February 7, 2024 — Our team at the Wallace Center has been hard at work on a number of grazing resources and tools – including a new podcast – and we’re excited to finally share them with you! We hope you will find the materials below useful to your work – whether you’re a land manager, an experienced grazier, or newly grazing curious. Thank you as always for sharing our commitment to advancing regenerative grazing to build healthy soils, viable farms, and resilient communities!
Special thanks to the Cedar Tree Foundation for their steadfast commitment to regenerative grazing and support of our grazing work.
We released a new podcast – Beyond the Pasture – created by our team at the Wallace Center! In the first season of Beyond the Pasture, we spoke to an amazing group of regenerative grazing practitioners and advocates about how they’re utilizing regenerative grazing to build culturally relevant food value chains, improve environmental outcomes of agriculture, and support Black, Indigenous, and Farmers of Color and communities. Tune in to learn along with us.
We’ve continued our advocacy work on public lands grazing in the Upper Midwest and are thrilled to release a practical toolkit designed to empower conservation grazing advocates to champion sustainable land management through managed livestock grazing. Read the toolkit here!
We also featured a number of land managers in a webinar series showcasing examples of grazing as a powerful land management tool. In these webinars, seasoned veterans from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and the Missouri Department of Conservation shared their experiences and provided an inside look into their triumphs and challenges in public land management. Watch the series here!
The team summarized much of what we’ve learned from public land managers who are actively using grazing in a Conservation Grazing Basics course, available for free on the Regenerative Ag Idea Network! The course covers the history of public land grazing, how to navigate leasing and working with contract graziers, and how to engage other land users in management. Explore the course here!
We spoke to a number of farmers about their successes and learnings with contract grazing. Michigan grazier Phillip Swartz advises, “Jump in and do it. Start small, learn from experience, and be open to refining your methods. It is a practice, much like any other skill, and the hands-on learning is invaluable. Don’t get too caught up in perfection; the best lessons come from doing.”
Catch up with these contract grazing all-stars and create your own listing on the Midwest Grazing Exchange!