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Show TO SUCCEED IN DRY FARMING Farmer Cannot Prosper With Grain Alone Live Stock Must Be Made the Basis of Production. Dean E. A. Burnett of the University Univer-sity of Nebraska says dry farming cannot can-not prosper in the great plains area as a grain farming system. The risk on grain is too great in a dry season Live stock must be the basis of production. pro-duction. It is true that grazing lands do not produce as much revenue or profit per acre as good crops of grain, but neither do they entull such heavy losses in bad years. A large amount of water can be stored when it falls In anything but light showers. At North Platte water has been stored as deep as fifteen feet in good years and from four to six feet In drier years. The season of 19.10 was, however, how-ever, very unfavorable to storing water wa-ter and only thirteen bushels, of wheat were harvested from land which had previously grown from thirty to forty-six forty-six bushels. No grain at all was harvested from land that was cropped in 1910. It is likely that the best re suits will be obtained by keeping three-fourths of the land in grass and devoting the balance to forage crops. The farming unit must probably be large but that does uot mean that it should contain much plow land. The homesteader as a rule is not prepared to take advantage of the best scientific knowledge In the management man-agement of his land. Deep plowing and summer fallowing land take horse power, frequently far in excess of that available to the homesteader The silo and the modern dairy cow are frequently beyond his reach, and for this reason again we should discount dis-count the largest possibilities of these areas when we seek to determine their suitability for the newcomer of limited means. The drier areas of the country which are suitable for farming will always have their limitations. limi-tations. They will have their bad seasons and their seasons of abundant abund-ant production, but the failures in unfavorable un-favorable seasons may be greatly reduced re-duced by the application of scientific methods and the best systems of management. man-agement. I 1 |