Since 2003 Ovis 21 has certified Patagonian sheep ranches under holistic grazing, scaling to 400+ producers on 1.3 million hectares. Argentina's own agricultural institute (INTA), however, found no significant advantage over continuous grazing in a rigorous station-scale trial.
Founded in 2003 in Río Gallegos, Santa Cruz, Ovis 21 began working with sheep ranchers in Argentine Patagonia to restore grasslands degraded by decades of continuous, high-density grazing — a legacy of the region's 1990s desertification crisis.
Activities
At its peak the network covered 62 farms across roughly 1.3 million hectares and 325,000 sheep, shifting land to holistic, rotational grazing without added inputs. In 2019 the Savory Institute contracted Ovis 21 to administer its Ecological Outcome Verification (EOV) protocol worldwide, and the network's certification later fed into the multi-country 'Ruuts' regenerative-agriculture initiative, which by the mid-2020s reported over 400 enrolled producers across more than 1.3 million hectares of Latin American rangeland.
Results
Participating ranchers reported carrying-capacity increases of up to 25% on land shifted to holistic grazing. However, the most rigorous independent test of the method in the region complicates this claim: Argentina's national agricultural research institute (INTA) ran a station-scale comparison (2012–2016) of a 13,600-hectare holistically grazed block against an adjoining continuously grazed block. Published in Rangeland Ecology & Management (Oliva et al., 2021), the trial found forage standing crop was actually lower under holistic grazing (194 vs 244 kg dry matter per hectare), and that land-function and vegetation-cover changes were similar under both treatments and mostly not statistically significant, during a dry period in which wild guanaco grazing also affected the holistic block.
Conclusions
What is solid is the certification infrastructure itself: a transparent, 20-plus-year monitoring and verification framework now used across several countries that has genuinely driven wide voluntary adoption of reduced-input grazing management among Patagonian ranchers. What independent science has not yet established is whether that management reliably outperforms well-managed continuous grazing on the specific ecological outcomes — forage, carbon, soil — the certification is meant to verify.
Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k)
Time to results
Long (> 3 years) — Founded 2003; peaked at 62 farms/~1.3M ha/325,000 sheep; contracted by the Savory Institute in 2019 to run EOV globally; fed into the Ruuts initiative reporting 400+ producers across 1.3M+ ha by the mid-2020s.
Staffing & skills
Ovis 21 (Río Gallegos-based NGO/network administrator), Savory Institute (global EOV protocol owner; contracted Ovis 21 in 2019 to administer it worldwide), Participating Patagonian sheep ranchers
Conditions for success
Shift from continuous, high-density grazing to holistic, rotational grazing management
Transparent, long-running (20+ year) monitoring and verification framework (EOV)
Voluntary rancher participation without requiring added inputs
Common failure modes
INTA's station-scale, quasi-experimental comparison (2012-2016) found forage standing crop was lower under holistic grazing, and land-function/vegetation-cover changes were similar between treatments and mostly not statistically significant
Wild guanaco grazing confounded the holistic block during the dry study period
Carbon-credit claims tied to newer commercial spin-offs are not yet backed by published, verified measurements
Where it fits
Governance type
NGO-administered voluntary certification network, later licensed globally
Scale
multi-farm regional network, later multi-country
Income level
upper-middle-income (Argentina)
Do you run this practice?
Claim it —
verified implementers get a public contact pathway and can propose corrections.
Data sources
Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.
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