It’s not about soil carbon — it’s about keeping cool-season pastures healthy and productive
In a recent Acres U.S.A. article, “The Take-Half, Leave-Half Fallacy” (July, 2025), John Kempf promoted a mob-grazing approach as a means of improving pasture productivity and increasing soil carbon. Before we discard the long-held take-half, leave-half rule of thumb, though, let’s sort out what it does and doesn’t do. While take-half, leave-half is often misunderstood and sometimes misused, it’s definitely not a fallacy. For cool-season pastures, it is the one rule of thumb that most consistently delivers the greatest forage yields and the best overall managed grazing results.
In our combined 40+ years of managed grazing experience, we’ve seen a lot of grazing trends come and go and tried a few on our own pasture-based farms. Each of these new grazing styles adds another tool or two to the toolbox. When we’re managing a dynamic ecosystem like a grassland across many seasons, we need to be adaptive. We need all the tools at our disposal — including take-half leave-half.
The best graziers we know to focus on the most important tool: their own management. They monitor their system daily and make real-time, place-based decisions based on current conditions. The key is to identify the right tool or practice to use at the right time, for the right reason.
Support authors and subscribe to content
This is premium stuff. Subscribe to read the entire article.
