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CapitalPress.com
December 2, 2016
Father, daughter follow holistic strategies
By MARGARETT WATERBURY
For the Capital Press
On Lazy R Ranch, a 1,000-
acre, third-generation cat-
tle ranch in Cheney, Wash.,
cattle aren’t just a profitable
business venture, they’re a
critical tool for managing the
ecosystem.
Together with his daugh-
ter, Beth Robinette, rancher
Maurice Robinette cares for
a herd of 140 to 160 Angus
cattle. All of their beef is sold
directly to consumers, with
most of their clients located
around Spokane.
Lazy R Ranch relies on
a philosophy called holistic
management, a system de-
veloped by a Zimbabwean
wildlife biologist and farm-
er named Allan Savory that
views land, plants and ani-
mals as integrated and inter-
dependent.
“Nature functions in
wholes,” Maurice says,
“which means that every-
thing is related to and has an
impact on everything else.”
Maurice’s first profes-
sional encounter with ho-
listic management came in
1995, when he participated
in a five-year holistic man-
agement project with Wash-
ington State University. By
1996, he had begun imple-
menting holistic management
practices on his own farm,
and he quickly became an ad-
vocate and educator.
“Think about environ-
ments where predators are
free to pursue large herbi-
vores,” Maurice continues.
“Like Canada with caribou
and buffalo, or Africa with
wildebeest and zebra. The
predator/prey dynamic keeps
animals closely bunched and
moving all the time, so they
don’t return to re-graze the
same place. Over millions
of years, grass has evolved
to grow in those conditions.
So when you duplicate that,
grass grows better.”
To that end, Lazy R Ranch
uses a planned grazing sys-
tem that moves cattle among
pastures that range in size
from just one-third acre to
150 acres. The strategy al-
lows grass to rest a long time
between grazings, at least 90
days, and sometimes up to
500 days.
Longer rests between
grazing allows grasses to de-
velop deeper roots and hold
more moisture, a critical con-
sideration in Eastern Wash-
ington, where only 15 inches
of rain falls on average each
year.
The system has reper-
cussions well beyond the
confines of the ranch itself.
Holistic management sees
pasture and grassland res-
toration as a powerful tool
in the fight against rising
atmospheric carbon. By in-
creasing the organic matter
of soil, growers can seques-
ter carbon while increasing
fertility and water retention.
Over the past 15 years, Mau-
rice says he’s been able to tri-
ple the carbon content of his
soil.
Now, Lazy R Ranch is
also an official hub of the
Savory Institute, an interna-
tional nonprofit founded by
the inventor of the holistic
management system.
As the first hub in the U.S.,
Maurice regularly hosts edu-
cational groups interested in
seeing holistic management
principles at work. On top of
all that, Maurice still plays
an active role in a nonprofit
Courtesy of Lazy R Ranch
Ranchers Maurice Robinette, and daughter, Beth Robinette, with some of their herd.
called Roots of Resilience,
which advocates holistic
management in the North-
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“Until five years ago I
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