She specializes in rural Mexico with almost three decades of research on Mexican sugarcane growers and the sugar sector. Her research focuses on the contentious relationships between neoliberal policies, privatization of sugar mills, market opening under NAFTA, and their impact on cane growers in western Mexico. In the wake of sugar mill closures, she expanded this research to include employment of women by transnational corporations that supplanted sugar cane with export fruit production and turned her attention to social movements that organized to create alternatives to the neoliberal agenda. She remains a strong advocate of social justice and supports efforts aimed at sustainable agriculture in the United States and abroad.