A firsthand look at regenerative rancher education

As I stood in the middle of a Montana pasture, on two separate occasions I saw someone reach down into the field, pluck a blade of grass, carefully peel back the tougher outer layer and place the remaining stem between their teeth. I smiled to myself at the perfect Great Plains TV moment they created. Among the crowd, there were also cowboy hats and large belt buckles — one even had the wearer’s initials emblazoned on it.

This group of 15 gathered to talk about three of the most contentious and cutting-edge topics in sustainable agriculture — regenerative grazing, soil carbon sequestration and sustainable beef . Native, a carbon offset project developer based in Vermont, brought these Montana ranchers together to bring peer-to-peer, rancher-to-rancher learning to life. 

Native is the only Verra-verified regenerative grazing program and started its first project in Montana in 2019 with four family cattle ranches for a total of 50,000 acres. The company presold the credits for an average of $19 per metric ton to clothing company Eileen Fisher, shoe brand Allbirds and Xanterra, a private concessions company that sells food, drink and retail in the country’s national parks including nearby Yellowstone. 

Native wants to bring the project’s acreage up to 1 million, so the company needs to sign up a lot more ranchers. The best way to do this, according to Colin Mitchell, project manager for nature-based solutions at Native, is for ranchers to talk to and educate one another about the opportunities in the carbon market, the benefits of regenerative grazing for their soil and how to best implement the regenerative practices. Native especially wanted to encourage conversations between ranchers already working with Native and ones still on the fence. 

"I'm particularly interested in the grazing management that these ranchers are doing," said Montana rancher Chad Howard. "I also wanted to pick the brains of some of these ranchers that have signed up and taken the plunge and ask them some of the harder questions I have: What were their biggest concerns with the contracts and how they felt about longevity [of the contracts]."

Dick Holzer is already part of Native’s program and still made the long drive from his ranch near Missoula, Montana, to the ranches to hear ideas of how to manage his lands better. 

On the Blake and Indreland ranches — two participants in the Native program — Holzer would get guidance on his own ranch and Howard would get some of his questions answered.

Answering questions only ranchers would ask 

Rick Caquelin, a rancher from Illinois who Native had chosen as the day’s guide, walked us out to the middle of a pasture with cows hovering nearby. 

"Grazing will always have an impact," he said. "We have to figure out when grazing is having a negative impact and when is it having a positive impact."

Caquelin explained that the Blakes were doing intense rotational grazing — moving about 60 cattle to different 1-acre pastures daily. At 6 p.m. each day, Alex Blake opens a fresh pasture by restringing an electric wire to move the cows from one area to the next. This regenerative technique stops the cows from overgrazing particular areas, creating healthier soils that should sequester more carbon.

"You have to look down to see that it's being sustainably managed," Caquelin said. He pointed out the lack of bare ground, the "litter" of trampled uneaten plants and the dark brown, moist soil he calls "cottage cheese." 

"You have to do this type of back-fencing because [the cows] will go get that newly grown leaf, even if they have to nip it off with that big mouth one blade at a time. That’s what they will do," he said. The land needs this regrowth to incorporate organic matter and carbon back into the soils.

But this type of management requires time, labor and infrastructure. 

"It will take years to get things where I would like them to be," Howard said. "I'm grazing much larger areas for longer durations than what these folks are doing. And I'm working with a lot of antique infrastructure, and I have some very limited water supplies. That's a big challenge of getting switched over to where I want to be." 

Upgrading the infrastructure is a big, costly barrier for ranchers, which is why the carbon market has become a lucrative opportunity to accelerate the transition.

According to Mitchell, Native’s carbon payments can cover about 40 to 60 percent of the cost of upgrading, and the company wants ranchers to input at least some of their own money to create buy-in.

The other concern Native hoped to address at this event is the misconceptions about what practices are part of regenerative grazing. According to Caquelin, the mention of creating 1-acre pastures for the herd causes many ranchers’ minds to immediately go to mob grazing — putting up to 500 cows on a single acre. They think it’s much too cramped and will destroy the land, the animals and thus the ranchers’ profits. Part of this educational day is helping dispel those assumptions and showing ranchers that regenerative grazing is not mob grazing. On the Blake farm, Caquelin was able to show that there aren’t 500 cows on a single acre but more like 30 to 60. 

At the Indreland ranch, questions and advice got even more tactical with Roger Indreland explaining how he always has a new pasture ready for his herd and how moving the electric wire can actually create a pasture two days in advance. 

"The biggest mistake is you get