ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses aspects of Production-Marketing-Consumption (PMC) systems for botanochemicals from arid lands with particular emphasis on those that differ greatly from botanochemical systems in the midwestern US family farm setting. Production of botanochemicals necessarily involves growing, harvesting and processing whole-plant produce and thus is naturally adapted to the "multi-use" concept, i.e. to the integrated production of primary and secondary botanochemicals, protein feeds, fibers and solid biomass fuels or feedstocks. Major constraints in the Crop Production Subsystem of arid land botanochemical PMC systems are due to limited water supplies, highly variable land quality, shortages of highly trained labor, and lack of technology to deal with the complex problems associated with arid-land crop production PMC systems. Interest in arid lands will continue to be directed mainly toward production of high-value and high-energy-content materials; for example, Guayule rubber, jojoba liquid wax and euphorbia latex-oils.
