A holistic approach to balancing economic, social and environmental objectives. Basic to this process has been to find ways to encourage biodiversity both on the land and within the soil. Life begets life, and any practice that destroys life must be suspect if stability and sustainability are the goals. On our operation and with consultation customers, I try to find ways to meet economic goals without depleting the resources of the operation. One of the most valuable and usually least-valued resources is biological capital.
Agriculture is a biological rather than an industrial process.
To be sustainable, it must rely on effective capture and conversion of solar energy into biological energy. Part of the biological energy is converted to money while the balance is banked on the land as biological capital. The ranch is 80 percent bottomlands, with soils ranging from heavy clay to sugar sand. We also operate the home ranch in the 20-inch rainfall belt of western Texas, which has an average growing season of 220 days. The soils of this ranch are mostly shallow rock, limestone-based, with some deeper sandy loam and clay loam creek bottom.