ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Constructing a book about a topic as complex and diffuse as our industrial food system has required a great deal of assistance, and I am obliged to a long list of people for their help. During the course of my research, I spoke to dozens of scientists, farmers, activists, and philosophers, from Maryland to Kansas to Hawaii. I also dug deeply into the published work of scores of scientists and journalists who have wrestled with these questions for years, and whose work has shaped my own thinking a great deal.

At the University of Delaware, I have been blessed for twenty years with smart and imaginative students, who have helped me work through a long list of entangled environmental questions. This project owes a special debt to my students in the program in Environmental Humanities, and especially to my research assistants, Kerry Snyder, Tanya Krapf, and Molly Gartland.

Also at Delaware, Blake Meyers opened his plant science laboratory to me and offered far more patience and guidance than any writer deserves. He has since moved on to the Danforth Center in St. Louis, where he joins Jim Carrington, Nigel Taylor, and Paul Anderson, who generously shared their work and expertise with me. Karla Roeber graciously helped organize my visit to the Danforth Center.

In Maryland, thanks to farmers Drew Norman, Joan Norman, Nancy Bentley, Greg Strella, Jennie Schmidt, and Hans Schmidt; and to Sheila Kincaide, Larry Bohlen, and Alfred Sommer, professor emeritus and former dean of the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins. In Baltimore, my dear friend Arnob Banerjee, MD, PhD, offered his deep expertise on genetics.

In Pennsylvania, thanks to Brian Snyder, head of the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture, and to farmer and entrepreneur Steve Groff.

In Kansas, thanks to Wes Jackson, Tim Crews, Lee DeHaan, and Pheonah Nabukalu. Their work at The Land Institute remains a beacon of environmental integrity.

In Hawaii, thanks to Dennis Gonsalves, Alberto Belmes, Richard Manshardt, Paul Achitoff, Craig Malina, Gary Hooser, Elif Beall, Jeri DiPietro, Fern Rosenstiel, Klayton Kubo, Dustin Barca, Gerry Herbert, Nancy Redfeather, Margaret Wille, Alika Atay, Gerry Ross, Janet Simpson, and Autumn Ness.

In New York, thanks to Steffen Schneider, Conrad Vispo and Claudia Knab-Vispo, and Craig Holdrege, whose work at Hawthorne Valley Farm, the Farmscape Ecology Program, and the Nature Institute, respectively, serves as the very model of enlightened land stewardship.

In Chicago, thanks to Naseem Jamnia, who proved an astute and scrupulous copy editor.

For their help with my understanding of plant genetics and the history of industrial agriculture, I am indebted to a long list of scientists and science writers, whose personal counsel or published work has helped clarify my own. These include especially Evaggelos Vallianatos, John Fagan, John Vandermeer, Marion Nestle, Alfredo Huerta, Bruce Blumberg, David Pimentel, Philip Landrigan, David Mortensen, Steven Druker, Michael Pollan, Nathanael Johnson, Aldo Leopold, Wendell Berry, Carey Gillam, Tom Philpott, Peter Pringle, Pamela Ronald, Richard Manning, Marie-Monique Robin, and Michael Hansen.

At Avery, thanks to Caroline Sutton, Brittney Ross, Brianna Flaherty, and especially Brooke Carey for helping me envision and shape such an unwieldy project. Copy editor Jennifer Eck polished the manuscript’s rough edges. And thanks, again and always, to my agent and old friend, Neil Olson.

At home, my deepest gratitude remains reserved for Katherine, Steedman, and Annalisa, who not only accompanied me on research trips to Hawaii and Kansas but also joined me for a 4,000-mile road trip across America’s amber waves of grain. Their love, support, and goodwill sustain me every day. They are my life’s greatest blessing.