I read your review of "Out of Poverty" and am afraid that we are mistaken in believing that the good things we can do to help smallholders improve their lot really does amount to an escape from poverty. Unfortunately, it usually does not. The improvement of the conditions of the very poorest people by means of intensifying agriculture on very small holdings (in this case, usually a couple of acres) by means, for example, of better crops, treadle pumps, and drips sytems, does not, and cannot ever, bring the expanding population of people depending on these tiny holdings "out of poverty". Do the calculations: at the end of the day, the 9 remaining members of the family Polak cites as his key example are earning exactly $1.06 dollars a day. Although their lives have improved, they are still living in extreme poverty, dollar-a-day poor, and, after having more kids on that land, will be even poorer. The only one who actually got out of poverty was the man who left the land to work in the Middle East and was sending money back to his folks in Nepal. Intensification of production on smallholdings can only get people out of poverty if it quickly leads them (if possible, all of them) to actually leave the land and get work that will provide a decent living. This is the real dilemma that so many of us working with very small farmers must face. We can help in the near term to improve their condition some (albeit they will still be horribly poor), but with the next generation of children, and more subdivision of the land, their poverty will only increase. The fear I have is that this is really "forever poor" not "out of poverty, quickly, and permanently." Again, do the numbers. I am afraid the book needs another title.