The U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE's team of experts is an impressive array of authorities ranging from farm management specialists, to state farm advisors, to agricultural economists, to the former Secretary of Agriculture.

CHRISTINE WOODSIDE is a freelance editor and writer whose articles have appeared in The New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, Backpacker, Yankee, Woman's Day, and Publishers Weekly. She is also the author of Energy Independence (Lyons Press). In 1987, she hiked the entire Appalachian Trail with her husband Nat Eddy.