This book is indebted to a lifetime’s worth of colleagues and friends who have shared ideas and information and offered support. No one does this sort of thing alone, at least I don’t.
Beyond that, though, there are specific contributions that need to be acknowledged here. First, my thinking about agriculture was greatly helped by the John S. Knight fellowship program, which supported me for a year at Stanford University. The reading, thinking, and research I was able to do there in 1994–95 steered me to my conclusion that agriculture is our time’s biggest environmental story, and I’ve been working on it ever since.
Of particular help was a chance encounter there with Rosamond Naylor, now a fellow at Stanford’s Center for Environment and Policy. Roz, a valued friend ever since, has been a continuous source of information, challenge, inspiration, and support. In particular, she was the link to the McKnight Foundation, which supported my research and travel in the developing world, work that produced my earlier book Food’s Frontier. That, in turn, led to a similar project with the Rockefeller Foundation. The support from both foundations was crucial to gathering the detail and rounding out the general direction of these ideas.
The Center for Environment and Policy also sponsored my trip to the Yaqui Valley of Mexico, reported herein. I’m indebted to Roz for that, as well as to Pamela Matson and Walter Falcon for sharing their research and ideas.
My editor, Rebecca Saletan, had an enormous role in shaping this book, especially in helping me rework some wildly disparate ideas into a more coherent flow.
My largest debt, though, on this and all other projects, is owed to Tracy Stone-Manning, my wife. It simply would not be possible without her.