Agriculture (also called farming or husbandry) is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi, and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the development of civilization. The study of agriculture is known as agricultural science. Agriculture generally speaking refers to human activities, although it is also observed in certain species of ant and termite.

The history of agriculture dates back thousands of years, and its development has been driven and defined by greatly different climates, cultures, and technologies. However, all farming generally relies on techniques to expand and maintain the lands suitable for raising domesticated species. For plants, this usually requires some form of irrigation, although there are methods of dryland farming; pastoral herding on rangeland is still the most common means of raising livestock. In the developed world, industrial agriculture based on large-scale monoculture has become the dominant system of modern farming, although there is growing support for sustainable agriculture (e.g. permaculture or organic agriculture).

Michael Pollan (born February 6, 1955)^{[citation needed]} is an American author, journalist, activist, and professor of journalism at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. A 2006 New York Times book review describes him as a "liberal foodie intellectual."

Pollan was born on Long Island, New York to author and financial consultant Stephen Pollan and columnist Corky Pollan. Pollan received a B.A. in English from Bennington College in 1977 and an M.A. in English from Columbia University in 1981.

In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Pollan describes four basic ways that human societies have obtained food: the current industrial system, the big organic operation, the local self-sufficient farm, and the hunter-gatherer. Pollan follows each of these processes—from a group of plants photosynthesizing calories through a series of intermediate stages, ultimately into a meal. Along the way, he suggests that there is a fundamental tension between the logic of nature and the logic of human industry, that the way we eat represents our most profound engagement with the natural world, and that industrial eating obscures crucially important ecological relationships and connections. On December 10, 2006 The New York Times named The Omnivore's Dilemma one of the five best nonfiction books of the year. On May 8, 2007, the James Beard Foundation named The Omnivore's Dilemma its 2007 winner for the best food writing. It was the book of focus for the University of Pennsylvania's Reading Project in 2007, and the book of choice for Washington State University's Common Reading Program in 2009-10. An excerpt of the book was published in Mother Jones.

Anna Lappé (born 1973) is a national bestselling author and public speaker, respected for her work on sustainability, food politics, globalization, and social change. Named one of TIME’s “Eco-Who’s Who,” Lappé has been featured in The New York Times, Gourmet, O-The Oprah Magazine, Domino, Food & Wine, Body+Soul, Natural Health, Utne, and Vibe.

Lappé is the daughter of activist Frances Moore Lappé. She holds an M.A. in Economic and Political Development from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and graduated with honors from Brown University. Lappé has worked and lived in South Africa, England, and France. She currently lives with her husband in Brooklyn, New York where she is at work on her third book.

From 2004 to 2006 she was a Food and Society Policy Fellow, a national program of the WK Kellogg Foundation.

With her mother, Anna Lappé is a founding principal of the Small Planet Institute, a collaborative network for research and popular education. Since 2002, Lappé and other Institute principals have published five books—two of which are national bestsellers—along with numerous articles, book chapters, and three mini-documentaries. The Lappés have participated in more than 400 public events, reaching more than 25,000 people, and appeared on numerous television and radio programs, traveled to more than a dozen countries for research, and contributed to boards of national and international initiatives.

Milton Friedman (July 31, 1912 – November 16, 2006) was an American economist, statistician, and author who taught at the University of Chicago for more than three decades. He was a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, and is known for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory, and the complexity of stabilization policy. As a leader of the Chicago school of economics, he influenced the research agenda of the economics profession. A survey of economists ranked Friedman as the second most popular economist of the twentieth century behind John Maynard Keynes, and The Economist described him as "the most influential economist of the second half of the 20th century…possibly of all of it."

Friedman's challenges to what he later called "naive Keynesian" (as opposed to New Keynesian) theory began with his 1950s reinterpretation of the consumption function, and he became the main advocate opposing activist Keynesian government policies. In the late 1960s he described his own approach (along with all of mainstream economics) as using "Keynesian language and apparatus" yet rejecting its "initial" conclusions. During the 1960s he promoted an alternative macroeconomic policy known as "monetarism". He theorized there existed a "natural" rate of unemployment, and argued that governments could increase employment above this rate (e.g., by increasing aggregate demand) only at the risk of causing inflation to accelerate. He argued that the Phillips curve was not stable and predicted what would come to be known as stagflation. Friedman argued that, given the existence of the Federal Reserve, a constant small expansion of the money supply was the only wise policy.

Mark I Shepard (born 1960) is a Vermont State Senator (R-Bennington) and unsuccessful candidate for the 2006 Republican nomination for Vermont's at-large United States House of Representatives seat.

Mark Shepard was born on September 12, 1960 in Windsor, Vermont and grew up in the neighboring town of Hartland. After graduating from Hartford High School in 1978, he went on to earn a Journeyman Electrician License (1982), a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering, University of Florida (1986), and a Master of Engineering in Electrical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (1994).

Shepard and his wife Rebecca have lived in Bennington, Vermont since 1994, and have four sons: Issac, Caleb, Zachary, and Samuel.

He is the owner and operator of an industrial control and test systems engineering business, which he founded in 1993.

In 2002, Shepard was elected to the Vermont Senate. He was reelected in 2004.

Shepard ran for the 2006 Republican nomination for Vermont's at-large United States House of Representatives seat. On September 12, 2006 he was defeated by Martha Rainville in the Republican primary.