Waterbury evening Democrat., 1905-05-24
DRY FARMING SYSTEM.
Soil Filling Method to Make
 Semiarid Plains Bloom.
IRRIGATION DEEMED UNNECESSARY

of System Destined to Revolutionise Agriculture In the Far west-Large Amount of Money Appropriated to Carry on Experi- meats on . Large Scale.
 The short grass" country of western Nebraska and Wyoming. together with northern Colorado, is thoroughly arous. ed over dry farming" and is seeing visions of time to come when the short grass country will disappear, and in place of its hundreds of thou sands of acres of land upon which cat tie now graze there will be great crops of wheat, corn, alfalfa and sugar beets, says an Omaha (Neb.) dispatch.
 Then the great irrigation projects now fathered by the government and private capital will be useless, because no water will be needed to produce the crops; ''dry farming will have taken the place of the water.
 The Cheyenne board of trade and business men of that city recently ap- propriated $10,000 to experiment along the line of the new system in Wyo- ming, the Union Pacific railroad has organized a department of ..dry farm ing'' to work under the direction of the industrial department of the liar riman system, the Burlington road is conducting experiments of its own on a farm of 800 acres in western Nebras- ka, one Colorado firm has employed an expert to make investigations on Its big cattle ranch of 10000 acres, North Platte (Neb.) business men have sub scribed several thousand dollars to- ward experimenting in that section, and a hundred different farmers and ranchmen in Laramie county, Wyo., have signed a pledge agreeing to cul- tivate at least i've acres each accord ing to directions issued from central body and to report results to that body.
 By dry farming is meant the culti- vation of land without irrigation in any form whatever. The lands affected are those millions of acres of semiarld lands in the great west which are now turned over to the cattlemen. the prai- rie dogs, the rattlesnakes and the owls A small portion of these lands have been placed under ''ditches' and are being irrigated, producing heavy re- turns on all crops But if the efforts of those interested in dry farming prove successful there will be added to the cultivated areas hundreds of millions of acres of lands now considered valu- able only for grazing purposes.
 The system used in dry farming IS IT, diculously simple. Late in the summer the soil Is plowed very deep. It is then laid over in loose furrows, and when the meager rainfall comes the loose soil retains the moisture, where 1t would not even remain damp In hard ground. To prevent evaporation the soil Is loosely scratched. The following spring the crop is put in and cultivated inrthe same manner as in other states. Crops are raised only every other year. how ever, under this system. the ground be- ing permitted to rest each alternating year.
 Already several small farmers in eastern Wyoming have succeeded in securing yield of thirty-flve bushels an acre of first class wheat, where for. merly no wheat whatever was grown except under the irrigating ditch Equally large crops of corn, alfalfa and sugar beets are promised to those who follow the same course of cultivation.
 Those who have been experimenting with the system for several years de clare their. lands increase in power tt hold water from year to year and state that with i've years of dry farming they will produce crops equal to those produced in Illinois and Iowa undel the most favorable conditions, If no larger.