Why do 95% of regenerative graziers struggle?
Why do they reach a ceiling where soil and grass production stops improving after the first few years of improving their productivity?
Has this happened to you? Do you know why this happens? Or do you blindly believe that, somehow, sometime, your soil and grass productivity will improve?
I will tell you a well-kept secret in the grazing guru’s circle: Most grazing theories are flawed. Most grazing systems and programs are based on flawed experiments and observations!
Take the Cridder experiment, for example. It was done in 1953, and he cut potted young plants of cool-season grass with scissors often. Then, by cutting this young grass at different heights, he concluded that frequent cutting stops roots on young plants from growing, demonstrating overgrazing effects under continuous grazing, which was the norm in the fifties.
He also concluded that moving the cattle out of a certain range under continuous grazing was best when they consumed more than half of the plant. Remember, they did continuous grazing back then.
Now, move forward 60-70 years, and you will find that most articles promoting the take half, leave half, or take a third, trample a third, and leave a third of the grass standing cite Cridder or someone who cites Cridder as their source! 70 years later, and they are still not considering basic plant physiology or how livestock graze.
I am sorry, but anyone observing livestock grazing knows they do not graze desirable plants to a certain height. That is the basis of their blunder when they say, "Have your livestock graze to such and such height and no more." This is impossible as livestock are selective grazers whenever we allow them to select. Livestock are not mowers where you can adjust the cutting height.
By allowing selective grazing, farmers harm their profits by reducing the potential stocking rate, which determines profits. Then, selective grazing causes overgrazing. Anytime grass growth slows down or there is a short-term drought, overgrazing or grazing plants before full recovery creates short roots and a compacted layer in the soil, restricting roots from exploring deeper.
All you need to check your land is a long screwdriver. Push it into your soil and find out if you get a hardpan around 3 to 5” deep. I find this hardpan anywhere that selective grazing is practiced.
I will repeat this: selective grazing will turn into overgrazing, and a lack of strong and deep roots will lead to a hardpan. A hardpan is ALWAYS the result of a lack of strong and deep roots.
I did a podcast with John Kempf of Advancing Eco Agriculture yesterday, and we talked about how the livestock grazing industry hasn’t advanced and still relies on a flawed experiment done 71 years ago. This is not normal; how can someone keep teaching obsolete knowledge that doesn’t increase soil fertility to its potential? Why?
We need to be better, and we can be better by following nature.
What does nature show us? Nature has complexity and biodiversity, and no synthetic fertilizers are used. Yet, in nature, soils are fertile, and production is the highest the ecosystem can sustain.
What are we missing? What can we do as managers of the land to reach its potential?
Can we increase long-lived soil carbon with our grazing management? An absolute YES!
“Most people think soil carbon comes from plant decay or compost, but new research validates how long-lived soil carbon is built. What if I told you that the best, longest-lasting soil carbon is built by stockpiling grass to graze it off with livestock? This idea changed how we graze — and how our land responded.”
The Problem with Conventional Thinking
Most assume long-lived soil carbon comes from litter or crop residues. Up to 90% of it comes from dead bodies of fat soil microbes. This changes the whole grazing paradigm
Research shows that only 10–20% of soil carbon lasts longer than a few years. Yet, whatever new flavor of the month they are named with, most grazing systems worldwide are losing soil fertility.
Why it matters: Soil carbon is the fertility engine — it holds water and nutrients, feeds microbes, supports deep-rooted forages, and makes the green season longer. Your soil levels of long-lived carbon determine its fertility!
A New Theory from the Field
In 30+ years of grazing livestock in different environments, I observed that pastures stockpiled for 6+ months dramatically improved.
I had a grazed dairy on my farm for 28 years, during which we tried to keep the grass vegetative by grazing the whole farm at a very high stocking rate. After 28 years, the soil organic matter hadn’t increased from the first few years, when it went from 3% to 4%; after the initial improvement, it stayed there for 25 years. Why? I did not know why, but now I know!
It's because there are two types of soil organic carbon:
I finally changed from dairy to selling adapted beef genetics, which allowed us to stockpile with the total grazing program three-section system.
Then, the soil changed very fast the next three years, the same soil that had not improved much after 25 years of rotational grazing, during which our focus was on grass quality for the whole year.
\We started stockpiling paddocks to use as standing hay later in the year, alternating them yearly to improve the whole property, as I had been doing with my students worldwide for over 15 years with excellent results.
After those 15 years of observation and researching, I developed this theory:
Green-season grazing = sugary root exudates → feeds bacteria → short-lived carbon.
Energy reserves in roots and crowns are used when grazed and start to build back in recovery, but they never overflow.
Stockpiling = mature plants with full energy reserves → leak fatty acids and amino acids → feed fungi → long-lived carbon.
This matches recent research showing microbial necromass and fungi are the most significant contributors to stable soil carbon.
.
How Stockpiling Creates Humus
Stockpiling allows energy-saturated plants to shift exudates from mainly sugars to mainly fats and amino acids. This feeds a different soil food web — mostly fungi instead of mostly bacteria, and fungi produce humus while bacteria consume it. Fungal decomposition leaves chitin and glomalin, forming humus that lasts 100+ years.
I call this “Grazing for Humus” — and it’s what nature has done for millennia when half of herbivores, by mass or weight, were hind-gut fermenters and half were ruminants. This is the basis for how nature created long-lived soil carbon BEFORE humans killed off the huge hind-gut fermenters megafauna around 20,000 years ago.
How do we know this? From fossilized pollen, fossilized bones, and fossilized fungi spores of fungi that grew in herbivores manure!
Most grazing gurus do not consider the megafauna's role in creating our best soils by achieving a total graze. They do not consider basic plant physiology when they teach selective grazing, where livestock select the best and reject the rest. This leads to less available energy after deducting the energy from the stems left behind respiring from the energy the green leaves produce by photosynthesis. How could they miss this?
Okay, let's go back to how to produce more long-lived soil carbon by our grazing management, mainly by stockpiling in alternate paddocks yearly.
In Florida, sandy soil went from 1% to 3.18% organic matter in 5 years with no fertilizer — only stockpiling and the total grazing program. That is around 15 tons of carbon per acre yearly in a high-temperature environment!
Pastures became more productive, drought-resilient, and supported more cattle—five times more in the same acreage without synthetic fertilizers.
Why This Matters Now
Soil degradation, input costs, and drought push ranchers to find better ways to maximize their profits while improving their land as quickly as possible.
We need to make money; this is not a hobby.
Long-lived soil carbon or humus holds moisture in your soil, making it spongy, fertile, and resilient. It also feeds your forages on demand, increasing their quality and creating pest resistance.
My Total Grazing Program, with its three-section system, saves you money, is simple, regenerative, and proven in multiple climates.
It reconnects grazing with biology, gives you back control of your land health, and maintains a low cost per cow. You follow nature instead of fighting against it.
This idea of creating long-lived soil carbon through grazing changed everything for me and many others. I’d love for you to try it. You can read my full article and watch before-and-after videos of success stories of our students at www.rwranching.com.
Get a free of my article here: www.rwranching.com/soilcarbon.
50% Complete
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.