OCR Text |
Show WHAT CAN BE DONE BY DRY FARMING. In his address to the Dry Farming Congress at Chicago. O. W. Bryant, of the department of agrlculturo. located lo-cated at tho experimental station in Wyoming, said: "In certain districts of the semi-arid semi-arid portion of the United States o-called o-called dry land farming has been nob ably successful during the last few years. This has probably been due to tho introduction of new drought resistant re-sistant plants, scientific tillage of tho soil, and rainfall above the normal. "Of the drought-resistant plants probably Durum wheat has been most successful and has made the greatest showing in the shortest length of time. It withstands the dry weather exceptionally well and has found a suitable home west of the 99th meridian. meri-dian. In 1906 20,000.000 bushels was exported to Europe, while In 1907, the total yield In the United Statea was 45.000,000 bu?hels. This was practically practi-cally all grown in the dry farming belt and covered about three million acres of land. "All advocates of dry land farming will advise conservation of moisture In the soil. This Is, no doubt, the most important factor entering into scientific scien-tific dry.land farming. Some teachers show us one way to prepare the soil for the retention of moisture, while others discuss methods slightly different, dif-ferent, but they all come to the same conclusion, viz. that a blanket of fine soil mulch must cover the ground to prevent excessive evaporation. "By taking Miles City, Mont; Cheyenne, Chey-enne, Wyo.; (North Platte, Neb.; Dodge City, Kas., and Amarlllo, Texas, as , representative points in the semi-arid semi-arid belt, we find, by consulting the weather bureau records, that during tho past five years the total rainfall has been from six Inches to two feet above tho normal in tho dry farmed district. "Having studied the conditions under un-der which many homesteads on our seml-arld plains were at one tlmo abandoned and realizing that this enterprise en-terprise was again assuming broad dimensions, this office saw fit, about three years ago, to establish three stations sta-tions in Wyoming and Colorado, where small areas would be irrigated and a few crops and trees grown, should the season at any tlmo prove too dry for the growth of the general farm crops. In order to show the value of a littlo water in connection with, dry farming we, out of necessity, established extensive ex-tensive farms at Cheyenne and Newcastle, New-castle, Wyo., and at Eads. Colo. Here we are attempting, on quite a large scale, dry farming experiments according ac-cording to the latest scientific methods. meth-ods. At Cheyenne tho yields In 190S were as follows: On summer fallowed land: Potatoes, 109 bushels per aero: barley, 22 bushels per acre, weighing 62 pounds per bushel, and peas, 7 bushels per acre. Tho hall thrashed out about one-half of the peas and tho potatoes were so badly beaten by it that a great many of them did not mature. ma-ture. Wo had prospects of raising 140 bushels per aero before the hail storm passed over the farm. On continually cropped land we produced 93 bushels of potatoes per acre, 12 12 bushels of beardless barley per acre, and 10 ton of sugar beets per acre. The beets contained about 17 per cent sugar, bui were rather low in purity. The dry farmed beets did not yield as well as the Irrigated beets, but were superior in sugar content and purity. Brome and Slenlcr wheat grasses did very well, but alfalfa was not so encouraging." |