Farmers in the northern plains of the United States say they are facing a crisis as serious as the droughts and depression of the 1930s. Crops have been hit by droughts, floods, pests and disease, at the same time as grain prices have collapsed. The U.S. government has set aside $1 billion in emergency aid for the region, but there are fears that this may be too little and too late.

Farmers who envisaged a whole lifetime in agriculture are selling land and farming equipment, often at a fraction of the prices they were expecting. Only the largest commercial farming operations have a hope of weathering the crisis, with smaller farmers being forced out of business, and many are still likely to face debts even after selling.

There are fears that a whole generation will be turned away from farming, in a region which was once among the most fertile on earth: "In 10 years we are not going to have any farmlands because the young ones will be gone, and we'll just have one vast wasteland out there," said one farmer. Such anxieties about the future have led to counseling sessions being set up to deal with the depression, the stress-related diseases, and the talk of suicide among the usually stoical farming folk.

"This is just as bad as the 1930s depression" said one farmer, recalling a time when the combination of drought and the worldwide economic depression saw farmers leaving the land en masse.

VINH LAM, Vietnam -- At midday, Vinh Lam looks like a ghost town, the only movement a dust devil swirling in the distance. This, like many villages across central Vietnam, is a place under siege. But it's not the devastation of the Vietnam War this time--it's a relentless two-faced enemy that can't be fought face to face.

For the second long stretch this year, drought has set in. And this time, it has been accompanied by an outbreak of dengue fever as mosquitoes breed in the stagnant ponds that many rivers have become. The national Agriculture Department estimates 2.5 million people in 14 provinces are short of water, with 345,000 acres of rice paddies affected. That follows a drought earlier in the year that caused an estimated $385 million in damage to crops nationwide.

Much of central Vietnam has had little or no rain for two months, even as the north has been plagued by floods spawned by heavy rains upstream in China. Quang Tri province is suffering what officials say is the worst drought in 90 years and has reported 10,200 dengue cases, most of them in the last three months.

All 99 reservoirs are dry after failing to get enough rain in May to reach more than half capacity. Rainfall so far this year is only about 10 percent of the annual average.

Colorless, odorless, tasteless, and calorie free, water is vital to all life on earth. Each of the six billion people on earth needs to consume, in liquids and food, about two and a half quarts of water every day to keep healthy. No water, no life.

Fortunately, there is plenty of water. When photographed from outer space, our beautiful blue planet looks as though it should be called Water, not Earth. Indeed, if the world's water evenly covered the surface of the planet, it would form a global ocean 1.5 miles deep. All of the earth's land surfaces could fit into the Pacific Ocean, with room to spare.

Of course, most of the earth's water is in the seas, and seawater is salty. A mere 3 percent of the world's water is fresh. Almost all of that fresh water--about 99 percent of it--is locked up in glaciers and ice caps or is deep underground. Only 1 percent is readily accessible to humankind.

One percent does not sound like much. But according to the magazine People & the Planet: "Even this [1 percent], if evenly distributed around the world and rationally used, would be enough to sustain twice or three times the world's current population." Of course, it's not always evenly distributed.

Mary, who lives in the United States, begins her day with a shower, brushes her teeth with the water running, flushes the toilet, and then washes her hands. Even before sitting down to breakfast she may use enough water to fill the average bathtub. By the end of the day, Mary, like many others who live in the States, has used over 100 gallons of water, enough to fill a bathtub two-and-a-half-times.

For Dede, who lives in West Africa, it's another story. She gets up long before dawn, dresses, balances a large basin on her head, and walks five miles to the nearest river. There she bathes, fills the basin with water, and then returns home. This daily routine takes about four hours. For the next hour, she filters the water to remove parasites and then divides it into three containers--one for drinking, one for household use, and another for her evening bath. Any washing of clothes must be done at the river.

Dede's situation is hardly unique. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the total time spent each year by multitudes of women and children fetching and carrying water from distant, often polluted, sources amounts to over ten million years!

So while there is plenty of fresh water worldwide, it is not evenly distributed. Scientists reckon, for example, that while Asia has 36 percent of the water filling the world's lakes and rivers, that continent is home to 60 percent of the world's people.

