Holistic management – a critical review of Allan Savory’s grazing method

Allan Savory is the man behind holistic grazing and the founder of the Savory Institute. Savory claims that holistic grazing can stop desertification and reduce atmo­spheric carbon dioxide levels to pre-industrial levels in a few decades. In this report, we review the literature on holistic grazing in order to evaluate the scientific support behind these statements

Modeling potential freshwater ecotoxicity impacts due to pesticide use in biofuel feedstock production - the cases of maize, rapeseed, Salix, soybean, sugarcane and wheat

Ecotoxicity impacts have seldom been included in Life Cycle Assessments of biofuels. This report demonstrates an approach to model the potential freshwater ecotoxicity impacts due to pesticide use, using the PestLCI and USEtox models. The method is applied to eight biofuel feedstock production cases: maize in the US (two cases), rapeseed and wheat in Germany, soybean (two cases) and sugarcane in Brazil, and Salix in Sweden. Potential freshwater ecotoxicity impacts vary by up to 3 orders of magnitude with Salix at the lower end and wheat and rapeseed at the higher end. Potential mitigation strategies include substitution to less toxic pesticides, and reduction of emissions to freshwater ecosystems, through improved management, e.g. the use of buffer zones

Holistic management

Holistic grazing builds on the concept of rotational grazing. The underlying assumption is that herbivorous animals can rehabilitate degraded land through grazing and that the world’s grasslands and wild herbivores evolved in parallel and thus are interdependent. Further, it is assumed that grazing livestock (e.g., cattle, goats, sheep and camels) can serve as substitutes for wild herbivorous animals, provided that they are managed in a way that mimics ‘natural grazing’ of wild herbivores. Natural grazing is characterized by large animal flocks moving across large areas as they try to escape predators. To simulate this function in holistic grazing, livestock are packed in large herds and frequently moved between different areas. Holistic grazing is claimed to increase plant production and the soil’s ability to infiltrate and retain water, stop land degradation and improve living and profitability for the herders. Increased pasture plant growth in turn leads to more carbon from the atmosphere being sequestered into the soil. Improved grazing management on grasslands can store on average approximately 0.35 tonnes of C per ha and year – a rate seven times lower than the rate used by the Savory Institute to support the claim that holistic grazing can reverse climate change. The total carbon storage potential in pastures does not exceed 0.8 tonnes of C per ha and year, or 27 billion tonnes of C globally, according to an estimate in this report based on very optimistic assumptions. 27 billion tonnes of C corresponds to less than 5% of the missions of carbon since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Holistic grazing can thus not reverse climate change

Updated indicators of Swedish national human toxicity and ecotoxicity footprints using USEtox 2.01

In a recent paper, Sörme et al. (Environ. Impact Assess. Rev., 56, 2016), took a first step towards an indicator of a national chemical footprint, and applied it to Sweden. Using USEtox 1.01, they calculated national impact potentials for human toxicity and ecotoxicity. The results showed that zinc dominated impacts, both for human toxicity and ecotoxicity. We calculated updated indicators of the Swedish national human toxicity and ecotoxicity footprint using USEtox 2.01. We also compared impact potentials based on USEtox with the mass of chemical emissions. The two model versions produced relatively consistent results. Zinc is still a major contributor to the human toxicity and ecotoxicity impact potentials when characterized with USEtox 2.01. The mass-based indicator pinpoints somewhat different substances than the impact-based indicators

A Nonparametric Test Reveals Selection for Rapid Flowering in the Arabidopsis Genome

The detection of footprints of natural selection in genetic polymorphism data is fundamental to understanding the genetic basis of adaptation, and has important implications for human health. The standard approach has been to reject neutrality in favor of selection if the pattern of variation at a candidate locus was significantly different from the predictions of the standard neutral model. The problem is that the standard neutral model assumes more than just neutrality, and it is almost always possible to explain the data using an alternative neutral model with more complex demography. Today's wealth of genomic polymorphism data, however, makes it possible to dispense with models altogether by simply comparing the pattern observed at a candidate locus to the genomic pattern, and rejecting neutrality if the pattern is extreme. Here, we utilize this approach on a truly genomic scale, comparing a candidate locus to thousands of alleles throughout the Arabidopsis thaliana genome. We demonstrate that selection has acted to increase the frequency of early-flowering alleles at the vernalization requirement locus FRIGIDA. Selection seems to have occurred during the last several thousand years, possibly in response to the spread of agriculture. We introduce a novel test statistic based on haplotype sharing that embraces the problem of population structure, and so should be widely applicable

Bioenergy production and sustainable development: Science base for policymaking remains limited

The possibility of using bioenergy as a climate change mitigation measure has sparked a discussion of whether and how bioenergy production contributes to sustainable development. We undertook a systematic review of the scientific literature to illuminate this relationship and found a limited scientific basis for policymaking. Our results indicate that knowledge on the sustainable development impacts of bioenergy production is concentrated in a few well‐studied countries, focuses on environmental and economic impacts, and mostly relates to dedicated agricultural biomass plantations. The scope and methodological approaches in studies differ widely and only a small share of the studies sufficiently reports on context and/or baseline conditions, which makes it difficult to get a general understanding of the attribution of impacts. Nevertheless, we identified regional patterns of positive or negative impacts for all categories – environmental, economic, institutional, social and technological. In general, economic and technological impacts were more frequently reported as positive, while social and environmental impacts were more frequently reported as negative (with the exception of impacts on direct substitution of GHG emission from fossil fuel). More focused and transparent research is needed to validate these patterns and develop a strong science underpinning for establishing policies and governance agreements that prevent/mitigate negative and promote positive impacts from bioenergy production

Definition of remission and relapse in polymyalgia rheumatica: data from a literature search compared with a Delphi-based expert consensus

OBJECTIVE: To compare current definitions of remission and relapse in polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR) with items resulting from a Delphi-based expert consensus. METHODS: Relevant studies including definitions of PMR remission and relapse were identified by literature search in PubMed. The questionnaire used for the Delphi survey included clinical (n=33), laboratory (n=54) and imaging (n=7) parameters retrieved from a literature search. Each item was assessed for importance and availability/practicability, and limits were considered for metric parameters. Consensus was defined by an agreement rate of ≥80%. RESULTS: Out of 6031 articles screened, definitions of PMR remission and relapse were available in 18 and 34 studies, respectively. Parameters used to define remission and/or relapse included history and clinical assessment of pain and synovitis, constitutional symptoms, morning stiffness (MS), physician's global assessment, headache, erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), C-reactive protein (CRP), blood count, fibrinogen and/or corticosteroid therapy. In the Delphi exercise a consensus was obtained on the following parameters deemed essential for definitions of remission and relapse: patient's pain assessment, MS, ESR, CRP, shoulder and hip pain on clinical examination, limitation of upper limb elevation, and assessment of corticosteroid dose required to control symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: Assessment of patient's pain, MS, ESR, CRP, shoulder pain/limitation on clinical examination and corticosteroid dose are considered to be important in current available definitions of PMR remission and relapse and the present expert consensus. The high relevance of clinical assessment of hips was unique to this study and may improve specificity and sensitivity of definitions for remission and relapse in PMR