Holistic grazing management as a scalable niche? A systems perspective on transitions to increased sustainability in beef cattle grazing

Extensive cattle properties have become focal points for examining climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies. This is largely due to their dual role as sites that both release and potentially sequester carbon, depending on management activities. Many global regions have extensive cattle production systems, including the US, South America and Australia. In this qualitative social science research, the Australian beef cattle grazing industry provides a valuable study site for sustainability transitions as it occupies around half of the entire land-use of a continent renowned for its vast and exposed landscapes and extreme climate variability. Through a qualitative study consisting of interviews with 31 cattle graziers, this paper examines cattle and land management practices from producers’ perspectives to evaluate whether a broader adoption of the currently niche Holistic Grazing Management (HGM) approach is desirable or possible. Based on biomimicry, HGM has been claimed as a pathway to more sustainable beef production, including increased soil carbon sequestration and its co-benefits of increased biodiversity, water infiltration, soil fertility, and landscape regeneration. This paper draws upon socio-technical transitions theory to evaluate the scalability of HGM as a regenerative practice. The findings indicate substantial barriers to niche scalability related to its strong reliance and alignment with dominant industry practice and lack of policy resources, which makes profound industry transformation unlikely without a significant change of guiding vision. However, this system-level analysis does reveal tangible points of intervention for wider diffusion and adoption of sustainable grazing and land management in Australia and other geographic regions with extensive grazing systems.