Field research in North American agricultural communities : products and profiles from the North American family

This book is based on a Field Research in an Agricultural Communities in Chiapas, Quebec, And Iowa.

It is both an Academic and a heartwarming study of Social and Human Factors.

The following book is a set of three interlocking personal memoirs, based on three interview trips into agricultural communities in North America.

We report our experience directly in the fashion of what might be called agricultural journalism.

The ideal reader for this book would be the old general reader, a literate armchair farmer, or an undergraduate student in one of the broad courses where our time gets learned - Ecology, Environment, International Relations, Agriculture and Technology, Rural Sociology, Technology and Social Transition.

While we write for such a learning but still unspecialized audience, are ourselves part of that audience, and allow ourselves many of the pleasures of journalism, we are aware of the perils surrounding the act of journalism.

As academics we are aware of the depths of history and cultural setting that underlie every experienced moment. Thus not only do we report the present, and try to retain its life, but we try to intimate the past, and through footnotes and asides to refer problems out into that past and its context, to keep before ourselves and our readers the dependence of the human present on all that has made it.

We are deeply grateful to the individuals whose generosity helped make this inquiry possible.

Foremost among these welcoming friends is Don Antonio Fernandez Torres, in Tapachula, Mexico, the owner of Asake plantation.

He it was who invited us to be his guests for a memorable visit in the winter of 1996, and who helped us to understand what a Mexican banana plantation is - and what Mexican hospitality is.

Immediately after Don Antonio, though we met him only late in the game, must come Claude Marchand, Conseiller en Gestion for the Bois Franc Region of Quebec.

He it was who planned out and gave coherence to our interviewing in Quebec Province.

Then come, but in no special order, the many farmers and farm related workers, in Chiapas, Iowa, and Quebec, who have informed us, told us about their lives and work, and made us realize what city slickers - and privileged middle-classers - we are. We have tended, by the nature our own circumstances, to address farmers of more than average wealth and success, but remain aware of what a large unvoiced constituency lay before us, the kinds of people Oscar Lewis once gave voice to in his Children of Sanchez.

The reference desk swat team, at Cornell College in Mt.

Vernon, Iowa, have proved to be indispensable, our sources of info and even brain power more often than I like to think.

Our wives, Julie and Jill, have baked the pies and kept the kitchen warm, while providing the necessary spurs and provocations.

For all this joy and pain we're fittingly grateful.