Zapotec farmers within the northern sierra of Oaxaca, Mexico, are hugely profitable in offering their households with ample, nutritious foodstuff in an ecologically sustainable model, even though the premises that consultant their agricultural practices will be thought of inaccurate via the criteria of so much agronomists and botanists within the usa and Europe. during this publication, Roberto González convincingly argues that during truth Zapotec agricultural and nutritional theories and practices represent a sound neighborhood technological know-how, which has had a reciprocally worthy dating with eu and usa farming and nutrients platforms because the 16th century.González bases his research upon direct player statement within the farms and fields of a Zapotec village. through the use of the ethnographic fieldwork procedure, he's capable of describe and examine the wealthy meanings that campesino households connect to their plants, lands, and animals. González additionally experiences the historical past of maize, sugarcane, and occasional cultivation within the Zapotec sector to teach how campesino farmers have intelligently and scientifically tailored their farming practices to neighborhood stipulations over the process centuries. through atmosphere his ethnographic examine of the Talea de Castro group inside a ancient global platforms standpoint, he additionally skillfully weighs the neighborhood impression of nationwide and international currents starting from Spanish colonialism to the 1910 Mexican Revolution to NAFTA. whilst, he indicates how, on the flip of the twenty-first century, the sustainable practices of "traditional" subsistence agriculture are commencing to exchange the failed, unsustainable ideas of recent business farming in a few components of the us and Europe.