There is an increasing utilitarianism being used by some environmentalists. A holistic approach has been scrapped for an industrial one that isolates goals and targets solutions.  We might call this industrial environmentalism. This industrial environmentalism is concerned with solving particular problems rather than a wholesale lifestyle change toward living at nature’s pace. It is interested in conserving water, but not conserving farms. It is interested in stopping global warming, but it will sacrifice an ecologically significant river for a hydroelectric damn. 

This industrial environmentalism is convenient for the greening of corporations. A corporation can become “green” by picking any single problem, creating some solution to it, and going about destroying the ecosystem in every other aspect of their work. Monsanto has recently embarked on a strategy to create GMO corn, soybeans, and cotton that will yield twice as much as current seeds and will use 30 percent less water. This is a wonderful thing from the perspective of the industrial environmentalists. Less land could be used for growing more crops, and fewer water resources would be required for double the yield. 

Posted by Ragan Sutterfield on Jun 30, 2008 at 2:53 PM
Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

After several years of raising animals I have eventually begun to see things as an animal might see them. A field full of red clover no longer just looks like a pretty pasture full of little red flowers. It looks delicious—a field of protein-rich, soft-leafed, succulent legumes that will make an afternoon chewing cud a heavenly experience. And with this new eye for animal forage, I can hardly drive down the interstate without thinking "What a waste." Highway medians consistently contain some of the best forage I've seen. They are "grazed" in an almost perfect way that allows the grasses, legumes, and forbes to grow back strong before they are trimmed again, strengthening their root systems. If I were a sheep or a cow or a chicken, I would love to feast upon a highway median.

And its not just highway medians. There are nooks and crannies everywhere where animals could be raised and guerilla gardens planted. Most of the land is marginal, but if it has a solid covering of grass it could serve as an animal pasture. 

Posted by Ragan Sutterfield on Jun 24, 2008 at 4:34 PM
Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Returning is a hard thing to do, especially if on the second day of being back from a trip you get a large order of chicks delivered a week early. Tim and I hadn't built a new brooder yet, and we had to go into emergency mode when the chicks arrived, improvising with what we had in place and putting in an after-hours call to a friend to get some chick starter. Luckily, everything worked out and despite the surprise we were OK. The chicks are now happily running around in large bins in our barn (aka the back room of my apartment). 

The incredible thing about this incident is how smoothly everything went. We are in the middle of downtown Little Rock, and we actually got an emergency ration of chick feed from the first friend we called. And that friend wasn't the only one on our list. I had at least 10 more people who were likely candidates for an after-hours bag of chick feed. I find all of this hopeful—there are lots of people raising their own chickens in the middle of a city, and most of them are in their twenties and thirties. 

Posted by Ragan Sutterfield on Jun 19, 2008 at 11:57 AM
Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have always lived on the edge of worldviews. I have always been either the most liberal or conservative of my friends, the most anticorporate or the most probusiness, the farthest right or the farthest left. Living on this edge has helped me to see how arbitrary some of those lines are and yet how comfortable they can become. 

I have sometimes felt comfortable in my ideas, and I have let some of those ideas develop into ideologies—ideologies that have allowed me to talk to some people with ease and to others not at all.  I can talk to the supporter of one candidate, but sometimes lack the imagination or empathy to talk with the supporter of another candidate. I regret those times, and yet I am also torn by the alternative.

Posted by Ragan Sutterfield on Jun 2, 2008 at 3:27 PM
Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I got married last Sunday, and because I have been thinking about little more—both before and after the wedding—I can only write about marriage. But marriage is an appropriate subject, particularly because my wife, Jessica, and I met through the Arkansas Sustainability Network, and we made every attempt to make our wedding as green as possible. 

We wanted it to be a community affair and that is what it was. Friends helped in every step from organizing a contra dance after the wedding to gathering wildflowers from the green parking lot of Heifer International where Jessica works. Friends from the Sustainability Network made salads for us from locally grown ingredients; my mom made deviled eggs from locally raised chickens; and my farming partner, Tim, helped grill beef from my farm and shitake mushrooms from a farm just north of us. Dessert was simply strawberries picked the day before (nothing can beat them). In all, our food came from more than seven local farms.

Posted by Ragan Sutterfield on May 29, 2008 at 2:47 PM
Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)