Las Vegas daily optic. [volume] (Las Vegas, N.M.) 1880-1908, 1904-09-21

RESULTS OF
500 YEARS
La one District Government gets
Income of 5000, 600 from
Expenditure Of
$2O,OOO.00

Irrigation has been practiced in this
country little more than so years,
while in Italy it has been practiced
for more than 800 years. 1t is, there
fore, natural that Italian experience
should be able to show much of value
to American irrigators. For the pur-
pose of determining what could be
learned in that country which could
be applied to our own problems, DR..
Eiwood Mead, Chief Of Irrigation and
Drainage Investigations, of the Of
flee of Experiment Stations, e. S.
Department of Agriculture, spent the
summer Of 1903 in the valley of the
Po. A partial report of DR.. Mead's
observations has just been issued by
the department of agriculture as Bull
letin 144 of the Office Experiment
Stations. No attempt was made TO
make this an exhaustive monograph
upon irrigation in northern Italy, but
the study was made solely from the
standpoint of obtaining suggestions
for American irrigation practice.
Contrary to very common opin-
ion, the valley of the Pc is not an
arid rigion. The annual rainfall at
Milan, the chief city of Lombardy, is
more than 40 inches, greater than
that of Cincinnati, Ohio, or Omaha.
Neh., both of which are situated in
regions whore irrigation is seldom
considered in connection with agricul-
ture. The climate of Lombardy is
not different from that of the Mis-
sissippi Valley and the crops raised
with few exceptions. are the same.
Notwithstanding this large rainfall
and the fact that crops can be success
fully raised without irrigation, the
pialns OF Lombardy are a network of
canals and drains To secure the
construction Of one of these canals,
the city of Milan gave a bonus of
100000 This canal cost Sc 1000 600.
or $3.50 for each acre of land that
can be served by it, 1t supplies wat
er TO 5000 farmers, who pay from one
to two dollars per acre per wear for
water. Some OF this land supports as
many as 800 people per square mile,
and has increased in value since the
building OF the canal from 90 to 100
per cent, land which formerly sold
for 800 being worth from slsO to |
'$200 per acre.
Under the Vettabba Canal which |
uses the sewage from Milan. mead |
oWs yield an annual crop worth $500 |
per acre Some of the fields have |
been used for meadows continuously I
for 100 years, Annual rentals for
these lands are more than $25 per |
acre Sewage has been used on these
fields for centuries without injury |
to the lands or to the healthfulness Of /
the community. This great rise in
land Increase in productivity of lands.
due TO irrigation, in a region with
rainfall equal to that of the southern
half of the Mississippi Valley and
climate no more favorable to cron
production. leads to the conclusion
that In irrigation this section has a
means of at least doubling the pras-
ent yield from its lands.
In Piedmont which has an annual
rainfall of more than 80 inches. or
about the same a. eastern Nebraska
and Kansas. the Italian Government
has built nearly Thousand miles of
canals and evueBded about s20,000,-
600 for irrigation work The annual
income from the government canals
in this Province is nearly above the
government canals One OF these was
put in at an expense Of s47 per acre
for the land irrigated In addition to
which The farmers ar, required to
nay the annual maintenance expense
and sS2 per year for a cubic foot Of
water per second irrigated land
supplied by this pumping plant is
worth three times as much as unir- j
rigated land adjoining Under an
other pumping plant the annual ex-
pense 10 the farmers is $3.50 per acre, {
p addition to $40 per year for a sink a
ing fund making an annual charge Z