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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> >There is plenty of water in the desert, just not enough to the millions of
> people and millions of acres of crop land. 

Yes, my comment would have been better stated to say there is no water in the 
desert for the current misuse of the desert.

Many places have limiting factors.  Here (in non-drought times) it's 
levelness.  Agriculture has to be on the relatively rare glacial valleys and 
shoulders 
of hills and mountains.  My place is high up toward the Eastern Continential 
Divide (which is three miles away by road or 2/3rd mile away line of sight.  
The mountains are steep and the soil on them is shallow.  On my own farm, the 
arable land is mainly one shoulder half way up the ridge.  The rest of the 
flat 
land, the bottom land near the creeks, is a skree of alluvial stones with a 
light coating of soil.  It is ideal for tough grasses and so it is in hay 
fields and pasture.

There is some sort of mysterious draw of water several feet underground and 
near the base of ridge (cold side) that extends part of the way under the 
field 
we use for grain and potatoes.  Apparently even during the Death Valley 
weather we had midsummer, the corn and potatoe roots found their way to it 
and we 
had marvelous crops of those things.  Beans would hardly grow there and the 
squashes not at all.

Farming the edge of a receding seasonal lake would be the max!  I've always 
held that we can reincarnate in any direction in time.   Here the 
pre-Cherokee 
people did as the Egyptians and waited for the Holston River to recede and 
planted corn, beans, and squash in the silt.  That's one of the reasons 
artifacts 
from that period are a bit rare.  Alas, it's the same here as everywhere.  
The South Holston Lake obliterated all traces of some of the best farmland in 
Tennessee.

James