How did Allan Savory develop Holistic Management and Holistic Planned Grazing?

The concept of Holistic Planned Grazing was initially developed in the 1960s by Allan Savory. Setting out to understand desertification in the context of the larger environmental movement, and influenced by the work of French agronomist André Voisin, he hypothesized that the spread of deserts, the loss of wildlife, and the resulting human impoverishment were related to the reduction of the natural herds of large grazing animals and, even more, the changed behavior of the few remaining herds. Savory hypothesized further that livestock could be substituted for natural herds to provide important ecosystem services like nutrient cycling. However, while livestock managers had found that rotational grazing systems can work for livestock management purposes, scientific experiments demonstrated it does not necessarily improve ecological issues such as desertification. As Savory saw it, a more comprehensive framework for the management of grassland systems — an adaptive and holistic framework for making decisions — was needed. For that reason, Holistic Management has been used as a whole farm/ranch planning tool.