OCR Text |
Show Soil Conservation Practices Help County Farmer A confirmed advocate of the values received from land leveling level-ing practices and a cooperator in the Iron County Soil Conservation district is George C Crawford, a farmer in the Escalante valley vrpst xft Cedar City. Crawford is in Work Group No. 9 of the Soil Conservation Service Ser-vice of Cedar City. He has his (arm, consisting of 80 acres of irrigated cropland, under agree-rnent agree-rnent with the County Soil Conservation Con-servation district In the fall of 1943 he leveled, with a tractor and carryall, 33 acres of this cropland. This land presented a somewhat perplexing perplex-ing problem to Mr. Crawford be- fore leveling .operations were started, in that the undulations on the ground necessitated his Irrigating in a diagonal furrow which varied the length of his irrigation runs. This land was leveled at a cost of $1,443.75 or $41.25 per acre. In the spring of 1949 he em-rloyed em-rloyed the use of a land plane to finish the ground before the planting of potatoes. These potatoes po-tatoes were planted In rows straight with the world and so that equal lengths of runs for Irrigation were possible. During the course of the growing season, as Mr. Crawford stated, "tremendous "tremen-dous saving in water, labor and time were made because the land had been leveled. I can now irrigate these 33 acres in the time it ordinarily takes me to irrigate 23 acres of my land which is not yet leveled, and with the same head of water, loo." This represents an increase of between 23 and 30 per cent in efficiency of time of irrigation and a decrease of from 23 to 30 Ier cent in me amount oi water applied. At harvest time the field run (or this acreage was between 250 and 300 sacks of potatoes per acre grading 90 to 95 No. 1 potatoes and bakers. He will Cross approximately $700 per acre from this field this year. When asked as to his plans for (uture conservation operations, Mr. Crawford stated: "I Intend to keep on leveling my ground until I have it all in A-l shape." Considering the high cost of pump well water and labor, he can well afford to make such a statement as these cuts In costs can mean only one thing greater great-er profit for the farmer. |