Project Background
The WildeBeef project is a landscape-scale regenerative farming venture focused on delivering community, biodiversity and carbon benefits through the adoption of intensive rotational cattle grazing (the ‘Method’) in East Africa.
The aim of the project is to encourage cattle farmers to join forces, remove internal fences, combine their animals into one large herd and graze the land in a more holistic, natural way. Each patch of land within the combined landholding is grazed intensively then left to recover, promoting both above-ground leaf growth and below-ground root development and restoring the soils. This will restore a savannah landscape with occasional trees and sparse bush, characterised by a lush ground flora, dominated by palatable grasses. Whilst a key driver of the project is to increase the quality and yield of beef production, and to promote sustainable and profitable land use, another primary objective is to increase carbon sequestration and storage and to enhance biodiversity. The project will harness blockchain technology to revolutionize how agricultural ventures are managed, guaranteeing fair pay, empowering every stakeholder and fostering trust in our sustainable practices.
Scope of Services
RSK Wilding is providing a role in quality assurance for this project. We have:
- investigated options for understanding and quantifying changes in ecosystem value that can be used to demonstrate tangible change in biodiversity through employing the Method;
- carried out a study quantifying the ecosystem value of a pilot site in Uganda, understanding what data should be collected and how it can inform an approach to assess ecosystem value;
- sought insights from experts at Makerere University on how monitoring data could be collected;
- summarised the applicability of the Ecosystem Condition Index method to the WildeBeef Project, and suggested a future monitoring protocol, using the results of the information-gathering and pilot study, to collect the necessary data to robustly quantify ecosystem value.
Impact
Quantifying changes in ecosystem value presents an opportunity for the WildeBeef project to scientifically demonstrate the uplift in biodiversity brought about by the implementation of the Method. We will play a key role as independent third party assurance for the project’s environmental claims.