Michigan's approach to sustainability does not conflict with its efforts to reindustrialize state agriculture. As currently applied, agricultural sustainability remains a one-dimensional concept tightly focused on the condition of production resources and the larger physical environment. The social and political dimensions of sustainability, by contrast, are conspicuously absent. Using Michigan's ‘livestock initiative’ as a case in point, it is argued that this conceptualization conforms to and reinforces the reindustrialization of agriculture and the existing structure of power within the industry.