This investigation into two of the world's most pressing needs (biodiversity conservation and agricultural development in the Third World) challenges current opinion by showing that the world-renowned diversity of crops in the Andes may not be as hopelessly endangered as was thought. The book uses the history of small-scale farming by Indians in Peru, including contemporary practices and attitudes, to shed light on prospects for the future. During prolonged fieldwork among Peru's Quechua peasants and villagers in the mountains near Cuzco, Zimmerer found convincing evidence that much of the region's biodiversity is being skillfully conserved on a de facto basis, as has been true during centuries of tumultuous agrarian transitions. Diversity occurs unevenly, however, because of the inability of poorer Quechua farmers to plant the same variety as their well-off neighbours and because land-use pressures differ in different locations. Social, political and economic upheavals have accentuated the uneveness, and Zimmerer's geographical findings are all the more important as a result. Diversity is indeed at serious risk, but not necessarily for the same reasons that have been cited by others.