Profitable Conservation?
By: Joshua Dukart
There has been much talk lately about profit versus conservation. Ever heard these statements?
“I would like to do some conservation, but it will have to wait, because I need to make money this year.”
“Conservation costs money, and I am in this business to make money.”
What if this is an incorrect perspective? What if appropriate conservation could actually make you more
money?
During the past few years my approach to ranch management, which always includes profitability, has
become less about conservation practices and more about regenerative management. I have witnessed
operations with an abundance of Cadillac-type infrastructure that have defaulted because of a lack of
management ability and sound decision making. I have also seen ranching operations with bare bones,
Datsun-type infrastructure complemented by an out-of-the-box yet well-planned management-style that
have been wildly profitable. Appropriate conservation is not restricting, is not regulatory, and at the very
least is money saving. Take it a step further and if your conservation efforts are proactive and regenerative,
they will increase your profits.
To be successful, this change in conservation perspective must be combined with a change in wealth
perspective. In my mind, good business people do not ignore financial planning nor do they assume that
just implementing conservation practices will ensure profitability. They do know that wealth comes in
various forms such as paper capital (money), and human capital (relationships and quality of life). Most
importantly, they know their amount and value of biological capital. This may not get credit in the asset
column, but it is real. These managers also view diversity as their operation’s greatest financial
muscle…able to flex when needed and handle stress when required; diversity of plants, animals,
enterprises, and talents of family and team members. Diversity equals complexity, complexity equals
stability, and stability equals security. Conservation can bring about diversity.
Improving the financial strength of a business and the ecological sustainability of a landscape can go hand
in hand, but it requires balance. For example, in a drought year you can tap into the insurance policy you
have built over the previous several years across your ranch with good grazing management. Imagine—
your own insurance policy where you determine the premiums! It would take a couple of extra steps to turn
that diverse and resilient forage into paper dollars, but nonetheless, the grass itself is biological wealth.
Without it, there are no dollars to put in your pocket.
The idea that becoming too focused on conservation has lead some ranchers into becoming poor financial
managers indicates to me the approach was wrong. Where trouble sometimes enters is when we make
hasty changes anticipating quick results. Patience, patience, and more patience is needed when working
with nature.
To have profitable conservation, your actions need to accomplish the following:
a. Address the cause of a problem, not the effect. Constantly attacking symptoms will
throw your operation into a vicious cycle of needing more and more inputs to continue at
your current production level.
b. Address the weakest link in your operation. Addressing the weakest link (there is only
one at any given moment) will strengthen your whole business and raise its capacity to a
higher level. Addressing anything else (unless it is an issue of health or safety) provides
little benefit.
c. Work in sync with nature. Let nature do the work she wants to do! Many people work
themselves to the bone until they have little left and wonder why they lose passion, energy,
and money. Lean on Mother Nature as a mentor.
It is a holistic approach that can provide the most benefits. Yes, you can always go to a workshop or a tour
or read a magazine and pick up a tip or trick to make things easier or quicker, but changing just one detail
and expecting to get the benefits of a whole model shift is an unrealistic expectation.
For example: installing water developments and fencing to better manage your grazing will provide some
benefit. However, don’t expect to receive all of the potential benefits that your landscape can provide just
by installing those conservation practices.
To receive the full palette of benefits it may require your whole model to shift (be careful about making
impulsive changes, but be impulsive in your attempt to explore alternative management methods). It will
take good planning and observant monitoring of your grazing to increase the health of the soils and plants.
It may take matching your forage availability cycle on your ranch to the nutritional requirements of the
animals to have increased cattle health. To take that a step further you may need to look at matching the
type of animal (species or phenotype) to the environmental capacity you have available. This may be an
extreme analogy, but why would you try to raise pineapples in North Dakota and penguins in Texas?
Here comes the business part of managing this change. Not only does changing your calving date need
consideration, but so might your marketing, your management of cash flow, possibly changing the product
you are selling, the time of year you are selling, and/or changes in enterprises. Then and only then will you
start to realize the financial benefits you were hoping for. Nature functions in constant re-balancing, whole
situations and so should your business.
Remember there are no recipes for your unique human, money, and resource situation. Therefore, any
research that has been done on changes in management should be considered information to “assist” in
making decisions; they should not “dictate” what decisions you should make. There is much more to
consider in the nature based whole situations that you work in than most research can account for.
To close, profit doesn’t just happen. Do you have a personal and production goal? Do you plan your profit
first or wait to see if there is any left? If you take a profit every year, even if it is a small one, you will never
go broke. It is better to get on-base many times with a few homeruns, than to have a lot of home runs and a
lot of strikeouts. Whereas on-base hits allow you to continue to play, one strikeout can lose the game.