Desert farming

[1] Today, the Imperial Valley in southern California, Australia, Saudi Arabia, and Israel are examples of modern desert agriculture.

Water reuse, desalination, and drip irrigation are all modern ways that regions and countries have expanded their agriculture despite being in an arid climate.

[3] German-Israeli researcher Michael Evenari has shown how novel techniques were developed, such as runoff rainwater collection and management systems, which harvested water from larger areas and directed it onto smaller plots.

[4] Other techniques included wadi terracing and flash-flood dams, and imaginative features used for collecting and directing runoff water.

[5] A massive rise in grape production in the northwestern Negev for the needs of the wine industry was documented for the early 6th century, by studying ancient trash mounds at the settlements of Shivta, Elusa and Nessana.

[6] These events likely resulted in almost a cessation of the international trade with luxury goods such as Gaza wine, grape production in the Negev settlements again giving way to subsistence farming, focused on barley and wheat.

[6] This seems to show that the wine industry of the semiarid region of the Negev could well be sustained over centuries through appropriate agricultural techniques, but that the grape monoculture was economically unsustainable in the long run.

American Indians in the Sonoran Desert and elsewhere relied both on irrigation and "Ak-Chin" farming—a type of farming that depended on "washes" (the seasonal flood plains by winter snows and summer rains).

The Ak-Chin people employed this natural form of irrigation by planting downslope from a wash, allowing floodwaters to slide over their crops.

Several hundred miles of canals fed crops of the area surrounding Phoenix, Tempe, Chandler and Mesa, Arizona.

Australia produces cattle, wheat, milk, wool, barley, poultry, lamb, sugar cane, fruits, nuts, and vegetables.