Growing ‘Greener’ Golf Courses (Part One)
How Regenerative Agriculture Principles Can Provide a Roadmap for Industry Sustainability
Anyone who has ever stepped foot onto a modern golf course knows a couple things:
The playing surface is invariably green, lush, and meticulously managed; and
There are a whole lot of buzz words in golf course media, like sustainable, green, renewable, and organic.
The origins of golf extend back almost half a millennium.
So, it’s no surprise course design and management have changed significantly from its roots in Scotland to the present (on the nearly 35,000 courses found around the world).
While today’s links-style courses owe their design aesthetic to the sheep-cropped pastures covering sand dunes amidst tidal pools and streams of coastal Scotland, the management of those courses, and nearly all others regardless of design concept, is inherently done mechanically, chemically and in the absolute absence of livestock.
In some places and in some minds, that reliance on mechanical and chemical management is changing due in large part to the public’s increasing interest in knowing what chemicals are being applied to our courses and what impact they may have on human health and the environment. There is a growing understanding that pollinators like Monarch butterflies and honeybees are diminishing to the brink of extinction. Finally, our climate is changing, which alters rainfall patterns, extremes in temperature, and amplifies extreme weather events—all of which impact how courses are managed and the cost of that management.
Arguably, golf is the game that gets the greatest number of Americans outside and walking in nature, albeit a highly manipulated and managed form of nature. Golfers pay attention to weather forecasts and the textures of tees, fairways, greens and even the rough and “natural” spaces between the various holes.
If we cast our gaze from the conventional wisdom of golf course management over to the quickly ballooning adoption of regenerative principles and practices in agriculture, we may find ways, completely out of the box, to think about and manage our courses differently.
But what is regenerative agriculture?
“Regen ag”, as it’s called in the industry, has been defined as “farming and ranching in synchrony with nature to repair, rebuild, revitalize and restore ecosystem functions starting with all life in the soil and moving to all life above the soil.” (Understanding Ag, LLC)
The premise of regenerative agriculture is that if we begin by looking at the context in which we’re operating and then look at how the natural world functions, principally at the soil level, then we can use adaptive means of management to mimic natural processes and cycles. In mimicking these natural processes and cycles, soil microbial communities come back to life and greatly improve carbon, nitrogen and water cycle function.
The Bottom Line: Applying Regen Ag in Golf
In other words, by adopting regenerative principles as the guides to our management decision-making process, we move from managing a golf course to participating in and managing ecological cycles. In so doing, we capture water, nutrients, and energy that are lost when we manage the course with practices that are chemically intensive. In so doing we reduce overhead, and begin creating havens of biodiversity, which are much needed in an otherwise predominately monoculture environment.
It comes down to accepting a specific set of principles which one regenerative ag pioneering group has termed the 6-3-4™: The Six Principles of Soil Health, the Three Rules of Adaptive Stewardship and the Four Ecosystem Processes.
Years 1-3 of implementing Regenerative Principles can achieve:
A 20-50% reduction in applied irrigation (for irrigated orchards).
A 25 - 50%+ reduction in applied synthetics.
A 20 - 50%+ reduction in applied herbicides.
A 30-45%+ reduction in applied fungicides.
A 30- 60%+ reduction in applied Insecticides.
A reduction in required soil amendments of 30-50%
An increase in the phytonutrient profile of the end product.
Per acre input cost reduction.
A 50 - 200%+ improvement in soil water infiltration rate.
An 80 - 200% increase in beneficial soil microbial population.
An addition of 0.25% to 1.0% Soil Organic Matter (SOM)
Significant improvement in resilience.
In Years 4-6:
Cumulative reduction in synthetic fertility of 50-100%
Cumulative reduction in fungicides of 60-100%
Cumulative reduction in insecticides of 60-100%
Cumulative reduction in herbicides of 50-100%
Cumulative reduction in required soil amendments of 60-100%
Total input cost reduction of 40%+
Cumulative increase in water infiltration rates of 100-400%
Cumulative increase in soil microbial biomass of 100-500%
Cumulative increase in SOM of 1.5%+ (i.e., going from 2.5% to 4.0%)
Continued improvement in resilience
In the next article in this series, Allen Williams, Ph.D. will further explain the 6-3-4™ in the context of agriculture. Subsequent articles will examine how those associated principles, rules and processes can specifically inform management decisions on and around golf courses to bring these beautiful stretches of “nature” more in line with nature. Intentional application of the 6-3-4™ will:
Increase profitability
Reduce chemical usage
Reduce water utilization/consumption
Increase resilience
