Match.Graze matches livestock with land to reduce wildfire fuel

Cattle graze dry grass to reduce wildfire fuel. Photo by Roger Praplan.

UCCE Sonoma County is excited to announce a new tool to match grazers with landowners: Match.Graze. The free online service that allows users to find their perfect grazing match, is now live.

“It's like Tinder for livestock,” said Stephanie Larson, UCCE livestock and range management advisor and director for Sonoma County, who developed Match.Graze.

Match.Graze is an interactive database of California contract grazers and landowners. Property owners create profiles with information about land they have available for grazing while livestock owners enter specifics about their herds for hire. That information will be associated with a marker pinned on a map of California. Users will be able to search the markers to find a contract grazer or available acreage to suit their vegetation management needs. 

“Every property is different and requires thoughtful consideration of how it should best be grazed,” Larson said. “Put Match.Graze to work and let's prevent catastrophic fire while helping landowners and livestock owners.”

Larson would like your help getting the word out to livestock owners and landowners across the state who may want to participate.

To get started, they should go to https://matchgraze.com and create a pin.

“We recommend doing this on a computer rather than a phone,” said Karen Giovannini, UCCE agriculture ombudsman for Sonoma County.

To make it easy for you to share Match.Graze with your landowners and grazers, Giovannini has assembled a sample email message, videos that explain the program, sample social media posts, photos of grazing animals and more at http://ucanr.edu/MGpromo.

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