Food Systems in an Unequal World: Pesticides, Vegetables, and Agrarian Capitalism in Costa Rica

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments Writing is inevitably a social endeavor—not just because it is communication but also because the author is supported by a large network of people. My largest debt is to the farmers of Northern Cartago and the Ujarrás Valley. Their interest and hospitality was truly remarkable, and I remain grateful and humbled by their generosity. I am also very thankful to the other people in the agrifood system—especially export firm managers and employees, produce buyers, and agrochemical salespeople— who were willing to talk to me. A number of farmers who were especially interested in my study became my guides in their communities as well as good friends: Salomón Montenegro in Buenos Aires de Pacayas, Crisanto Ramírez in Cot, Marcos Sanabria in San Martín de Santa Rosa, Reinaldo Sánchez in Cipreses, and Ignacio Segura in Calle Naranjo de El Yas. Estoy muy agradecido a ustedes por su ayuda, su tiempo, y su entusiasmo. No tengo palabras para agradecerles. Two families provided me with a home away from home in Costa Rica, for which I am extremely thankful: the Warn family in San Antonio de Desamparados and the Sánchez family of Cipreses. I also thank the Sanabria family of San Martín de Santa Rosa for their hospitality on so many occasions. I owe a large debt to my faculty mentors while I was in graduate school—Professors Karl Zimmerer, Matthew Turner, Jamie Peck, Jane Collins, and Bradford Barham—as well as to other influential professors in my education, including Jess Gilbert, Bob Reed, Dick Walker, Michael Watts, Ted Hamilton, Lisa Naughton, Doug Jackson-Smith, and the late Fred Buttel and Bill Freudenburg. As exemplary scholars, their knowledge and advice improved my endeavor immeasurably. Chris Duvall, Dan Mensher, Mara Goldman, Dawn Biehler, Eric Carter, Eric Compas, the University of Wisconsin–Madison Global Studies dissertators’ group, Stefanie Hufnagl-Eichiner, Jennifer Blesh, Rob Young, Steven Wolf, Laurie x Acknowledgments Drinkwater, Colleen Hiner, Raoul Liévanos, Christie McCullen, Margaret MacSems, Jess Daniel, numerous anonymous reviewers, and journal editors Paul Robbins and Adam Tickell provided important comments and critiques of various pieces of the project at different stages. I am very grateful for the helpful suggestions of the readers of the full manuscript: three anonymous reviewers, Colleen Hiner, Jennifer Blesh, Jess Daniel, and my 2010 political ecology graduate seminar students. I am fortunate that many organizations deemed this work worth funding . The Cultural and Political Ecology Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers and the Latin American, Caribbean, and Iberian Studies Program (LACIS) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison funded my initial field research in 2000. Funding for my 2003–2004 fieldwork was provided by the U.S. Department of State’s Fulbright IIE Student Fellowship and by the MacArthur Foundation Global Studies Fellowship from the Global Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin –Madison. I also thank the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation for the Academic Year Fellowship and LACIS and the U.S. Department of Education for the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship that supported my graduate course work, research, and proposal writing that led to this project. The research presented here would not have been possible without the support of these organizations. Library and logistical support for this project involved a very large number of helpful people. The geography library staff at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, especially Tom Tews and Richard Swartz, deserve special thanks. In Costa Rica, I wish to thank the many librarians at Biblioteca Nacional, Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza (CATIE), and the other university libraries for help accessing materials, and I also wish to thank the staff of the ADICO community association’s retail outlet for their assistance with my peculiar project of documenting pesticide labels. I am very thankful to the many people at the Instituto Nacional de Aprendizaje’s organic agriculture school, Unidad Tecnológica en Agricultura Orgánica, who allowed for and assisted me in establishing the experimental plots, even though data from them did not make it directly into the book. At the U.S. Food and Drug Administration , I am thankful to Carolyn Makovi for answering my questions about the application of Environmental Protection Agency regulations Acknowledgments xi in practice. Most important, I thank Allyson Carter at the University of Arizona Press for believing in the book. She as the Press’s staff—Scott De Herrera, Amanda...