Salinity and drainage are challenges of irrigated agriculture in semiarid and arid climates that transcend history and geography. Three thousand years before Christ, the Mesopotamia culture emerged and prospered, aided by domestication of crops and animals and employment of a water conveyance and irrigation network. When the civilization crumbled millennia later, it was broad-spectrum socio-economical turmoil, poor governance, and institutional weakness that led to societal decline and eventually resulted in dilapidated water delivery infrastructure, rising shallow groundwater tables, salinization of soils, and crop failures. When and wherever irrigated agriculture has ascended in history, the populace sooner or later has been forced to cope with the threat of soil salinization. Examples today include Egypt, Jordan, China, Peru, India, Pakistan, Australia, and California. While water movement, salt buildup in soils, and plant injuries are molecular-scale processes governed by the natural laws, over time, it has been failures in public policy, institutions, and management, which have culminated in wholesale crises in irrigated agriculture