Rodger Savory: Let's Fix Deserts!https://youtube.com/watch?v=TfvGORzbtM8&si=EnSIkaIECMiOmarEHOW TO FEED 120 PLANT SPECIES TO CATTLE IN THE DESERT
Rodger Savory describes how he feeds his carefully selected 120 plant species to cattle in the desert.
HART HAGAN: You're proposing a cattle ranch to the east of Los Angeles and San Diego in the Salton Sea/Imperial Valley. How does the operation work? More specifically--and something that can be confusing at first--is that the cattle are roaming across a certain stretch of desert that does not have grass for them to eat. But you're growing the forage elsewhere and then bringing the forage in. But then after a while, the cattle have an impact and turn it into a grassland, right?
RODGER SAVORY: We need more complex life. To get the entire ecosystem functioning, we grow 120 different varieties of plants to feed the cattle.
By having 120 species of forage, we can build the soil life up in the fields, where we're growing the forage. And then we can move that soil life over to where the cattle are being fed.
On average for the Salton Sea, transport time from field to cattle will be 30 minutes. In an ideal world, hopefully, Elon Musk will have his autonomous electric trucks that can bring it from the field straight to the cattle. But we’ve got to grow it in one location where there's irrigation, move it via a 30-minute drive to the desert and have the animals in the desert eating it.
Then the animals move forward across the desert. What they leave behind is what we call the biological carpet. The biological carpet is the medium that protects the soil microorganisms from harmful ultraviolet light and maintains moisture, so that life can begin to grow again.