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Show USE FOR DRY LAND Necessary to Develop Barren Plains and Conserve Resources. With Advantages of Modern American Ameri-can Machinery There Is No Reason Why Seml-Arld Por-tlonof Por-tlonof Country Cannot Be Utilized. By MANLET CHAMPLIN, South Dakota Dako-ta Agricultural College.) "There Is nothing new under the sun." Id the United States, in recent years there has been much valuable work done toward reclaiming or more properly toward opening for mixed farming purposes all that magnificent area of the plains that lies between the 100th meridian and the Rocky mountains. This territory includes the western half of the Dakotas, Nebraska, Ne-braska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, as well as the eastern part of Montana, Mon-tana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. Then, too, there are many fertile valleys and table lands of the Rocky mountain region that will lend themselves encouragingly to this system sys-tem of farmine. Anyone who lives along the lines of railroad that lead to the various registration regis-tration points and has seen train after aft-er train of seven to nine coaches filled with earnest homeseekers who are looking for a farm of their own in the newly opened reservations will not need to be told that there is a need for dry farming. The population of the entire world has been increasing by leaps and bounds during the past century since the improvement in medical and surgical science as well as the improved conditions In life have made it posible for a much higher high-er per cent, of the children born to reach maturity and old age. Europe has settled America, Australia, many Islands of the sea and much of Africa Afri-ca during this brief hundred years and still ihere are more than double the people there than were extant 100 years ago. It has become necessary then to find new means of support, to develop hitherto barren lands, and to conserve in every way the resources about us. Dry farming is one of these developments. While it is new in the United States, it has been practised for ages in certain parts of the world and much has been done in the way of developing drought resistant plants and in finding methods of tillage to hold the scanty moisture for the use of crops. As quoted at the beginning there is nothing new under the sun, and I wish to say at the outset that when the Algerians are cultivating the sand dunes of the Sahara desert, when the Arabs are raising abundant crops of dates and grapes and olives In their own rugged peninsula, when the Russians of the east are supplying supply-ing a large part of Europe with wheat and rye from their semi-arid steppes, when thousands of Americans are already al-ready at work upon their dry farms, that with the advantages of modern American machinery at our disposal there is no reason why the semi-arid portion of the great plains area cannot can-not be utilized as a mixed farming country. Moisture is the great need; moisture moist-ure conservation the great problem. In a large part of this territory sufficient rain falls every year to raise a crop if it can be saved from the sun and wind. In an equally large portion of the territory tt has been found profitable profit-able to fallow the land one year and thus save moisture for the crop of the following year. The rainfall to a very large extent comes in the form of local lo-cal showers. Some townships will be visted by abundant showers while their neighbors on each side may be parched. Apple trees do best at a distance of two rods each way, unless It Is a variety that tends to grow upward rather than outward. |