Doug Tolleson                                                                                                                                                                              The Ins and outs of planning for drought for ranch families

    Doug Tolleson:  “What a thrill it is for me to be here with you all. I have dropped a bit of my “Texican” accent, so you can hopefully better understand me. I am a range specialist for the University of Arizona at the V Bar V Ranch.   I have interacted with this group many times through the Society for Range Management, and you have come to participate at our meetings. So I am well aware of what is going on here, and have wanted to get here and attend these meetings for quite a while. This year it worked out; so thank you for inviting me.
    I feel like if ever I have been in a situation where I am ‘preaching to the choir’ this would have to be it.   A lot of what I will talk about will be elementary and obvious to you, and more like a review. But I want to walk us through a set of steps to get us to an end point; to set up a drought planning strategy or framework that seems to work.    We are sort of in the baby steps of actually getting it out on the ground and using it, but it is based on good sound business, and I can’t see any reason why it wouldn’t continue to work. In this 45 minutes and what we could fit on the slides here we are not going to get into great depth.   But we will get enough information to see how to put this framework together and to get the context of how it would work. We could come back and divide into small groups and pursue this in more depth at some other time.
      I do this talk for a lot of different types of audiences.  n this room I don’t have to tell you that drought is serious, but for a lot of the groups I find I really do have to get their attention. So, there are a few very graphic slides...like dead animals ...that we really don’t want to get into here--especially right after lunch.
[Slides begin]
    Here is some text of an April 10, 1903 article on Arivaca.   The subject is how to find the waterholes, and it was basically with your nose and your ears.   Excerpts in the text tell about cowboys having to use their bandanas to strain the maggots out of the water in a very dry year.   And there are pictures of people stuck in mud holes.  The point is, if we don’t learn about our past mistakes from historical accounts we are ‘destined to repeat them’, as the old saying goes.   So let’s look at what tools we have available to use to stay up to date on weather, climate and how to plan for drought.
[Slide]   Here’s a website tool from the University of Arizona showing different drought indexes.  It is called ‘RangeView’, or sometimes ‘DroughtView’.   These are satellite based, drought monitoring and assessment links where you can view and analyze vegetation through time and across landscapes.   You can actually zoom down into your own pastures and see vegetation variances.  It gives a good picture of what is going on, and is a good drought planning tool.
[Slide]   Here is a graph of the accumulated precipitation during monsoon with long term averages for the Santa Ritas.  It is based on the historical records of precipitation from June 15 to Sept 30 from 1996 on, and we can see how you would normally accumulate precipitation during a monsoon.  This also shows us how the rain is distributed on particular ranches. So, once a week we can go check our rain gauges and get a good idea of where we are in the long term precipitation picture. We keep rain gauges laid out all across the Santa Rita range.   We are keeping good business records so we can compare where we are this year compared to other years.
[Slides: A series of monsoon rainfall slides for the Santa Rita range]   This shows us how not all droughts are the same.  Here’s a year where half the range is in drought and the other half not!   This slide shows a different year with a very different pattern, with only about 60% of the rain of an average year.    So in this year we might decide not go out and buy some more cattle, or figure our stock tanks might not fill, so we need to prepare for that.  And here’s another year where the rain pours straight down, so in this year we might go out and buy another load of steers, or grow some more warm- season grasses.
[Doug shows a series of slides of different rain patterns in the region which clearly show how it is unevenly distributed in space and time.  And he shows how satellite views are artificially colored to show below average rain or above average, and how  we can figure from the charts  how long the drought conditions may go on in any given year or area.]  
      The whole point is that there are some great tools out there to help plan our drought protection.   And the other important thing we have learned is drought management is very complex and there is no universal plan for a given range area or year or month.   You have to tailor this to fit individual ranches.  Your management plan will be different from your neighbor across the state line, or even across the fence.
