Save Money, Increase Grass and Enjoy Cattle
How regenerative practices can benefit ranchers featured on episode of Angus at Work.
March 5, 2025
Taking care of the land and cattle to the best of their ability should be at the very top of every cattleman’s to-do list. To that end, effective land management saves money, retains water, produces more grass and can increase stocking density. Regenerative ranching isn’t necessarily a new idea, but it’s certainly become a hot topic the last few years.
To learn more about tips to consider when looking to improve land management, our Angus Beef Bulletin team sat down with Hugh Aljoe, director of ranches, outreach and partnerships at the Noble Research Institute for an episode of Angus at Work.
Why pursue regenerative?
What is regenerative, and why should producers care? Regenerative really puts a focus on rebuilding soils, according to Aljoe.
“We want to be able to put our emphasis on soil health. And at Noble, what we’ve defined as our focus [to achieve that] is regenerative ranching,” he explains. “For us, [regenerative ranching] is the restoration of degraded grazing lands using practices based on ecological principles. We’re really trying to focus on soil health and to pay more attention to what’s going on below the soil, not just what’s going on above the soil.”
Economics and livestock are always going to be important. While ranchers can look out across a field and see what’s going on visibly, we can’t always see what’s going on below the surface, notes Aljoe.
At Noble, staff members have learned over the last decade that the true litmus test for whether soil is really improving or not is the soil itself. That may seem like a clear assessment, but producers need to be able to look at the soil and see if management practices are having the desired results.
“It all goes back to [whether] we are focusing on the ecological principles that are there, the water cycle, the mineral cycle, the energy flow, as well as community dynamics. Is our management really having a benefit to those different cycles?” questions Aljoe. “A ranch is an ecosystem. If we understand that, then we go back to what those soil health principles are, and then can address the weak link within that ecosystem.”
Proving progressive management
At the Noble Institute, working ranches under the Noble umbrella are the proving ground for data that can then be provided to producers. One of the most important areas that the data is shedding light on? Return on investment.
“We’re trying to track everything that we do. As we move to this regenerative focus, not only are we trying to track revenues, but also the cost of everything we’re doing. Not only just from the operational side, but also as we look at infrastructure changes,” says Aljoe. “What’s the return on investment?”
Being able to test new ideas before producers sink valuable resources into unproven methods is something of which the Noble Institute is proud to be a part.
Noble is able to attack things in a big way, explains Aljoe, while most producers need to move forward with caution so they can minimize the monetary risk on the line for upcoming technologies should those advancements not work on their own operations. Noble, on the other hand, can provide answers early in the process so that Noble staff can tailor solutions to an individual’s operation.
“We converted close to 14,000 acres of ranchland into this regenerative focus. Half of those [acres] are very much focused on introduced pastures and heavily weighted toward inputs,” says Aljoe. “Over the last year and a half, we have saved somewhere in the neighborhood of $70,000 in fertilizer on about 7,000 acres, and then another $50,000 on chemicals that normally we would’ve applied prior to being regenerative.”
One thing that should get ranchers even more excited about regenerative pastures? Noble didn’t destock those pastures. Aljoe notes that — if asked — in the beginning of the transition he would have suggested destocking with the idea that 50% of the forage available was due to nitrogen fertilizer usage.
How did Noble manage to maintain stocking rate while improving pastures? Intensive grazing. Noble staff now use temporary fencing and manage moving those cattle every day to every other day, but gone are the days of spraying weeds and similar pasture activities. So what is the Noble staff doing? The same thing other ranchers utilizing regenerative practices do on a daily basis.
“They’re just moving cattle. Wouldn’t you rather spend time with cattle? Our guys on the ranches will not go back. Even their own farms that they own themselves, they’ve moved completely toward the regenerative side,” Aljoe says. “It’s a lot more enjoyable. It’s saving a lot of input cost, they’re getting to spend a lot more time with the livestock, and the land is improving simultaneously. It’s not as big a lift as a lot of people would’ve thought.”
The information above is summarized from the Nov. 16, 2022, episode of Angus at Work. To access the full episode — including further information on the Noble Institute and regenerative ranching practices — check out our Angus at Work archive on www.angus.org.
Angus Beef Bulletin EXTRA, Vol. 17, No. 3-A
Topics: Management , Sustainability , Nutrition , Pasture and Forage
Publication: Angus Beef Bulletin
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