Grazing in Future Multi-Scapes - from thoughtscapes to landscapes, creating health from the ground up

Throughout different landscapes of the world, grazing herbivores fulfill essential roles in ecology, agriculture, economies and cultures including: families, farms, and communities. Not only do livestock provide food and wealth, they also deliver ecosystem services through the roles they play in environmental composition, structure and dynamics. Grazing, as a descriptive adjective, locates herbivores within a spatial and temporal pastoral context where they naturally graze or are grazed. In many cases, however, pastoralism with the single objective of maximizing animal production and/or profit has transformed landscapes, diminishing biodiversity, reducing water and air quality, accelerating loss of soil and plant biomass, and displacing indigenous animals and people. These degenerative landscape transformations have jeopardized present and future ecosystem and societal services, breaking the natural integration of land, water, air, health, society and culture-scapes. Land-users, policy makers and societies are calling for alternative approaches to pastoral systems; a call for diversified-adaptive and integrative agro-ecological and food-pastoral-systems designs that operate across multiple scales and ‘scapes’, simultaneously. There needs to be a paradigm shift in how grazing herbivores are managed – grazed– within pastoral systems, derived initially from a change in perception of pastoral wealth provision – thoughtscapes.

This event will run over 6 consecutive Mondays from 7am-11am NZ time. A provisional daily schedule is outlined below - this is subject to change. Please note that days 6 and 7 will include virtual farm visits.

7.00am-7.15am Welcome, housekeeping and introduction

7.15am-7.30am An introduction from industry

7.30am-8.00am Stream One

8.00am-8.25am Q & A/interactive session with audience

8.25am – 8.30am Comfort break

8.30am-8.45am An introduction from industry

8.45am-9.15am Stream Two

9.15am-9.45am Q & A/interactive session with audience

9.45am-10.00am Comfort break

10.00am-10.45am Virtual breakout rooms - themes to come from each workshop

10.45am- 11.00am Wrap up on day's session