I had the pleasure of sitting down with C. Peter Timmer and Michael Lipton in early April for short interviews based on their provocative and well-received lectures at Tufts University, where my institute awarded them the 2012 Leontief Prizes for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought. Timmer offers an interesting defense of food reserves as necessary to the functioning of international markets. Lipton’s talk on “Income from Work” through smallholder development in Africa provided the backdrop to an interview on the centrality of smallholders to early development even in the age of global markets. See the short interviews below, and for more: read a summary of the event; read the lectures by Timmer and Lipton; read more about the Global Development and Environment Institute’s Leontief Prize, including past winners.