Frans Schryer obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at McGill University. He has been teaching in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Guelph since 1974. He has held part-time teaching posts at Atkinson College (York University) and at the Centre for Rural Development Studies of the Colegio de Postgraduados at Chapingo (Mexico). He also spent four months in 1988 as a visiting researcher at the Centre for Research and Documentation on Latin America (CEDLA) in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and was a post-doctoral fellow at the Centre for Agrarian Studies at Yale University in 1994-1995.

Using a Canadian case study, this book demonstrates that Dutch immigrant farmers have a global competitive advantage. It also deals with the implications, both beneficial and harmful, of positive stereotyping, in this case the reputation of the Dutch as successful farmers. Farming in a Global Economy consists of three parts. The first provides an overview of farming and migration in the Netherlands and Ontario. Part two deals with Dutch farmers in Ontario from a historical and a sociological perspective, telling the story of postwar farm immigrants, much of it in their own words. The last part covers the Dutch presence in, and impact on, Ontario agriculture.