It’s easy to forget that once upon a time, all agriculture was organic and grassfed. Saving seeds, composting, fertilizing diverse crops with manure, not tilling, and raising livestock entirely on grass was the norm over a century ago. Yet today, these are just the approaches we associate with sustainable food production. We all know what […]
Courtney White
Posted inWotr
Ranchers can fight global climate change, one acre at a time
If you are worried about climate change, these are not the best of times. The decision by the U.S. Senate to postpone climate legislation and the failure of last year’s Copenhagen summit to produce tangible progress on limiting greenhouse gases means that Business-As-Usual still rules the world. The carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere has […]
Posted inWotr
Aldo Leopold might call it the new agrarianism
One hundred years ago, a great American conservationist began a job in the Southwest as a ranger with the U.S. Forest Service. Over the course of an influential career, Aldo Leopold advocated a variety of conservation methods, including wilderness protection, sustainable agriculture, wildlife research, ecological restoration, environmental education, land health, erosion control and watershed management. […]
Posted inWotr
Believe it or not: Ranching has something to teach us
As the 21st century unfolds, it’s becoming clear that we need more family farmers and ranchers on the land, not fewer. We need them not only for the food they provide, but also for a lesson in how to live on the land. It’s an ironic turn of events. For decades, livestock grazing in the […]
Posted inMay 2, 2005: The Great Energy Divide
Buyouts doom private lands
Thank you for the recent story and comments on grazing buyouts. We were especially taken by Executive Director Paul Larmer’s evocative description of the seasonality of grazing in the Paonia area, with its blend of low-elevation private lands, where cows have their calves, and its high-elevation public lands, where cows summer. Paul’s delightful soliloquy of […]
Posted inWotr
One West
Looking back over the past century, the greatest shortcoming of the conservation movement in the American West has been its near-total failure to devise a strategy for privately owned land in the region. By any yardstick — watershed acres, animal species, ecological processes — conservation success on private land has been small. While many environmentalists […]
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
Grazing story ignored radical center
Dear HCN, I would like to register a firm objection to the recent cover story, “Healing the Gila” (HCN, 10/22/01: Healing the Gila). I was distressed by its old-fashioned, polemical, “Good Guy vs. Bad Guy” tone, which seems out of character with recent cover stories in HCN. You’ve done a very good job recently covering […]