Close-up of one of the farmers working at the Wadi Zabid experimental farm in the Lowlands region. He is carrying a 'grub' hoe. - - Assistance to One of the Sixth Least Developed Countries in the World. After centuries of isolation, seven years of civil war and a three-year drought, the Government of Yemen, with the help of the UN Development Programme and the UN/FAO World Food Programme, is struggling to raise the abysmally low level of life in the regions of the Highlands, the Midlands and the Lowlands. FAO experts are spearheading four broadly based Government/UNDP projects to increase agricultural production, land reclamation and forestry. The single limiting factor is shortage of water, and FAO gave priority to a survey of a 20,000 hectare area with the view to bringing parts of it under irrigation. The Highlands project surveyed farm systems and experiments and stressed extension services carried out by UN Volunteers, a group of young people from 13 different nations. The Lowlands project concentrated upon the possibility of crop improvements through the utilization of ground water.