Elsewhere in Yemen, we had seen tiny water irrigation ditches under country roads expertly targeted with precision airstrikes, so we knew the weapons the coalition was using could be incredibly accurate.
This terrain is a soldier's nightmare: orchards and fields parcelled into the tiniest plots by irrigation canals in which the only way to get around is on foot, chasing the ghosts of an enemy who almost never shows himself.
Because of the huge size of the rivers in the East and the small amount of water required for Eastern irrigation, only a tiny fraction of the water in Eastern rivers would be needed for farming.
African farmers work tiny plots without the benefit of fertilizers, irrigation or pesticides.
An analysis by the corps said that without White River water, there was no way to save enough underground water to continue irrigation at anything but a tiny fraction of current levels.
But in response to strained water supplies, some farmers have made the shift to much more efficient underground irrigation or precision micro-sprinkler and drip irrigation systems that deposit tiny amounts of water directly above the roots of crops.
The most gigantic of them all is the Central Valley Project, a vast system of dams, pipes and channels that supplies irrigation water to the farmers of the central valley at a tiny fraction of its cost.
In a totally different way, that is what these photographs do - set off a tiny, confusing explosion of recognition and non-recognition; Elton John having a colonic irrigation, the Duke of Edinburgh looking at a naked lovely, Tony looking down Cherie's bikini.
A continuum of societies may be constructed, ranging from tiny, simple bands of hunter-gatherers in poor environments to large, dense populations of irrigation agriculturalists that is, from the entirely nomadic to the fully sedentary.
They use a tiny hand-held, two-wheeled, diesel-powered tractor and a petrol generator provides vital irrigation water from their borehole (this part of East Anglia has a lower rainfall than Jerusalem) but when they get planning permission some modest solar panels will charge the caravan batteries powering their electric fences.
