Daniela Ibarra-Howell on the Emergence of Holistic Management as a Global Movement

Daniela Ibarra-Howell is the co-founder and director of the Savory Institute in Colorado in the United States. As a child, growing up in Buenos Aires in Argentina Daniela dreamt of moving out of the big city to the countryside and so she studied agronomy so she could find a job out in the field. But in Argentina in the late 1980s, it was not easy for a woman agronomist to become a rancher. Instead, Daniela became a governmental advisor at the ministry of agriculture where she also become intrigued by the challenges of desertification. To find answers to these challenges she went to study in New Zeeland, where she also met her future husband Jim Howell. Jim introduced Daniela to the work of Zimbabwean Allan Savory, whose principles on holistic management gave her the answers she was looking for. One thing lead to the other and as a newlywed couple the Howells moved to the United States and founded the Savory Institute, a learning hub around holistic management practices. In our conversation we talk about the development of the regenerative agriculture movement that applies holistic management to their farmlands and how such practices affects life on land and the life of the farmers.

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