"A creative interdisciplinary study on the peasant economy. Contains three sections: 1) a profitability analysis of the potato crop that traces the transition from consumer subsidies to 'liberalization,' with its current price distortions; 2) an analysis of the persistence of aparceria in peasant communities, a topic that has been taboo since the 1969 agrarian reform; and 3) a review of widely prevailing idea that the introduction of modern crops diminishes biological diversity"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 57.