
Regenerative Grazing in the South: Changing Attitudes and Gaining Ground
November 12, 2024 | Source: ATTRA Sustainable Agriculture | by Mike Morris, NCAT Agriculture Specialist
“When I was in college, I was taught that you fed hay and grain, and the pasture was just something you put the animals out on to look pretty, or just to get a little bit of supplement. I had to really change the way that I think to make that switch. It was tough to wrap my head around all of that, but once I did, I would never go back to doing it any other way.”
That’s how one producer described the intellectual and emotional journey that led him to adopt regenerative grazing: raising livestock in ways that improve soil health and increase biodiversity and productivity. For the past three years, NCAT has been talking to producers, listening to their stories, and leading a project funded by Southern SARE whose purpose was to “identify practical and regionally appropriate methods of regenerative grazing and accelerate the adoption of those methods in Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia.”
We told Southern SARE that we wanted to expand the work NCAT’s Soil for Water program was already doing in Texas, California, Colorado, and New Mexico. We also wanted to give special attention to the needs of small, underserved, and limited-resource farmers—not just for reasons of fairness but also to learn if regenerative grazing can be done affordably at a small scale. I had the pleasure of leading an interdisciplinary team that included four of NCAT’s best livestock specialists, researchers at four universities, thought leaders from several nonprofit organizations, and dozens of farmer cooperators.
What we learned is that regenerative grazing, while still far from mainstream, is gaining traction throughout the South. In focus groups at the end of our project, producers in all four states named many new organizations that were invisible to them three years earlier but now “leading the way.” Participants also noted greater support and sympathetic interest from universities, some of which had previously been skeptical or hostile.