Noble Research Institute’s programs and research — check out our  Angus at Work archive on www.angus.org.

Angus Beef Bulletin EXTRA, Vol. 16, No. 10-A