Drought is a recurrent and often devastating threat to the welfare of countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) where three-quarters of the arable land has less than 400 mm of annual rainfall, and the natural grazings, which support a majority of the 290 million ruminant livestock,...

World population was about 2.5 billion in 1950; by 1988 it had doubled. Despite this unprecedented population explosion, global food supply kept pace with the additional demand for food. A technological revolution after World War II in the agriculture of the industrialized countries initially made...