In the near future, global food supply chains have failed: people live on rations, and supplement their food by growing as much as they can on government-allotted plots of land. For most people, farming is controlled by a huge agricultural company that dictates what crops they plant and how they manage them.

At the heart of the story are two teenagers, Sam and Avril: Sam lives in town, where he and his family follow the rules of the Green Cultivation Corporation, and Avril lives in a beautiful hidden valley where her extended family practices sustainable agriculture. The collision of their different ways of thinking about how to farm and how to live drives this touching romance about sustainable agriculture, community versus insularity, and sharing rather than hoarding.