Article summary: A single “carrying capacity” number can be a useful starting point, but it can also lull you into false confidence when rainfall, veld condition, water access, and grazing distribution shift quickly. South African rangeland work highlights a constant tension between department norms, what the land is doing right now, and what you (and your neighbours) believe is happening on the ground. It also shows that drought responses like destocking are shaped as much by social and economic realities as by forage supply. To finish, you’ll get a practical resilience toolkit you can apply on any grazing business.
The drought problem you can’t spreadsheet your way out of
When drought bites, you want certainty. A number. A rule. A simple “this farm can carry X”.
That’s exactly why “carrying capacity” sticks. It feels like a firm baseline you can plan around.
But rangelands don’t behave like a fixed factory line. In semi-arid and variable systems, forage supply can swing hard with rainfall, and the same property can carry very different numbers of animals across seasons, years, and even paddocks. Research on rangeland dynamics suggests management needs to account for both variability over time and patchiness across the landscape.
So drought decisions aren’t just technical. They’re a three-way tension between:
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Recommended norms (district averages, guideline stocking rates)
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Real-time conditions (what the land and water are doing right now)
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Farmer perception (your risk tolerance, your goals, your community context)
If those three aren’t aligned, drought will expose it.
Carrying capacity is a long-term average, not a live feed
Most grazing capacity guidance is built from long-run rainfall patterns and typical vegetation. In South Africa, many producers still reference department-recommended stocking rates for their district, with the implicit assumption that “average” conditions will show up often enough.
Here’s the catch:
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“Average” years are not your current year. A norm can be reasonable over decades, and still be wrong for the next 90 days.
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Within-farm variation is real. Even on one farm, camps can carry very different numbers depending on veld type and condition.
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Water and distribution matter as much as feed. Livestock don’t graze hectares, they graze what they can reach and what they prefer.
A practical way to think about it:
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Carrying capacity is a planning benchmark.
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Stocking rate is your daily operating decision.
Benchmarks are useful. But in drought, operating decisions keep you afloat.
What South African studies add: norms vs the land vs what farmers believe
One recent South African study (across Grassland, Savanna, and Nama-Karoo biomes) put the core problem on the table: broad, fixed grazing capacities don’t always translate well into variable rangelands. The researchers compared four views of “capacity” side-by-side:
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Department-recommended long-term grazing capacity norms
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Grazing capacity calculated from rangeland assessment (field surveys)
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Current stocking rates
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Farmers’ perceived grazing capacity
That framing matters because it admits something we all know in practice:
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The “right number” is not just ecological.
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It’s shaped by institutions, social networks, and infrastructure (think boreholes, fences, access to commons), not only grass growth.
In other words, the decision isn’t just “What can the land carry?”
It’s also “What can we carry as a system, right now?”
Timing is everything: why “wait and see” often becomes “sell with everyone”
Drought rarely surprises you on the day it starts hurting. The bigger trap is waiting until the market, the feed base, and your options all tighten at once.
Open-access work from the semi-arid Karoo found farmers leaning heavily on three core strategies:
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Destocking before drought to reduce grazing pressure
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Income diversification during drought
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Rangeland evaluation after drought to decide how many animals to run and when to graze specific areas
And when researchers looked at destocking behaviour more broadly in South Africa, they found drought conditions were closely linked with patterns in beef output, consistent with destocking acting as a risk-transfer strategy. They also identified that destocking decisions were influenced by socio-economic factors such as herd size, income, land ownership, and whether farmers could purchase fodder.
The take-home is blunt:
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Early decisions preserve choice.
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Late decisions preserve cash flow for a week, then cost you control for a season.
Drought decisions are social decisions (even on “your” farm)
Destocking is often described like a pure optimisation problem. In reality, it can be tangled up in:
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status and identity tied to stock numbers
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family and community expectations
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market access and price fairness
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trust in advice, forecasts, and institutions
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ability to finance feed, freight, or restocking later
Work on communal drought risk reduction in Southern Africa highlights how limited investment options, low income, unclear pathways, and weak participation can stall proactive action. In some settings, farmers may delay action until it’s too late, partly because the “system around them” hasn’t made early action feasible.
