Holistic Management by Allan Savory: the next level after ERE?

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poleo
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Joined: Sat Dec 19, 2015 7:58 pm

Holistic Management by Allan Savory: the next level after ERE?

Post by poleo »

I would like to bring up for discussion the topic of Holistic Management by Allan Savory. Savory is known to quite a few for his tremendous TED-talk on the topics of desertification, the role of livestock in the ecosystem and indeed; management.

In my pursuit of freedom, financial independence and a meaningful life, I have come upon two works of great significance. These two are ERE and HM.

ERE is to me very much the opening of a door. The discovery of a more intelligent perspective on reality, a toolbox to take control and become the architect. However, becomin an architect is not the same as drawing, or indeed erecting, a building.

So where ERE opens your eyes, it can also leave somewhat of a «now what»-feeling. Enter HM.

My meaningful life is one of becoming a farmer. This is how I came upon HM, as it is very much designed with management of natural systems in mind, of which farming is an example. Two subsets exist too - Holistic Planned Grazing (which is very much related to farming) and Holistic Financial Planning (which I find has quite some overtones in common with ERE).

The HM process starts with defining your context - that is what you would like your life to look like. Quite like the not unfamiliar «what would you do if money weren’t an object»-question.

The context takes into account three broad categories - social, financial and ecological goals. For a farm, like mine, and (very) broadly speaking, these may be that we provide one full time income from the farm enterprise, that we increase biodiversity on our land, and that we are a positive contributor to our local community.

This is of course quite superficial, and our family’s actual Holistic Context is about two pages long. It ranges through everything from what kind of children we wish to have, family and friend relationships, to what kind of vitality we shoot for in the various aspects of our ecosystem, to cattle performance and welfare.

The point is that in my experience, this process gives a very clear way of steering my path forward. ERE is the key to unlock the right way of thinking, HM gives the tool to decide on what to do with it.

If I see that our fields are producing runoff, which they certainly are not in my Holistic Context, I can self confront in an unthreatening and constructive way. It is indeed also a perfect way to visualize that waste streams in one area damages the overall profitabilty, ecology and social impact of our farm.

By using this framework, one is able to root out all the dissonance that ERE does/should do away with in general terms. That is the dissoncance in perhaps loving nature greatly and also loving your children, but also working many hours for a company that actively destroys nature.

I’ve been working with this for a quite a few years now, and it has radically changed my outlook on decision making and quality of life. Where these two were previously always to a large extent based on hunches, I now have a tool to cool-headedly assess potential decisions. Will this bring me closer or further away from my context?

When I think about my current iteration of my context - is this the highest thinkable degree of fulfilment for me? Us? The community? If not, we replan and change the context.

The combination of ERE and HM have for me been and continue to be ...awesome. That is why I write this today, and hope that you find it interesting, and also hope that my writing has touched upon the most relevant.

--

PS.

I could go on about Holistic Planned Grazing too, but that is perhaps a little outside the scope of this post. It is a truly revolutionary tool for agricultural planning, and the transformation that is going on in my fields, thanks to this tool and right before my eyes, are momentous to such a degree that I struggle to believe them myself, even having documented them by photography. More about that some other time perhaps.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Holistic Management by Allan Savory: the next level after ERE?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

At the other end of the same spectrum, I am currently very engaged by the method of holistic management of suburban or peri-urban garden farming as described by Peter Bane in “The Permaculture Handbook” ( which also offers nod to Savory.) Bane developed “patterns” for garden farming based on and integrated with the urban planning and architectural “patterns” developed by Alexander and others in a “A Pattern Language.” These “patterns” are sort of like a kit of pre-designed, pre-tested modules that can be linked with or within each other and with other elements in an overall systems (or holistic) design of lifestyle (or integrated environment of lifestyle.)

So, for instance, the manner in which I might fulfill Pattern 52: Rotational Grazing on a 1/3 acre urban site could be rabbit pens with wheels which are usually parked in the shade under very large maple at edge of property, but sometimes parked over raggedy remnants of small turnip crop, and maybe secured in garage overnight as protection against urban predator vector/sector inclusive of stray pit bulls.

