Unabated population growth, projected to reach 8 billion by 2020, compounds these problems. About 86% of the projected population growth will take place in developing countries. Currently, more than one billion people inhabit the dry areas of the world. The six most economically disadvantaged states in the region are Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mauritania, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. GNP for more than 510 million people is less than 2 dollars a day per capita, and some 271 million live on one dollar a day.

        Dr El-Beltagy did not underestimate the challenge to research institutions such as ICARDA. If per capita consumption of all grains remained constant at 1995 levels to the year 2020, the population projections showed a total aggregate grain consumption of about 323 million tonnes in 29 CWANA countries. The expected total grain production by 2020 is about 247 million tonnes with 2% annual production growth rate.
        Without Turkey and Kazakstan, the 27-country CWANA grain gap in 1995 was about 54 million tonnes. This deficit could easily reach 114 million tonnes by 2020, worth US$ 14.8 billion at a grain price of $130/tonne.
ICARDA research is directed to improving yield and crop production efficiency in a variety of ways. Research on supplemental irrigation demonstrates that reducing the irrigation by 50% of the full irrigation requirement causes a yield loss of only 10%. Water saved can be used to irrigate additional areas that would otherwise remain unirrigated and less productive. With this strategy Syrian farmers participating in ICARDA trials have increased total wheat output by an average of 38%.
        A multidisciplinary approach allows ICARDA to use both conventional and modern technologies. A three-year project on using remote sensing and geographic information system, or GIS, has identified areas of water-harvesting potential in Syria. Similar techniques are used in the Marsa Matrouh Resource Management Project in Egypt to identify sites for water harvesting.

griculture is the engine driving the economic growth of a country and has a key role in poverty alleviation, Prof. Dr Adel El-Beltagy, ICARDA Director General, told visitors to the annual ICARDA Presentation Day at Tel Hadya.
        He warned that human activity continues to create 'new' deserts at the same time as expanding populations increase the demand for more food from the water-scarce areas of Central and West Asia and North Africa. Dr El-Beltagy underlined the role that ICARDA could play in defeating desertification, poverty and malnutrition. "We have a strong conviction that agriculture can play a key role in poverty alleviation," he added.
        Dr El-Beltagy pointed out over 840 million people already go hungry and two billion are malnourished in today's world. Although just 70 square meters is the minimum area of arable land required to feed one person, even a medium-rate increase in population growth will make land scarcity a reality for about four billion people by the year 2050.
        Good arable land is lost to desertification through wind and water erosion, overgrazing, unsustainable farming practices that damage soil health--such as salinization and depletion of soil nutrients--and urbanization. The world loses over 6 million hectares of land per year to desertification. These deserts in more than 100 countries differ from the 'natural' deserts in being a result of human activity, and they can be controlled if the causes are recognized early enough.
        ICARDA contributes to the control of desertification and overgrazing, biodiversity conservation, and developing new crop varieties tolerant to drought and heat. There is great potential for collaboration between ICARDA and international organizations such as JIRCAS of Japan in these areas, particularly in genetic transformation in ICARDA mandate crops--barley, lentil, faba bean and forage legumes on a global level and regionally for bread and durum wheats and chickpea--using the genes for drought and heat tolerance.
        In spite of its scarcity, water continues to be misused in the region, said Dr El-Beltagy. As a result, the water table is falling, and aquifers are being depleted to exhaustion. "We must pay increased attention to water conservation to avoid any further worsening of this situation," he added.

      A digital agroecological atlas has been developed for Syria, and a land suitability atlas is also being developed for Morocco, in collaboration with Moroccan scientists, to help researchers and policy makers develop appropriate strategies for drought mitigation in Morocco.
        ICARDA is now heavily involved in a new partnership with the Central Asia and the Caucasus (CAC) region, comprising Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia.
        The region has 255 million hectares of rangelands, but the total number of small ruminants has dropped from 60 million in 1990 to 28 million in 1998 because of feed shortages. ICARDA has developed technologies for Central Asia, but these need to be fine-tuned to meet the specific requirements of the region. In this connection the Center is implementing a new project on crop-livestock integration in Central Asia, with funding from IFAD.