Texas Grazing Mentors Network
Regenerative grazing can be a powerful way to increase resilience to severe weather, like drought stress and flooding, safeguard healthy soil, sequester carbon, and provide grassland habitat for birds, pollinators, and other wildlife. Yet, ranchers may be skeptical of adopting regenerative grazing practices due to concerns about their profitability and practicality.
American Farmland Trust (AFT) is establishing a Grazing Mentors Network (GMN) in Texas to assist ranchers in understanding the benefits of regenerative practices and provide guidance on how to successfully implement those practices on their operations. Farmer and rancher-led mentor networks can be highly effective at addressing concerns about regenerative practices because they enable peer-to-peer learning based on real-world experience. The GMN will assist ranchers, especially historically underserved producers, in expanding the adoption and implementation of adaptive grazing and soil health management practices.
AFT is launching this program now and is looking for producers interested in participating as mentors to other producers in North Central Texas and, eventually, other parts of the state. Mentors will be financially compensated and receive training before working with mentees. To be considered for a mentor position in this program:
- A producer will need to demonstrate experience with regenerative ranching methods.
- Beef cattle should be a producer’s primary enterprise.
- There is no minimum acreage or production level required.