Despite extreme conditions agriculture and related land use have always played a leading role in drylands economies and societies. However, recurrent droughts and migration from rural areas have decreased the contribution of agriculture to the GDP of these areas and has accelerated many of the major changes (e.g. urbanisation and industrialisation) currently underway in many drylands areas. The development of alternative economic options remain however strictly dependant on the resource base, on the level of socio-economic development and on the capacity of the countries to create and maintain a diversified economic environment. The "poor drylands" are often the countries with strongest dependence on the primary production sector and at the same time are those facing the most serious threats in terms of sustainability of agriculture and land resource management.

Constrained by limited water and soil resources, dryland rural economies have always been affected by strong competition between agriculture and other land resources uses. Optimisation of these limited resources is a high priority and often a matter of survival for the local populations and stock. The physical constraints tend to discourage reliance on single sources of food, income and wealth. Many indigenous societies in Drylands areas have traditionally enhanced the multifunctional use of land resources: they have often adapted their production systems according to the availability and variability of the natural features, applying to some extent the concept of "carrying capacity".

An approach to agriculture and land use that is "multifunctional in character" can therefore be considered a traditional response to dryland management. Transhumance in the Maghreb, for example, is a traditional practice which regulates pressure on rangeland and enhances exchanges and trade between regions with different agro-climatic conditions and consequently favourable economic complementarity. Problems arise when increased pressure on land resources, often exacerbated in recent decades, disturbs the fragile balance, thereby jeopardising the natural capacity of the land to regenerate, leading to inevitable ecological, social and economic consequences.