A unique and compelling feature of my book is its use of interviews and archival documents to explore how people understand organic foods and farming in very different ways. The book opens by comparing speeches from the early 2000s by two organic sector leaders.The first speaker, a farmer named Elizabeth Henderson offers a “radical” vision of organic agriculture to a collection of farmers and food activists in gritty La Crosse, Wisconsin. She calls for an organic sector that is “democratic and participatory,” where production is organized around regional food systems, and where small farmers can stand up to agribusiness corporations.The second speaker, a business consultant named Joe Smillie, characterizes organic farming as “an agricultural methodology.” Speaking to an audience at an organic foods trade show in a high-tech California convention center, he calls for measures that would make it possible for all farmers to switch to organic production. Only a broad, market-oriented organic sector can stop what he describes as “the poisoning of the planet” by synthetic agricultural pesticides and fertilizers.The point is not that one of these speakers is right and the other one is wrong. The point is that they both offer heartfelt, compelling, but ultimately incompatible visions of what organic farming can and should be. The core chapters of the book analyze how advocates of organic agriculture have wrestled with these incompatible visions at pivotal points in the sector’s history. They also consider how relationships between these visions are playing out in different segments of the sector in the present day.A reader who opens the book to the first chapter, “Breaking Ground for a New Agriculture,” will learn about how the fragmented character of the early organic foods industry enabled these visions to coexist with a minimum of friction, at least until the emergence of a national market for organic products in the 1980s. The second chapter, “Stabilizing the Market, Dividing the Field,” shows how efforts to smooth the development of this market through federal organic regulations led to a series of disruptive conflicts, despite the intentions of nearly all the participants involved.A reader who opens the book at a later point may find herself taken into the world of organic foods co-op stores in the chapter “Caught in the Middle.” Co-ops trace their histories to the counterculture of the 1970s, when they sought to put ideas about social and cultural transformation into everyday practice. But today, co-ops find themselves competing closely with savvy organic foods superstores like Whole Foods Market, and even with discount retailers who sell organic foods, like Wal-Mart.Co-op managers experience agonizing tensions between adherence to a transformative ethical vision and simple economic survival. Yet, they also describe ways in which their stores have managed to combine the warring gods of efficiency and social change. As they explain these strategies, co-op leaders and others in the book emerge as thoughtful and passionate individuals who struggle to act with integrity in a complex cultural and organizational environment.The story about the organic sector that I tell in this book is neither a triumph nor (as is the case with many other published accounts) a tragedy. It is a story of ongoing negotiations, of emerging patterns of conflict, of new approaches to compromise.This is a good thing. The tension between transformative and expansionary visions of organic agriculture has propelled creativity and innovation within the organic sector, as well as provoking members of the sector to think more deeply about the significance of their work than they otherwise might.However, one finding that emerged clearly in my research is that expansionary understandings of organic farming are becoming more influential, while transformative ones have retreated towards the sector’s margins. I document several reasons for this.The federal organic regulations that went into effect in 2002 emphasized the goal of market growth and employed rationalized definitions of organic farming that left little room for discussions of systemic change. The new generation of organic foods professionals, who often work for large food companies and possess mainstream business training, find expansionary understandings more intuitively acceptable. Some small-scale farmers have chosen to exit the organic sector and to create new ways of marketing their products that go “beyond organic.”There are real benefits to expanding the organic market in ways that convert increasing amounts of land to organic management. But there are also risks associated with the dominance of expansionary understandings. For one thing, temptations exist to alter organic farming and trade regulations in ways that would subordinate the best environmental practices to the goal of market growth. Additionally, processes of deliberation and compromise-building may be sidelined in a competitive and expanding market.In the final analysis, people in the organic sector face an ongoing challenge, albeit in new circumstances: how can they cultivate institutions and practices that enable different ways of understanding the organic project to coexist? It is around this puzzle that some of the most exciting innovations – from participatory guarantee certification programs to new animal welfare standards – are emerging.