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Focuses on the Negev Desert in Israel. Description and history of the Negev; How the desert once sustained crops through irrigation; Methods of the ancient farmers; Question of whether runoff agriculture could be repeated without bringing in water by pipeline from outside the Negev; Experiments with two reconstructed farms; Outlook for large-scale desert runoff agriculture in the Negev and other arid regions.

This article presents information on the transforming landscape of American farms. From 1920 to 1950 the number of farms containing from ten to 260 acres dwindled from 5,500,000 to 4,100,000. The number of American farms of all sizes fell in that thirty-year interval by one million, from 6,400,000 to 5,400,000. The land yielded up by these disappearing enterprises has been, in the main, consolidated by the larger farms. The acreage held by farms 1,000 acres and over increased swiftly from 221,000,000 in 1920 to 495,000, 000 or 43 per cent of the farm acreage-by 1950. These giants comprise only 2.5 per cent of all farms, and as they increased their acreage they also increased the average quality of their lands.

The article discusses the problem of providing a growing world population with a subsistence food supply. Two books published in 1948, dealing with this problem, have already made a considerable impact on the thinking of people; and while some of the facts and conclusions of these writers may be controversial, nevertheless, the data and ideas presented should be given careful consideration by leaders in all countries and especially by teachers. In 1630, the population of the world was around 400,000,000; today it is over 1,000,000,000 and the rate of increase is now 1 percent per year. The United States, today, has some 460,000,000 acres of crop land, approximately 3.5 per person. Originally there were 560,000,000 acres. Russia has 3.5 acres per person; India has 1.3 acres; China has only half acre. This picture of heedless depletion of resources is repeated in every field: timber, grazing land, oil, minerals, water, wild life, fish. Intelligent, cooperative management of natural resources is the answer to the problem.