Soil, timber, and minerals have shaped the South inpeculiar ways and continue to stand in a precarious limbo between potential and exploitation. Not only has profit-oriented development devoured the South's natural resources, it has also produced our own home-grown, land-hungry barons. The byproducts of this process are sharecropper and entrepreneur, clea rcut forests and ravaged mountains, the cotton plantation and agribusiness. The gas shortage and oil profits, our electric bills and strip-mined coal, skyrocketing food prices—all accent the critical position of land-based enterprises in our contemporary society. This double issue of Southern Exposure explores this foundation of southern culture.