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Show DRY LAND AGRICULTURE DATA Bulletins Issued by Government Treating Treat-ing on Best Methods of Farming In Arid Regions. The United States department ot agriculture has for several years been accumulating data regarding dry land agriculture in the Great Plains, and In compliance with the urgent demand made by settlers, actual and prospective, prospec-tive, for information concerning the best methods of farming In that section, sec-tion, it has issued two bulletins giving giv-ing publicity to such facts and figures as have direct bearing on the subject, sub-ject, although it is not claimed that sufficient data have been accumulated to form a basis for final conclusions. The results announced are, however, how-ever, of sufficient importance to deserve de-serve careful consideration, and they throw strong light upon the controverted contro-verted questions of summer tillage, continuous cropping, and crop rotation, rota-tion, and show that in addition to actual rainfall the questions of evaporation evap-oration and run-off have much to do with the successful production of crops in those sectio- -. Accurate information in-formation regarding the precipitation in many sections of the west Is now available as the result of the extended operations of the United States weather weath-er bureau; many of the records are complete for years, and being of value to the prospective settler, have been computed in rainfall tables and have been included In the bulletins. The bulletins treat to a greater or less degree upon continuous cropping as compared with alternate cropping and summer' tillage, upon crop rotation rota-tion compared with continuous cropping, crop-ping, and the relative farm value of crops of wheat, oats, and barley as produced by the various rotations and by continuous cropping. The question as to the relative merit of disking the corn stubble for spring wheat and oats and summer tillage, and the relative rela-tive merits of fall and spring plowing receive considerable attention and are discussed in one or the other of the bulletins In connection with the distribution dis-tribution of rainfall, rapidity of evaporation, evap-oration, and the amount of moisture conserved by the different processes. Prospective settlers are apt to give very little attention to the climatic features other than the total rainfall. Ofttimen they do not even assure themselves that the figures given for a particular region represent the normal nor-mal rainfall and not simply the rainfall rain-fall of a single year. They ignore almost al-most completely the frequency of torrential tor-rential rains, the seasonal distribution distribu-tion of the rain, the loss of wat?r through wate.' run-off, the occurrence of hail, and the amount of evaporation. evapora-tion. ' These bulletins are intended fo bring the importance of such factors to the attention of the prospective " settlers in regions of limited rainfall. The bulletins also contain tables showing the normal rainfall for practically prac-tically every station in these regions where precipitation records are available, avail-able, the tables being supplemented by state maps showing at a glance the distribution of the ra'nfall in the state. |