Resource managers everywhere are challenged by declining land productivity, increasing costs of production, pressures from the global marketplace, onerous government regulations, extreme weather, changes in societal attitudes about land use, and a host of other concerns. But there is an answer: Holistic Management.

Holistic Management will help us assess situations and manage them—including the decisions we make and the actions we take based on them—from a holistic perspective. By understanding how Nature functions and managing resources to create symbiotic relationships, everyone wins and there is more effective use of those resources.

If you are a land manager, you can enhance your ability to interact with and manage your resources by looking carefully at the environment in which you live—at the soil cover, moisture, and fertility, the variety of living organisms on the land around you, and how well plants are capturing the sun’s energy. All these and many other factors affect how productive your land will be, not only today, but if you do your job well and manage your resources carefully, far into the future. You are not simply a land manager, but a steward of the resources.

And, when you consciously address your social and economic needs in the process, you will have a greater ability to sustain the progress you have made on the land. That is why Holistic Management helps people look at the environmental, economic, and social short and long-term consequences of their decisions and management. Holistic Management is a straight-forward management approach to improve your effectiveness and make better use of the tools you already have as a resource manager.

Healthy environments support a variety of different living things. From the tiniest soil organisms, to the plants that grow above the soil surface, to the animals that harvest them and cycle the nutrients back into the soil, this biodiversity brings strength and balance to an environment. If you do a good job managing your land resources, you build and sustain diverse populations of living things and enhance the environment that sustains us all.

Holistic Management, simply put, helps us make better, more informed decisions that balance social, environmental, and financial considerations, while leading us in the direction we want our lives to take.