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For farmers, crop loss can be significant, as grain laid in the sun to dry and then threshed by stomping animals can blow away or become contaminated by those animals, dust, or insects. Later, when taking the grain to market, rutted, sometimes muddy roads make vehicle transportation difficult. Farmers tend to walk, carrying only what they can haul by hand.

Guyana, in the northeastern corner of South America, hosts some of the world’s last remaining virgin tropical rainforests. There, in the upper Potaro Basin of western Guyana near Mount Ayanganna, Professor Cathie Aime and her colleagues hunt for undiscovered fungi.

One of the nation’s leading agricultural economists, Hurt knows exactly what to look for in the dense block of data—specifically, which numbers will move the market up or down. For hundreds of farm families, a swing of a few cents in the price of a bushel of corn or soybeans can mean the difference between putting money away for a child’s education and keeping food on the table. The line between success and subsistence can be painfully thin.