WORLD authority on holistic grazing management Dick Richardson now calls Australia home.
The lanky South African is living at Boorowa, near Yass in NSW, managing a property owned by the Arnott family.
- AT A GLANCE
- Who: Dick Richardson
- What: holistic grazing
- Why: mimicking nature
- Where: Boorowa, NSW
His methods, while not exactly a revelation, mimic nature and have proven to benefit farm profit, the ecology and agriculture's key ingredient, its people.
Dick was introduced to holistic management by other farmers in South Africa during the early 1990s and later attended a training session led by Kirk Gadzia, who runs a consultancy based in New Mexico.
He then established his own training company in 1977 before moving back to the land in 2000 to run an extensive cattle operation on 7000ha of low-rainfall, lease country near the Kalahari desert.
Here, stocking rates increased from a government-recommended one livestock unit per eight hectares to one every 4.2ha, using cell-grazing based around 60ha paddocks.
One of Dick's unusual practices is the use of "sabbath" camps or strategic resting camps or paddocks to resurrect grasslands, whereby a seventh of the property in a sabbatical rest.
He said this recovery period, during the growing season, emphasised animal performance instead of plant performance.
"One would think this would reduce stocking rates but it in fact increased them," he said.
Dick intends to use the concept at Boorowa by introducing autumn-to-autumn rests in the initial grazing cycle and then spring-to-spring rests in the following cycle.
He has joined with agricultural consultancy and training provider, PrincipleFocus, which will run a cell-grazing course at Dubbo, in NSW, on March 23-26.
The course will include visits to cell-grazing properties operated by 2008 NSW Farmer of the Year winners Nigel and Kate Kerin at Yeoval, and Warren farmers Rod and Kate Mildner.
