Read full article: “A global assessment of Holistic Planned Grazing™ compared with season-long, continuous grazing: meta-analysis findings”
Read the rebuttal: “Hawkins’s 2017 Meta Analysis of Holistic Planned Grazing Should be Retracted”
Summary: This paper performs a “quantitative meta-analysis” of twentyone grazing studies that are claimed to represent Holistic Planned Grazing (HPG) in a comparison with performance data from year long continuous grazing. The paper finds no significant difference in plant basal cover, plant biomass and animal performance and thus refutes claims that HPG is superior in those areas. It does not say it is inferior, only that there is no meaningful difference. The verisimilitude of this paper, however, is itself refuted by Frith (2017) – included herein – which argues that Hawkins misattributed her reviewed studies to HPG, when, in fact, they were not representative of it. Upon closer investigation, Frith actually finds that those papers that were most closely aligned with the HPG protocol – including elements such as adaptive stocking densities and rest periods – actually showed the best performance along the measured categories, and, thus, provided evidence favorable to HPG, not the opposite, as Hawkin’s claims.
Hawkins, Heidi-Jayne. 2017. “A global assessment of Holistic Planned Grazing™ compared with season-long, continuous grazing: meta-analysis findings.” African Journal of Range & Forage Science 34 (2):65-75.
