NM Grazing Workshop Focuses on Rancher Innovation
On October 10th 2026, HMI partnered with the JX Ranch on a one-day workshop “Honor the Land, Restore the Range.” The workshop started with JX Ranch owner Tom Sidwell explaining how he does his grazing planning and how that has improved land resilience and productivity. The 20 participants (who manage over 84,000 acres) were fully engaged as they listened to Tom talk about his management of the ranch over the last 20+ years.
The workshop was facilitated by HMI Education Director and HMI Certified Educator Ann Adams. The JX Ranch won the 2023 Leopold Award for their conservation ranching efforts.
Participants came from many places throughout eastern and southern NM, Texas, and Arizona, as well as a group of students from a rangeland management class at the Southwest Indian Polytechnic Institute (SIPI). Of particular interest to participants was how Tom chose to develop his land plan over the years, creating 30 paddocks out of the 5 paddocks that had been developed when he purchased the 7,000-acre ranch near Tucumcari, New Mexico.
Part of the morning was a trip out to one of the paddocks where Tom has a monitoring transect and where species diversity had moved from predominantly blue grama when he arrived to 4 additional grass species including tobosa, bristlegrass, sand dropseed, and Arizona cottontop. Additionally, bare ground in some pastures had been as much as 70%. Now the average is 30% bare ground. Participants had a chance to learn about and experience the Bullseye Monitoring method and quickly became involved in a lively discussion of how to look for signs of effective water cycle, mineral cycle, energy flow, and improved diversity of the biological community—the 4 ecosystem processes.
After lunch Mimi Sidwell, Tom’s wife, joined the discussion to talk about their grassfed beef business model and how it has evolved over the years and how they have developed a profitable business model. They have also been involved in agritourism as an enterprise but are scaling back on that as they want more flexibility in their schedule.
Over the years the Sidwells have doubled their carrying capacity (even allowing for higher stocking in drought years), so they have been able to increase their profitability by carrying more animals on the same land base bringing their cost of production down. With years like this one with a high cattle market they can reinvest more into the ranch to increase its resilience and productivity.
Ann Adams then led a forage assessment exercise using the STAC method to help people develop their eye on determining the number of animal days per acre (ADA) a paddock has so that they can then determine graze periods and carrying capacity for the ranch. This exercise then led to discussions of how to determine recovery periods and what recovery looks like on the land.
Participant evaluations showed that 88% of the group thought the workshop was excellent and 12% thought it was good. 100% would recommend this workshop to others. 100% said they expanded their network and 94% noted they intended to change management practices as a result of their participation in this workshop. Many reported that learning the STAC method was the most useful thing they learned at the event to help them with their forage inventory and determining carrying capacity.
Thanks to the Thornburg Foundation for support of this program as well as to our collaborators: Indian Nations Conservation Alliance, Indigenous Grazing Lands Coalition, and the JX Ranch.
