Foreground Semilla Besada as compared with neighborouring land
Permaculture practices developed in temperate or tropical environments cannot be applied to dryland environments without a sound understanding of the principles that underpin them. Here at Semilla Besada, we discovered this through experience. When we moved to the Alpujarras in southern Spain, we designed and managed our land along temperate Permaculture practices. Four years on, we had less biodiversity and more bare soil. This was definitely not the direction in which we wanted to go! It was then that we heard of the pivotal environmental insights of Allan Savory, and his holistic decision-making framework, Holistic Management. We realised that our ignorance of where Semilla Besada was on the Savory Brittleness Scale, and its implications for our farm design and management.
When we shifted our focus from trying to generate a ‘forest garden’ to a ‘grazed orchard’ and introduced grazing animals, holistically managed, we quickly saw the return of Semilla Besada’s landscape to robust health. Four years have passed and the results of our management is startling when compared with the landscape that surrounds us, which shows increasing bare ground and only supports grasses which are sown annually and fertilised with chemicals. By contrast the foreground shows perennial grasses, which have been managed with holistic planned grazing, together with a vineyard of over 100 plants. See the photo at the top.
Aspen
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