ABSTRACT
The decade of the 1970s witnessed some dramatic changes in the world food economy. Between 1973 and 1975 a series of events sent United States (US) and world farm commodity prices soaring to spectacular heights, forcing a sharp rise in the real costs of food. In the past two years, many popular magazines have carried articles with the theme that the energy crisis of the 1970s will be replaced by an equivalent water crisis of the 1980s. The scientific literature on water supplies also confirms the dawning of a new era of "scarcity," especially in the arid regions of the West. Current water use exceeds average stream flows in most of the West's major watersheds, while groundwater is being depleted in many important basins. Agriculture now uses more than 85 percent of the West's total water supply, and therefore any reduction in the supply will have its greatest impact on this sector.
