Beyond the interplay of land, investment and migration over time in central Mali, this book tells the story of a special attachment to the place and people of one scholar’s foundational fieldwork experience, Dlonguebougou (DBG) – which the author visited over 35 years. Its pages intertwine technical topics with personal reasons for writing, aiming to: 1) capture change over time; 2) capture the shift of values, technologies, climate, domestic structure and ‘arrangements’; 3) screen the global question ‘How to feed the world’ through agricultural policies, irrigated / rain fed patterns, social justice and value for money; 4) explore the conditions under which collective solutions could be found to common problems (control of land, water, trees, grazing resources); 5) shed light on connections; 6) pay tribute to a debt towards the villagers. Indeed, one can feel a deep commitment and anger between the lines about land grabbing and political chaos. The narrative mobilises manifold sources (archives, satellite images and rainfall measures, ground-level interviews); patterns drawn from ecology, landscape approach, agrarian studies and anthropology; skills (two foreign researchers settled for two years, three Malian research assistants, an initial team under the direction of Jeremy Swift); as well as institutional and social conditions (grants and institutions, availability of the Malian peasants). Apart from its incredibly rich content organised into eight chapters, including boxes, pictures and figures, the book can also be read as a historical object, produced within a political era that has just ended under our eyes.