One of the worst feelings I’ve ever had concerning my pastures was when I realized just how much better the roadside was than our pastures where our cattle were grazing.

The same can mostly be said about my use of salt fertilizer and our history with broiler litter. As a matter of a fact I’ll just remind everyone that we do not break natural model rules and principles, but they will break us.

Mississippi grazier Gordon Hazard used to say that when money was gone it was gone. Most money I’ve seen spent on pastures for quick fixes is gone.

My No. 1 principle is that nature loves and needs diversity. Nature loves a loaded seed bank, covered soil, lots of growth, huge plant diversity, carbon in quantity, and lots of critters on top of and under the soil surface. If you don’t have huge numbers of birds, dung beetles, earthworms, voles, moles, and more, you should ask yourself why? Clean farming and short grazing will kill your operation. If your ponds are not covered with bank growth and full of frogs, they are nasty. Birds are your first pasture cleaning crew and frogs are your first pond cleaner.

My No. 1 thing to monitor is outside my pastures. Look at the roadside. The prettiest legume field I have ever seen could not beat the nearby roadside.

Think about many of the roadsides you have seen, assuming the county isn't spraying with herbicides. In most cases if we can match the roadside we are boogying, and the truth is we can beat the roadside. Yet that is seldom done.

To make progress we must ask ourselves: What are the characteristics of highly productive, biologically diverse soil and land?

I consider these ideal characteristics of good land, and the ideal goal to manage for. (This is what we manage for)

These diverse, well-managed pastures have major component changes every year.

I’ll take a minute here and remind everyone that nature requires and depends on destruction and death. Death is just as normal as life.

Every year will be different from a standpoint of moisture, storms, sunlight and market and all these things are mostly out of our control. But with information-rich land and using boom and bust management the swings have minimal effects. Our job is simply to tweak and cushion the natural model.

Things to avoid

It's worth discussing the things you generally will not see at my 499 Ranch or on similar ranches managed with natural-model principles. These are not so much things to manage against, but things you should not manage for.

In summary

Remember also that mankind's No. 1 mistake concerning pasture plants is partial plant recovery.

Our No. 2 mistake is mining and spraying. These are done with the plow, the uncontrolled cow, the hay-making process, the feedyard, and lack of well-managed, adaptive grazing.

Manure and urine can be soil and plant builders or toxic waste, depending on concentration and location.

Cattle are our No. 1 tool to build our land, wildlife and water resource -- or they can be our demise. The choice is ours.

Beef from grass is the No. 1 health food in the world.

This business is based on the use of healthy cattle grazing in high densities to harvest and build and renew the plant and soil resource and create wealth in the form of biological and physical cash. We market the excess production and save no less than 20% of the proceeds every year.

The No. 1 profit center in this business is to retain the money that most producers are spending. Folks, this business is not a "big lick" or home run deal. It is a series of making a profit every year and piling it up. You have got to keep your hand on the pile. It can easily and quickly blow away. Once it’s gone it’s gone.

Also remember that everything relates to everything else. Declaring war with the natural model is a big, big mistake.