After serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Nicaragua, he completed a PhD in environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His primary research involves smallholders, cooperatives, and food security in the context of market and climatic change in northern Nicaragua, examining the political ecology of conventional and alternative food systems and their impacts on rural development and change. His second line of research focuses on environmental and food justice in California, and his previous work has been published in Global Environmental Change, the Journal of Peasant Studies, Ecology and Society, and World Development.