Allan Savory Quotes

Allan Savory has said that floods and droughts are man-made. At first glance this seems a bold, even brazen statement. But here’s what he means: When it comes to the water cycle functioning in a landscape, the condition of that land is as important as what descends—or not— from the sky.

Allan Savory’s belief that drought and floods are man-made and therefore not inevitable opens the way for a different response. With this principle in mind, Grasslands, LLC, seeks to apply Holistic Management to thousands of acres of land, creating islands of ecological resilience with regard to the water cycle. So that perhaps when, say, an inordinately heavy rain comes in the spring, the pasture can absorb the water and there’s little runoff.

If you're in livestock, certainly Allan Savory, Jim Gerrish, Stan Parsons, Andre Voisin, and Allan Nation are high on the list. For general farming, J. I. Rodale, Ed Faulkner, Sir Albert Howard, Louis Bromfield, George Henderson, and Charles Walters come to mind. And for cultural anchoring, how about Wendell Berry, Barbara Kingsolver, Michael Ableman and Fred Kirschenman, Marion Nestle, Joan Gussow, Michael Pollan, and Gary Zimmer. In the culinary world, it's Alice Waters and Dan Barber. In the crop world, it's Colin Seis and Gabe Brown.