     Here’s a quote I really love from Dr. E. J. Dyksterhuis in 1951....”A man that has a short pasture needs a rain much worse than his neighbor who has ample forage on his range.   But, when the rains come, it will do the least good for the fellow who needs it most.”  I believe this quote captures planning in a nutshell...in that one quote.  The ‘range model’ (good, fair, bad, excellent) was his baby.  I think he nailed it with this quote for us here some 60 years later.  
     Another gentleman here in this slide is a mentor of mine, Wayne Hamilton.   He has forgotten more about range than I will ever know.  He teaches at Texas A&M University.   He says the best time to start planning for the next drought is while it is still raining...so... today (laughter in the audience as it is raining outside)...I have to tell you that in all the times I have presented this particular series of drought management talks over the last two to three years it has rained every single time!    So when do you want me back? ... (Laughter)... I would like to expand on what Mr. Hamilton said; to say...the time to plan for the next rain is during the middle of a drought.   We need it to go both ways.   We need to prepare for the good times to make headway and take advantage of them, and we need to prepare for the bad times and maybe even make headway then.
     When do we start planning?  We have more time to plan for this right NOW than we will ever have.    If you have ever needed to plan a wedding, or been within a mile of someone who is planning one, you will understand what I am saying here.    Starting at point “A”, the closer we get to point “B” the more stress we have and the less time we have, and the less fun we are to be around.   So, keep that concept in mind as we continue.
[Slides]   Here are models of people very well prepared for every eventuality.  This is a very well known professional sports person.    In his heyday he was maybe the best there has ever been in the sports world.   Adaptive management works in the sports world where you have to constantly plan plays to get the team into a better position.   The other most prepared and planned people I know are emergency preparedness teams such as first responders, military, and law enforcement.  They have to look at all the possible contingencies of what could possibly go wrong and how they will handle it.   Very successful businesses do this as well.  
     These are the basic concepts I want to point out:  1) We have more time now to plan than we ever will and 2) we have good models here for planning ahead and being prepared; so not only can we be proactive, but in the heat of battle we can also be a better informed reactive.   I am a football junky so I am giving you a sports analogy today with this series of slides.  To make your plan you first have to know...the big picture. Then you focus all the way down to the point where you are going to start the ball going.  
     The first step would be to analyze such things as what stadium you are in, what team we are playing, and where is the ball on the field.   The next step is to look at different indicators such as what personnel are on the field, where is the quarterback, etc?  Then we look at triggers and focus on whether the play will work at this moment in time or do we need to stop and revise the play.  Unfortunately we range managers don’t have the ability to stop the play....we just gotta go ahead.  
     Drought monitor information is not necessarily the best tool for this planning in my opinion, but it is still useful to give us big ticket information...(Doug talks about general drought conditions in California...) It’s  good business information to know about what drought conditions are over time and in other locations.  It gives us the ability to start putting our plan together in the context of where we are and what contingencies we need to plan for.
     Now we start to get more focused.  We zoom in on our particular ranch lands.   We can do this from the satellite views and we can also zoom in on the particular data we collect from our own land, our own rain gauges.   So get out that clipboard and pencil, your computers and graphs, and collect your data on your own place.  And don’t forget the access to scientific data to help us.
      I have been asked if I have ever personally applied this planning that I am teaching you to use.    Yes, I have done the boots on the ground, hands on, day to day management of land and animals.   This plan was starting to take shape back in those days.  But it wasn’t until I started running a scientific lab, a commercial, small business, research facility that it all came together for me.    The lab operated a lot like an emergency room; I never knew when I walked in the door in the morning how many samples would show up...5 or 500.   I had two permanent employees and three to ten student employees who may or may not show up on any given day.   So, every day I had to show up and put together a contingency plan for that day.  I had to plan what I would do if I got 500 samples and only 2 workers...that sort of planning.   What I am teaching you now really crystallized and matured while I was running that small business.  It worked like a charm so YES, I can offer you real personal experience.     This scientific lab would analyze cattle and other livestock fecal samples to determine their diet needs, and to predict and determines future diets based on vegetation growth patterns.  So this is another kind of help science can give you.
