This is a second edition of a book published in 1998. It has 14 chapters written and illustrated in a consistent style that is both straightforward and authoritative. The thread begins with a background on the needs of human populations, consequent environmental issues, ecological perspectives and the origin of crops. It moves through climatic factors, mainly solar radiation and temperature, and their effects on crops, then on to constraints by soil, water and plant nutrients. Two chapters dealing with in vogue topics – anthropogenic global warming and biofuels – serve well as case studies through which to illustrate the principles. This reviewer would have welcomed more in a similar vein on nitrogen and phosphorus in crop production, and in particular more on nitrogen fixation and its increasing contribution to agroecosystems in some parts of the world. A word in qualification is needed, however. Despite the title, the treatment is largely based on the methods of crop physiology and physics, and in this respect the book is excellent as an introductory text to plant production. But while ecological principles are outlined in one of the early chapters, the emphasis subsequently is on monocultures. So there is little on functional biodiversity in agro-ecosystems, the division of resource among, say, soil microorganisms, weeds and food webs, on the multiple outputs or ‘ecosystem services’ expected from croplands, or on the integrated management needed to provide such outputs – all topics that are now well within the mainstream of agro-ecological research.