In more general terms which also relate to finance/ERE, the zone most appropriate for the pattern of rotational grazing is Zone 4 /Investment which is in between/overlapping with Zone 3/ Orchards/Staple Cash Crop and Zone 5/ Wilderness/Foraging/The Commons/General Resource Services/Insurance.

oldbeyond
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Re: Holistic Management by Allan Savory: the next level after ERE?

Post by oldbeyond »

There is a lot to gain from studying permaculture/regenerative agriculture/holistic management et al, even for those of us who don’t farm. There are a lot of great examples of beautifully designed systems out there, and they’re of course very concrete and often quite beautiful. And a lot of the principles can be scaled down even to level of apartment living. As it happens I’m currently making my way through The Permaculture Handbook.

I guess the deep connection to ERE is that they’re all instances of applied systems thinking, with ERE focusing on lifestyle design rather than food production. There is a lot of overlap, from what I can gather permaculture also has a life well lived in a broad sense as its aim. But there’s certainly different emphasis and slightly different goals. ERE is more abstract/broader while permaculture explores its niche of choice deeper?

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Re: Holistic Management by Allan Savory: the next level after ERE?

Post by jacob »

oldbeyond wrote:
Thu Jul 08, 2021 3:25 pm
ERE is more abstract/broader while permaculture explores its niche of choice deeper?
That's how I see it. After leaving Plato's cave, the surface is wide open. How one expresses oneself will become more individually tempered but built on a foundation of systems theory (holistic thinking)---this is simply because it's a more natural way of thinking even if cog-in-machine thinking is more prevalent. It would be really cool to see more examples of concrete expressions of the "urban tradesman"- and the "cosmopolitan intellectual gunslinger"-types as it pertains to systems thinking. Having mostly been turning into jobs and careers, they're not as well developed [at the systems level] as "non-urban farming/horticulture" though.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Holistic Management by Allan Savory: the next level after ERE?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

oldbeyond wrote:But there’s certainly different emphasis and slightly different goals. ERE is more abstract/broader while permaculture explores its niche of choice deeper?
I think yes and no. I mean, the question "How will we eat?" is pretty damn core. I would also note that Vicki Robin produced her Level 9 video interview* only after her experiment with locavore eating. Similar applies to "shelter" and also acceptance of basic human psychology as it applies to lifestyle design. For instance, the importance of elements such as "the hearth", "protection of back", "bright color beckons and warns", "waking in room with eastern window light", "individual space for handiwork." Maximization of quality of life within limits of resource base can't well be achieved without attention to these basic psychological needs/desires and like missing minerals in our diets, we will keep consuming poor yet expensive sources until these basic elements are achieved or acquired.

OTOH, I have yet to make a profit or even provide myself with majority kcals from any of my gardens. Most of my minorly profitable adventures in frugality have involved "scavenging" or taking advantage of the waste streams of current affluence, roughly in alignment with the model described in "Discards: Your Way to Wealth" which was likely co-ghost-authored in the 1970s by Daniel Quinn, who later came to fame with his novel "Ishmael." So, I very much appreciate the fact that the more generalized strategy (or design of strategies) offered in "ERE" is more realistic or likely to succeed for most humans within context of post-comparative-advantage world. Many or most farms or other small businesses fail, not because they are unprofitable, but rather due to lack of Level 6:Yields and Flows thinking applied to the realm of Cash Money. The roots of the Green Revolution (global monoculture) can even be traced to the farm bankruptcies of depression era America. Even trading on the stock market can be regarded as example of being discard market operator, because somebody must be wanting to discard the stock in order for you to buy it. IOW, there is a disagreement about its value. And, the roots of the modern stock market and math relevant to its operation can be found in the movement of farm commodities through Chicago combined with the gambling tactics of European rentiers.



*my minor very literal example of generativity would be that my DD30 now has a functional garden which I will be eating from for a couple weeks this summer in which I do not yet have a functional garden at my new site.

oldbeyond
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Re: Holistic Management by Allan Savory: the next level after ERE?

Post by oldbeyond »

Some hipstery businesses of the craftier type (microbreweries, coffee roasters, bakeries but also some “maker” type business) seems to be one example. There’s a focus on mastery and quality of life and there’s at least a desire for sustainability. But granted there’s no formalized framework like permaculture provides for gardening/farming.

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