Dry-Farming : A System of Agriculture for Countries under a Low RainfallWidtsoe, John Andreas
Science
Dry-Farming : A System of Agriculture for Countries under a Low Rainfall
Widtsoe, John Andreas
Dry farming
The curious thing about the development of dry-farming in Utah,
California, Washington, and the Great Plains is that these four
sections appear to have originated dry-farming independently of each
other. True, there was considerable communication from 1849 onward
between Utah and California, and there is a possibility that some of
the many Utah settlers who located in California brought with them
accounts of the methods of dry-farming as practiced in Utah. This,
however, cannot be authenticated. It is very unlikely that the
farmers of Washington learned dry-farming from their California or
Utah neighbors, for until 1880 communication between Washington and
the colonies in California and Utah was very difficult, though, of
course, there was always the possibility of accounts of agricultural
methods being carried from place to place by the moving emigrants.
It is fairly certain that the Great Plains area did not draw upon
the far West for dry-farm methods. The climatic conditions are
considerably different and the Great Plains people always considered
themselves as living in a very humid country as compared with the
states of the far West. It may be concluded, therefore, that there
were four independent pioneers in dry-farming in United States.
Moreover, hundreds, probably thousands, of individual farmers over
the semiarid region have practiced dry-farming thirty to fifty years
with methods by themselves.
Although these different dry-farm sections were developed
independently, yet the methods which they have finally adopted are
practically identical and include deep plowing, unless the subsoil
is very lifeless; fall plowing; the planting of fall grain wherever
fall plowing is possible; and clean summer fallowing. About 1895 the
word began to pass from mouth to mouth that probably nearly all the
lands in the great arid and semiarid sections of the United States
could be made to produce profitable crops without irrigation. At
first it was merely a whisper; then it was talked aloud, and before
long became the great topic of conversation among the thousands who
love the West and wish for its development. Soon it became a
National subject of discussion. Immediately after the close of the
nineteenth century the new awakening had been accomplished and
dry-farming was moving onward to conquer the waste places of the
earth.
H. W. Campbell
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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