ABSTRACT
The world has always known famines. It has not always worried about surpluses. So many factors go into the world food production picture that the opportunities for well-intended "fixes" to go astray seems to far exceed the chances for success. The pessimistic view is that empirical data confirms the distribution of failure opportunities. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO, 1979) of the United Nations (UN) estimated that irrigated agriculture represents 13 percent of the global arable land but accounts for about 34 percent of the crop produced. Both percentages appear destined to increase (Jensen, 1980), with the latter likely to increase more as we learn to positively control more of the food production process.
