The Government of Beans is about the rough edges of environmental regulation, where tenuous state power and blunt governmental instruments encounter ecological destruction and social injustice. At the turn of the twenty-first century, Paraguay was undergoing dramatic economic, political, and environmental change due to a boom in the global demand for soybeans. Although the country's massive new soy monocrop brought wealth, it also brought deforestation, biodiversity loss, rising inequality, and violence. Kregg Hetherington traces well-meaning attempts by bureaucrats and activists to regulate the destructive force of monocrops that resulted in the discovery that the tools of modern government are at best inadequate to deal with the complex harms of modern agriculture and at worst exacerbate them. The book simultaneously tells a local story of people, plants, and government; a regional story of the rise and fall of Latin America's new left; and a story of the Anthropocene writ large, about the long-term, paradoxical consequences of destroying ecosystems in the name of human welfare.

"“The Government of Beans is an exhilarating read. Kregg Hetherington offers a brilliant theorization of agripolitics built up from the ground up through close observation of how dreams, schemes, laws and a host of small things (beans, trucks, measuring sticks, hedges, insects, traffic jams) transform lives and create new worlds. Anyone tempted by the idea that governing the Anthropocene means finding the right policy, or the right technology, or even the right kind of state should read this book.”" - Land’s End: Capitalist Relations on an Indigenous Frontier

"“Stimulating, thought-provoking, and beautifully written, The Government of Beans explores what may be politically possible in the face of the overwhelming power of agribusiness and an ineffective and frequently corrupt government. This important and creative book brings histories, dreams, hopes, horrors, ambivalences, and practices to light.”" - After Method: Mess in Social Science Research

"“This well-written and important book is simultaneously a political and economic history of Paraguay, particularly its eastern part, and a depiction of a short historical period of radical politics on the part of the state.”" - Anthropology Book Forum

"“Hetherington’s book The Government of Beans offers a riveting (yes, riveting) account of the expansion of agroindustry and soy production in [Paraguay].... [His] book offers a particularly timely cautionary tale about the possibilities and limits of government....”" - Public Books

"“The Government of Beans offers a cautionary tale about the risks of using the regulatory instruments of the state to limit the violence of the state.... [It] offer[s] a refined interdisciplinary lens to study the intricate workings of soy and power in South America.”" - AAG Review of Books

"“Recent state-society research in rural Argentina has produced important works on the politics of the GM soy boom.... Profoundly ethnographic and conceptually sophisticated, The Government of Beans is an excellent contribution to this literature from a Paraguayan perspective. This fine study deserves a wide interdisciplinary readership.”" - Journal of Peasant Studies