Weeds and Water in World Food Production

Abstract

We have come together to discuss the way in which weeds and water work together to influence yields in agriculture. In the small allotment of time available to us this morning a review of basic knowledge about this relationship would be so general that it could help no one. I believe it would be more appropriate, and more helpful for a group so large, if I tell you of some of the hard realities which come to bear on food production across the world because of this relationship of weeds with moisture. These stories will have to do with such practical matters as the expansion of the world's most important crop, and the difference between good and bad crops on the two sides of the same river under identical climatic conditions in Middle Asia.