I want to tell you a little bit about how this book with my mother actually came about, and then read from my long list of bitter complaints about what's wrong with U.S. agriculture, particularly in Iowa where industrialization is at its most extreme. It's important to see how environmental degrad ation, water pollution, soil degradation and other problems that we are seeing both within our state, in the Gulf of Mexico and other places around the world, tie into our loss of bi ological diversity. We often separate our natural resource degradation from biological diversity or species loss, and I believe they are two parts of the same set of issues.