This book is one of a series of studies by the Rand Corporation and Resources for the Future, Inc., and sponsored by the Ford Foundation (of the U.S.A.), on economic and political problems and prospects of the Middle East. Part I is a very brief review of the area's natural resources as they affect agriculture. Two pages are devoted to climate and four to water resources whilst six pages on soils are supported by a good 30 page study and 2 inserted maps on soils of the Middle East. Part II, 85 pp., is a useful factual statement on the present organisation of agriculture in the constituent countries, and has chapters on agricultural inputs, manpower, land tenure, crops, livestock, marketing, community infra-structure etc. Part III, 52 pp. on the development potential of the area, is realistically and mainly concerned with the economic and social problems of realising a potential which the authors estimate as 2.6 times the present output. However, both Part II and III start with technical chapters on land and water use and allied agronomic problems and should interest climatologists, hydrologists and general agriculturists.
The problems of irrigation agriculture, e.g. water supply, salinity and flushing out of salts, drainage, and related soil problems are emphasised and so are the water-soil interactions in the rainfed farming which occupies more than half the cultivated land in the region. But surprisingly there is little mention of, and no statistical treatment of the unreliability of the precipitation and river flow of this region where uncertainty about water availability so deeply influences agricultural psychology and hence decision making and farming systems. There is, however, one illustration showing the correlation between annual precipitation and wheat yield in Jordan and an appendix by K. Fuhriman of Utah, U.S.A. which gives, for "runs" of 20 years or more, water flows in each month of the year for the main rivers. This data might usefully have been analysed statistically, e.g. to give confidence limits for river irrigation water supply. A final appendix brings together, from normally inaccessible sources, a variety of agricultural statistics.
The volume is well produced, has enough illustrations, plentiful tables, many references often to unusual sources, author and subject indexes, and conversion tables. It achieves what it sets out to do, even if the input requirements, which are largely based on U.S. analogues, verge on the extravagant. The authors conclude that, at the technical level, production could be doubled or trebled in 2 or 3 decades by applying current knowledge in "packages" (e.g. of better genotypes, fertiliser, weed control, proper dating and spacing of seeding) suitable to each locality. But this objective will be achieved, if at all, only "in the combination of these elements in a favourable political and institutional environment, not in the discovery of one magic approach that will quickly bring major change to the region". A. N. DUCKHAM (Reading)