Allan Savory's Quotes

Clifford Allan Redin Savory (born 15 September 1935) is a Zimbabwean ecologist, livestock farmer, and president and co-founder of the Savory Institute. He originated Holistic management (agriculture), a systems thinking approach to managing resources.

Allan Savory's selected quotes:

Allan Savory about Time:

A good tracker is interpreting all the time, from every little sign, you know? Not just ...
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Allan Savory about Creativity:

Now that we've discovered how to actually develop policies and projects holistically, if we can get ...
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Allan Savory about Life:

I spent a lot of my life - 20 years of it - in war, training ...
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Allan Savory about Deep:

If you dig deep and keep peeling the onion, artists and freelance writers are the leaders ...
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Allan Savory about Life:

People in all walks of life, and especially business, do not want to experience the collapse ...
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Savory advocates using bunched and touching livestock to what he claims mimics nature, as a means to heal the environment, stating “only livestock can reverse desertification. There is no other known tool manageable to humans next which to address desertification that is contributing not lonely to climate tweak but plus to much of the poverty, emigration, violence, etc. in the seriously affected regions of the world.” “Only livestock can keep us.” He believes grasslands retain the potential to sequester ample atmospheric carbon dioxide to reverse climate change. Praised by cattle farmers, his controversial ideas have sparked opponent from academics; ranging from debate upon evidence for treatment effects to the scope of the potential impact for carbon sequestration.

Savory conventional the 2003 Banksia International Award and won the 2010 Buckminster Fuller Challenge. Prince Charles called him “a remarkable man” and noted farmer Joel Salatin wrote, “History will vindicate Allan Savory as one of the greatest ecologists of all time.”

In contrast, James E. McWilliams described Savory as having “adherence to scientifically questionable conclusions in the incline of evidence to the contrary”. George Monbiot said of him, “his statements are not supported by empirical evidence and experimental work, and that in crucial respects his techniques realize more harm than good.” However, this comment has been subject to criticism in a future article published in The Guardian by Hunter Lovins, titled “Why George Monbiot is wrong: grazing livestock can keep the world”.

All quotes from Allan Savory sorted alphabetically:

Allan Savory about Food:

Agriculture is not crop production as popular belief holds - it's the production of food and fiber from the world's land and waters. Without agriculture it is not possible to have a city, stock market, banks, university, church or army. Agriculture is the foundation of civilization and any stable economy.

Allan Savory about Time:

A good tracker is interpreting all the time, from every little sign, you know? Not just interpreting the age of the tracks but also: Is it wounded? Is it hungry? A good tracker is interpreting a lot.

Allan Savory about Agriculture:

Agriculture is the most destructive industry that we have. More than coal mining and other extractive industries.

Allan Savory about Knowledge:

Almost all the knowledge required to produce more food than eroding soil is available today - we just need to use that knowledge within a holistic paradigm - managing agriculture holistically, forming the policies that undergird it holistically.

Allan Savory about Technology:

Hard systems are everything we're using right now - computers, phones, planes, the clothes you're wearing, the room you're in. Everything there involves 100% use of technology and expertise to make it, and nothing we make - including space exploration vehicles and so on - is complex. Everything we make is complicated. Nothing is self-renewing.

Allan Savory about Life:

I spent a lot of my life - 20 years of it - in war, training army trackers and commanding a tracker unit, and then in the Game Department, tracking lions and elephants and poachers. So I've spent literally thousands of hours tracking people or animals, and training others to do it.

Allan Savory about Problem:

I was so fanatical about trying to save wildlife... I was unable to accept that we couldn't solve this problem of thousands of years, of wherever humans operated, the environment deteriorated.

Allan Savory about Creativity:

Now that we've discovered how to actually develop policies and projects holistically, if we can get the barriers out of the way and release the creativity that's in our universities, our farming organizations, amongst our farmers and land managers, we'll be astounded. As I'd like to express it, the human spirit will fly.

Allan Savory about Future:

I've often been asked what drives me, particularly through the last 50 years of abuse, and ridicule. What has kept me going is one word - care. I care enough about the land, the wildlife, people, the future of humanity. If you care enough, you will do whatever you have to do, no matter what the opposition.

Allan Savory about Deep:

If you dig deep and keep peeling the onion, artists and freelance writers are the leaders in society - the people who start to get new ideas out.

Allan Savory about Healing:

People and land need healing which is all inclusive - holistic.

Allan Savory about Life:

People in all walks of life, and especially business, do not want to experience the collapse of cities like New York along with global finance and economy in chaos, but this is what business faces if we continue to attribute climate change to fossil fuels alone.

Allan Savory about Life:

The problem with holistic management is it's so profoundly simple, but it's not easy. And it's profoundly simple. You're almost insulting people's intelligence to explain it twice, just about making better decisions of where you want to go in your life, bringing in environmental, social, economic issues simultaneously.

Allan Savory about Future:

The problem of a rising population destroying more than four tons of soil for every human already alive needs to find its way into corporate board rooms if we are to enjoy future financial, economic and political stability.

Allan Savory about Community:

Ultimately, the only wealth that can sustain any community, economy or nation is derived from the photosynthetic process - green plants growing on regenerating soil.

Allan Savory about Knowledge:

We need to manage holistically, embracing all of our science and traditional knowledge - all sources of knowledge. We can do that from the household to government to international relations.