Thorne and Peterson wrote in the preface of their works that more than half of the world's population depends on the food produced on irrigated land for food supply. According to the author's approximate estimation (see Table 2 of this book for the data), in the history of thousands of years, human beings have cultivated 106.36 million hectares of semi desert and desert land¹. Academician Л. И. Prasolov calculated according to the world soil map and the world agricultural map of И. Ф. Makarov (see the World Atlas of the Soviet Union), and pointed out that the total non irrigated and irrigated agricultural land in the world was about 804million hectares. Among them, the productivity of irrigated land, which accounts for 13% of agricultural land, is equivalent to the sum of the remaining 87% of non irrigated farmland. These figures prove the great significance of irrigation measures in the world economy. Obviously, irrigation is particularly effective in arid, semi desert or desert areas with a huge area (about 3.5-4 billion hectares). According to the calculation of academician Л. И. Prasolov, 70million hectares of cultivated agricultural land are distributed in the chestnut soil belt; In addition, only using modern agricultural technology, another 286million hectares of chestnut soil can be reclaimed here. Irrigation of these lands (356million hectares) alone can bring about a huge increase in agricultural production for mankind. According to the data of Ⅺ. И. Prasolov, it is relatively easy to expand the irrigation area in desert areas by at least 113million hectares. It can be seen that the earth has a huge and relatively easy to obtain land reserve, which can double the expansion of irrigated agriculture. If we add at least four times the possibility of increasing cultivated land in other wetter soil zones that require little irrigation (according to Л. И. Prasolov), then the absurd nonsense of American "scholars" such as William Vogt about the lack of living land for human beings (and the resulting brutal claims such as forced population reduction) will become completely obvious. In terms of its nature, agricultural development is also spontaneous under the conditions of capitalist economy. Therefore, its individual success is often accompanied by the scrapping of millions of hectares of reclaimed land due to the loss of production capacity, which is due to the erosion and blowing erosion of previously fertile soil and the swamping and salinization of previously irrigated areas on the land that has lost the impact of forest cover protection. Karl Marx wrote: "the conclusion is: if we let culture develop spontaneously instead of consciously guiding it, we will be left with a desert..."¹the principle of consciously guiding culture, especially farming culture, is completely strange to capitalist society. In this regard, the "achievements" of the richest capitalist country - the United States in the field of irrigation agriculture are very representative. According to the data provided by the author (see Table 3), the United States had about 7.677 million hectares (rounded) of irrigated land in 1919. By 1939, that is, 20 years later, the United States could only increase the irrigated land area to 8.468 million hectares, that is to say, the irrigated area had only increased by 791000 hectares. At the same time, all irrigated land in the United States has suffered from secondary salinization to varying degrees, especially in the western states (California, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado). In addition, the characteristics of irrigated agriculture in the country are that tenant farmers are extremely lagging behind in reclaiming land with irrigation conditions. For example, В. А. Kovda wrote²: "according to the statistics of the United States, it is known that only 40-50% of the land can be reclaimed 10-20 years after the completion of the new irrigation system. " Therefore, under the capitalist economic system, land fertility is exhausted; There is no prerequisite for the planned transformation of natural conditions in arid, semi desert and desert areas. To realize the grand plan of transforming nature, the country needs the socialist system: to fundamentally transform nature, we must take socialism as the foundation and fundamentally transform social life as the premise. The Soviet Union inherited only 3.973 million hectares of irrigated land from Tsar Russia; After 20 years, the Soviet Union has owned more than 6million hectares of irrigated land³. That is to say, in the same period of time, the Soviet Union increased the irrigation area by more than 2million hectares, while as mentioned earlier, the United States increased only 791000 hectares. According to the data in Table 2 of this book, the expansion plan of irrigation area in the United States in the next few years is only 2million hectares. At the same time, in order to create the material basis of the Communist society, the planned socialist economy is committed to transforming nature so that the results of agricultural labor do not depend on the occasional fluctuations of the weather. According to the great Stalin land irrigation and water supply plan, the Soviet Union is bringing the following areas into the scope of irrigation and water supply in an unprecedented short period of time (5-6 years): Due to the construction of the Volga River Hydropower Station (gubishev and Stalingrad hydropower stations), in the lowlands along the Caspian Sea and the Volga River Basin, for irrigation -2.5-3million hectares, for water supply and with selective irrigation -12million hectares; Based on the Dun river resources and the Volga Dun river canal, in Rostov and Stalingrad, it is used for irrigation -750000 hectares, and for water supply -2million hectares; Due to the construction of the kahovka hydropower station on the Dnieper River and the canals of southern Ukraine and Northern Crimea, in southern Ukraine and Northern Crimea, it is used for irrigation -1.5 million hectares, and for water supply -1.7 million hectares; Based on the construction of the Turkmen Grand Canal, in karakalpak Soviet Socialist Autonomous Republic and Western Turkmenistan, it is used for irrigation -1.3 million hectares, for water supply and with selective irrigation -7million hectares; Based on the utilization of surface (local) runoff, 575000 hectares will be irrigated in the central black soil belt. As a result, the new irrigation area will exceed 7million hectares, and the water supply area with selective irrigation will reach 22.7 million hectares, a total of about 30million hectares. This is the huge scale of water conservancy and irrigation project construction in China. What needs to be added to this is the large amount of work in the transition from the original irrigation land to the new irrigation system in China. The consolidation and leveling of fields are under way. Millions of hectares of irrigation channels and water collection and drainage networks are being transformed, hundreds of thousands of trees are being transplanted, and new forest belts for protecting fields are being built. The result is to free up a large area of land for irrigation and obtain additional irrigation water reserves. All these will create conditions for fundamentally improving the fertility of irrigated land. With this in mind, irrigation experts may be interested in a wide range of information about the current situation of irrigation agricultural technology and Agronomic Technology in capitalist countries, especially the United States. In addition, the information about the quality evaluation of irrigation water and the methods adopted by the United States to improve irrigation water (gypsum, etc.) is also worth paying attention to. Information on the use of mineral fertilizers with irrigation water is also interesting. When reading this book, it should be noted that every soil and plant life factor in the book is not investigated in connection with each other (as we all know, this is the characteristic of agricultural bioscience in the Soviet Union), but separately. В. Р. Williams found and expounded the law that all plant life factors are equivalent and irreplaceable. Only by comprehensively acting on the growth environment of cultivated plants, can the influence of any "restrictive" factors be eliminated and the continuous improvement of crop yield be realized. Investigating the role of individual factors in isolation will inevitably lead to the discovery of "restrictive" factors, and lead to the pseudo law of "subsequent input productivity decline" or the performance of "soil fertility decline law". This element can also be found in the books of the authors Thorne and Peterson, which is particularly evident in Chapter 10. The author of this book is very close to explaining the role of perennial grasses in improving the fertility of irrigated soil (creating aggregate structure, accumulating organic matter in the soil, plant nutrients, etc.), but there is no example of fully implementing grassland rotation in the United States, let alone establishing grassland farming system under irrigation or even non irrigation conditions. The individual comments we made on a series of issues can be found in the footnotes. There are some deletions in the translation, involving the purchase and sale of irrigated agricultural land, the rate of return and other issues, which are of no significance to Soviet readers. The values (weight, area, volume, etc.) expressed in the customary U.S. units of measurement (acres, pounds, feet, inches, etc.) in the original book have been converted to metric units, with few exceptions; US units are retained in some charts. The unit of measure conversion table is given in the appendix