This is why drought plans fail when they ignore the human layer.
A technically perfect plan that can’t be executed socially is not a plan.
Case vignette: a Senegal mob grazing pilot (and what it really teaches)
In late 2025, reporting from Senegal described an early-stage “mob grazing” pilot led by a village chief, where multiple families formed a combined herd and grazed a defined area in tight, short bursts, then moved daily, aiming to increase recovery time and reduce selective grazing. The reporting also emphasised two crucial points:
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the approach is context-specific and nuanced, with a fine line between regeneration and damage
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community buy-in is decisive: a nearby pilot reportedly failed when rest rules weren’t followed
So what’s the lesson for you, whether you’re in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, or elsewhere?
It’s not “mob grazing will fix drought.”
It’s this:
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Grazing density and rest can be powerful tools, but only when the rules are executed consistently.
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The constraint is often management and coordination, not theory.
A sensible caveat from the research side: a meta-analysis on Holistic Planned Grazing (a form of time-controlled rotational grazing) found no consistent production advantage over season-long continuous grazing at the same stocking rate, and warned it’s risky to assume you can safely double stocking rates just because you changed the grazing method.
Practical translation:
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Planned grazing can help you protect recovery, control selectivity, and manage utilisation.
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It does not remove the need for forage budgeting and early stocking decisions.
Resilience toolkit: capacity, timing, and water, without the wishful thinking
Use this as a checklist you revisit monthly, then weekly as conditions tighten.
1) Treat carrying capacity as a range, not a single number
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Split the farm into zones (reliable, variable, fragile).
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Maintain a base stocking level you can carry in a poor season, then use trading stock to flex up in good years.
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Re-check capacity against what you can actually utilise, not what grows in the back paddock you can’t effectively graze.
2) Build a “forage runway” you can see
You don’t need perfect measurement. You need visibility.
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Estimate how many days of feed you have under current demand.
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Identify your sacrifice areas (where you’re willing to take pressure) to protect the rest.
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Keep a written plan for how you’ll use standing feed, conserved feed, crop options, or agistment.
3) Write decision rules for early destocking (before you need them)
A rule beats a debate when stress is high.
Try a simple three-step trigger, adjusted to your context:
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Trigger A (climate): rainfall has materially underperformed for your season window
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Trigger B (feed): growth and ground cover trend is down, not just “one bad week”
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Trigger C (runway): you’re inside a pre-set feed runway (for example, “less than X days”)
When A + B + C are true, you act:
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sell a defined proportion
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wean earlier if appropriate
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move stock to a planned holding area
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lock in feed supply while it’s still available
4) Make water security a first-class constraint
In drought, water often fails before feed.
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capacity of bores, pumps, pipes, troughs
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redundancy (what breaks first, what’s your backup?)
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access and stock flow to water points under heat and dust conditions
5) Pre-negotiate the social and market pieces
This is the part people skip, then regret.
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Who do you call first for agistment, transport, or short-notice sales?
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What’s your minimum acceptable sale plan if prices fall?
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Who needs to be aligned (family, partners, neighbours, grazing committee) so the plan can actually be executed?
6) Review, recover, and reset after the drought
Recovery is where long-term capacity is won or lost.
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assess ground cover and plant composition
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prioritise rest on the most damaged areas
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rebuild numbers with a plan, not with emotion
Where Pasture.io fits (without replacing your judgement)
Tools are only useful if they shorten the time between “things are changing” and “we’re acting”.
If you’re using Pasture.io, the value in drought is clarity:
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seeing trends in pasture supply and demand earlier
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stress-testing “what if” scenarios before you run out of options
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keeping decisions consistent across the team, season after season
Because in drought, resilience isn’t a number. It’s your ability to make good calls early, then stick to them.
- The Dedicated Team of Pasture.io, 2025-10-28