Kate Sherren

Landscapes - People - Global change

Tag: adaptive multi-paddock grazing

New paper on AMP grazing and wellbeing

August 2, 2022 /

Graphical abstract for new paper in ASFS

In the heady days of February 2020, before Covid landed in Halifax, I launched a panel-based survey of Canadian ranchers about adaptive/AMP grazing and well-being to wind up my SSHRC Insight Grant. The first paper out of that work is finally out in Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, Adaptive multi-paddock grazing and wellbeing: uptake, management practices and mindset among Canadian beef producers. One of the big surprises was the reported uptake, at 29% of the beef producer population, suggesting potential for a tipping point which may have something to do with the sudden increase in interest in regenerative approaches. Grazing regimes were distinct, as anticipated. The only type of well-being that was statistically associated with adaptive/AMP ranchers was higher physical well-being, but the other well-being scores also tell interesting stories. Insights from smaller-n studies that we tested here didn’t always hold up, for instance, neither being female, having a spouse who is a grazing partner nor belief in climate change were statistically related to grazing AMP.  Systems thinking and traditional thinking were both related just how you would expect, and it was nice to see the statements that Carolyn Mann developed for her Q-method work with ranchers turned into such useful scales for each of those.

March announcements

March 28, 2022 /

It is the usual frantic end-of-term time, compounded by COVID uncertainties and some family health issues, but I can’t let March go by without a post. There has been a lot happening worth exclaiming about.

First, ResNet postdoc Lara Cornejo started her fellowship remotely early this month, while she waits for her work permit to be approved. She is starting by working on modelling some of the pollination service delivery in dykelands and tidal wetlands based on fieldwork by Evan and Terrell from SMU.

Second, Brooke McWherter, currently a PhD candidate at Purdue University under the wonderful Dr. Zhao Ma, learned that she won a Mitacs Elevate postdoctoral fellowship to come work with me for two years. Her project will start in August, and will follow the new Advanced Grazing Management farmer peer-mentorship program being launched this year by Canadian Forage and Grassland Association and Farmers for Climate Solutions. Huge thanks to the latter for being the official host of this Mitacs. Brooke will unfortunately soon get to experience the work permit uncertainty that Lara is experiencing now.

Third, IDPhD applicant Robin Willcocks Musselman, already an MES alum, learned she won a Nova Scotia Graduate Scholarship to supplement her study on my climax thinking SSHRC this fall. Robin will hopefully be looking longitudinally at experiences of flood displacement along the St. John River, as well as potentially elsewhere, to understand not only place disruption but processes of place adaptation and attachment.

Not bad for a single month. Welcome, Lara, and brava Brooke and Robin!

Is HM = systems thinking?

August 26, 2019 /

Happy to announce another paper out of our Reconciling HM project, based on work Carolyn Mann led after her MSc. Our overarching question for her work has been, “are HM farmers born or made?” and that has indeed been an elusive question to answer. We started by talking to HM trainers across North America, and certainly learned that the paradigmatic shifts are seen as the most important by trainers but also more challenging to teach and to adopt than grazing skills; that work was published in Sustainability last year.

This new paper, recently out in Ecology & Society, used Q method with a set of HM trainers, as well as farmers variously identifying as HM or ‘somewhat HM’. Sorting of statements about farming that were selected as being generically systems or traditional in nature revealed archetypes that reveal the trainers to be firmly systems experts, and trainees to be more weakly aligned with systems thinking though in some cases aspirational. Our question remains: does HM training attract those with the capacity for systems thinkers, which will necessarily be a subset of all farmers, or can it indeed be taught?

Bibliometric paper on HM is out

June 8, 2017 /
Factions in Savory-citers based on bibliometric coupling.

Factions in Savory-citers based on bibliometric coupling.

There has been a great irony in my first sabbatical: it has been publication-free. More things in process than I can easily monitor but nothing in hand. Until today, barely three weeks before sabbatical end. Phew! Today the first paper is out in Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems from my SSHRC-funded project on adaptive grazing approaches like holistic management. This paper, Who’s afraid of Allan Savory? Scientometric polarization on Holistic Management as competing understandings, is based on Carlisle Kent’s bibliometric work on HM in the summer of 2015. This used papers citing Allan Savory’s work on HM, as found in Web of Science, to understand the structure of research on the topic. General descriptives allowed us to see the changing nature of that work, geographically and in terms of discipline. Bibliometric coupling revealed distinct factions in terms of the kind of work being used to support papers (i.e. the reference lists) and that those factions seemed to align with disciplines as well as positions on HM. A number of recommendations are discussed around how farmers, advocates, researchers and policy-makers can work to resolve the competing understandings.

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