The opportunity of agriculture to use, during the last three to five decades, abundant and cheap sources of fossil-fuel energy, has enabled farmers to enjoy an extraordinary growth of output in developed countries and in some sectors of the Third World. Unfortunately this technical revolution has not had wholly beneficial effects: pushed to its extreme it is detrimental to the environment, creates little new employment, and can even increase unemployment. Moreover, it is by no means always adapted to the needs of the hundreds of millions of poor farmers and landless labourers in the Third World, and henceforth the emerging energycrisis will surely question the wisdom of pursuing this agricultural technology.