In contrast, the Amazon River contains 15 percent of the world's river water, but only 0.4 percent of the world's people live close enough to make use of it. Uneven distribution likewise applies to rainfall. Some regions of the earth are almost permanently dry; others, though not always dry, suffer from periods of drought.

Water shortages threaten the economies and health of 80 countries, warns the World Bank. And already, 40 percent of the earth's inhabitants--more than two billion people--have no access to clean water or sanitation.

Sandra Postel, when vice president of research at the Worldwatch Institute, wrote: "It remains a grave moral shortcoming that 1.2 billion people cannot drink water without risking disease or death. The reason is not so much a scarcity of water or inadequate technologies as a lack of social and political commitment to meeting the basic needs of the poor. It would take an estimated $36 billion more per year, equal to roughly 4 percent of the world's military expenditures, to bring to all of humanity what most of us now take for granted--clean drinking water and a sanitary means of waste disposal."

Add to the problem of water shortages a related problem: pollution. The Bible speaks of "a river of water of life," but many rivers today are rivers of death (Revelation 22:1). According to one estimate, the amount of wastewater--domestic and industrial--that pours into the world's rivers every year amounts to 110 cubic miles.

The lack of clean, fresh water does kill, quite literally. For Dede and millions like her, there is little choice but to use water from streams and rivers, which are often little more than open sewers. Small wonder that, according to WHO, a child dies of a water-related disease every eight seconds!

In the developing world, according to WorldWatch magazine, 80 percent of all disease is spread by the consumption of unsafe water. Waterborne pathogens and pollution kill 25 million people every year.

The interrelated problems of water shortages, the demands of growing populations, and pollution leading to ill health are all factors that can lead to tension and conflict. Water, after all, is hardly a luxury. Said a politician in Spain who was grappling with a water crisis: "It's no longer an economic struggle, but a fight for survival."

As the demand for water spirals, such tensions will increase. The World Bank's vice president for Environmentally Sustainable Development predicts: "Many of the wars in this century were about oil, but wars of the next century will be over water."

The Egyptian government has warned that the high rate of population growth in the Arab world is pushing the region towards a water crisis--where even drinking water may be in short supply. The water resources minister, Mahmoud Abu Zeid, said that in thirty years' time, the supply available per person will have fallen by half.

The disease that caused the Irish famine of the 1840s is wasting potato crops worldwide in a resurgence especially harmful to developing nations where potatoes are an important food, researchers say. "If we were talking about humans, we would be talking about cancer. It's the most important agricultural disease in the world," said Wanda Collins, potato expert and a leader in an international effort to develop disease-resistant potatoes.

Modern-day versions of potato blight, the crop-killer that struck Ireland and Europe in the 1840s, were estimated to reduce global potato output by 15 percent. Found in every inhabited continent except Australia, the new, more aggressive strains were overwhelming potato varieties that were immune in the past. Potatoes, along with rice, wheat and corn (maize), are one of the four major food crops of the world.

Nearly half a billion people around the world face shortages of fresh water, and that number is expected to swell to 2.8 billion people by 2025 as the world population grows, AP cited a report from The Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health. Today, 31 countries, mostly in Africa and the Near East, are facing water stress or water scarcity. By 2025, population pressure will push another 17 countries, including India, onto the list. China, with a projected 2025 population of 1.5 billion, will not be far behind, said the report.

Although much of the world is trying to meet a growing demand for fresh water, the situation is worst in developing countries where some 95 percent of the 80 million people added to the globe each year are born. In addition, the competition among industrial, urban and agricultural uses for water is mounting there, the report said. Even in the United States, which has plenty of fresh water on a national basis, groundwater is being used at a rate 25 percent greater than its replenishment rate, said the report.

The report warned that regional conflicts over water could turn violent as shortages grow. In Africa, Central Asia, the Near East, and South America, some countries are already bickering over access to rivers and inland seas. Even within a country, competition can be fierce. For example, the water in China's Yellow River is under so much demand that the river has dried up before reaching the ocean. In 1996, when there was enough water, the government ordered farmers not to use it; a state-run oil field further downstream needed it to operate.