 [Slides of Arizona from 1995-2007 showing typical weather patterns]   What I really want to show you here is how we can apply this to our own particular ranch.   Here’s my V bar V Ranch, and here’s the weather patterns there over the years....for the same ranch.  So this allows me to select the best diets for my animals.   This was our acquired scientific data, to show indicators of where we were and give us context.  Another scientific tool...space age technology...allows us to see things like rock formations and distribution on our range lands.   We can see if the animals are moving off of a certain species of plants at a certain time of year.  Here are two of my favorite indicators to look for; cow pies (splattering pies mean things are pretty good), and the colors of the western wheat grasses.  And always be sure to have plenty of rain gauges well distributed about the range.
     Now we get down to putting the ball in play.   We have the plan, we have our indicators, we know what the best case and worst case scenarios look like, and we see the triggers that might cause us to make adjustments later.   Now it’s time to get out and actually do something.   And by the way, be sure to put it all down in writing.
     I will talk about stocking rate as a good example of ranch management.    It is a common denominator and we all know about it.   So we gather at the table or around the old truck and start to talk about what our options are and what we are actually going to do.   We look at what category we are in.   Remember, the sooner you make the adjustments the better...that’s planning again.  We might have residual forage available to open up, or a dirt tank cleaning schedule to change, or maybe we will put together a culling priority group (maintaining the base heard and not losing the genetics), or reroute rotating pastures.   And now put the plan together with what makes sense for YOU.  Remember that your plan probably has a 50-50 chance of happening, ‘cause the way things work, something else may come along at any time and change it.  But now, if we need to deviate from the plan we have the time to sit down and talk about what and why in an intelligent and less stressful manner.    
      To summarize our conclusions...If we develop these scenarios and management options in advance this facilitates the heat-of-battle reactions that we will have to make.   We will be prepared for good times and for bad.    We will utilize a combination of all the large scale, public, scientific data, our site-specific monitoring, business information, and local knowledge we collect.  All of those sources have equal weight and value; they have to go together.    Taken together we will make better informed, current decisions.
     Here is the last slide...talk about being struck by lightning....We need to document all this for the next generation.   It is one of the best things we can do for the people who we will be handing the reins of these ranches over to.   People my age and older have brains that are medically different from younger people now because of the way we learned.     I was introduced to technology later in life.  I didn’t learn it in grade school or college.    I use it now, but my brain wasn’t set up to use it.  Kindergarteners, high schoolers and college-age kids now, have never NOT known the technology.   Their brains are wired for it.     
       We older folks don’t leave them spread sheets, apps, word docs, digital photos, graphs and charts of what we did and why we did it.  We just say “Ah, you know, the grass is beer can high.”    But if we tell them that it is beer can high on April 1 and we had this much rain and we did this with it and we grew this much grass and  it turned into such and such a weaning weight and pregnancy percentages etc it means something to them.
      So if we are going to hand our ranches over in better condition than what we got , which is what most of us have as a goal, the biggest thing we can do, the best thing in this drought planning strategy, is writing it down.
Thank you.”
Questions:
Q:  Re Climate Change issue....inaudible. ..can you give a program on drought planning without mentioning climate change?
Doug:  “Drought is, I believe, just inherently part of climate.   Weather is what happens in the short term while climate is just what happens over the long haul.   So, if we are going to be prepared for climate change we need to start by being prepared in the short term for drought.    Sometimes when you go into a crowd ‘climate change’ can be a term that can cause half of them to turn you off and not listen to the rest of what you have to say...and the other half will start to pick apart everything you say.   In producer meetings and other meetings like that, I am usually called upon to talk about drought and drought is part of climate, so you just have to address it.”
Q:  inaudible....
Doug:  “The other thing about doing this kind of planning and writing down...is you are building up some ‘institutional memory.’   When change occurs and people get new jobs and start moving on at least you have some data and records you can talk to people about.”  
End of questioning...