Farmers, herders, and the practitioners of diversified economies are interesting to human behavioral ecologists because they encounter similar trade-offs of energy, time, and risk that characterized ancestral populations of humans. Studies of agriculture, herding, and mixed economies also examine choices about how much labor and other inputs to invest in order to increase yields and diminish variability, whether to consume, share, or sell products in markets, and how to manage resources through social institutions. This chapter reviews research and key studies on the five themes of risk, time, investment and intensification, markets, and institutions. The chapter discusses the tricky issue of commensurability, of comparatively evaluating dissimilar forms of value such as calories and cash, certainty and unpredictability, and immediacy and delay. The conclusion proposes avenues for future research, involving niche construction, embodied capital, cooperation and competition, culture, and applied evolutionary anthropology.
