Although high insolation and precipitation regimes offer the prospect of high biological production in the tropics in comparison to other climatic zones, a variety of factors both physical and cultural mitigate against its realization. Of particular importance among these are poor and edaphic soil conditions, impoverishment of lands by intensive use over successive generations, inadequate knowledge o f plant and animal species especially trees for manipulation by human societies, and inadequacy of technology in the cultural repertoire of human societies to optimise land use and landscape integration. Nevertheless, knowledge about soils, trees and agro-ecological interactions is several millenia old having emerged quite independently in several tropical civilisations.