The Roswell daily record. [volume] (Roswell, N.M.) 1903-current, 1909-02-05
WHAT is DRY FARMING?
A WYOMING EDITORS ANSWER

WHAT is DRY FARMING?
A WYOMING EDITORS ANSWER
Cheyenne, Wyo, Feb. 5.-For the in
formation of those who II not famil-
lar with the work that is being done
in the West by the TranS-MiSsouri
Dry Farming Congress, which will
hold it's third annual sessions at Chey
enne, Feb, %, "a, and 25, William c..
Deming editor of the Wyoming Trib-
une, and who will be present and is ex
pected to address the congress, has an
swered the question, What is Dry
Farming" in the following words:
Two years ago in the Rocky Noun
tain West dry farming was a joke and
a by-word. Today hundreds of thou
sands of acres are, OF o will be, I'M
der cultivation by this method; thou
sands of sturdy men are its devoteeS.
Dry farming has Joined hands with ir-
rigation in reclaiming the barren was
ties of the West.
Technically speaking, all that sec
tion of country in which h annual
rain fall is less than twelve inches is
called arid. Where the rainfall ex-
ceeds twelve inches and is less than
twenty inches, it is called semi-arid.
For convenience and easy reckoning,
"a d Lille 1OI en-, NIL Ii La
kota, through North Platte, Nebraska,
to Laredo, Texas, and all that country
to the westward to the Sierra Neva-
das, and the Cascade Mountains may
be termed arid or Sem1Sarid, and it
embraces more than one-third of the
entire United States. In this section
is all that is left of the public domain,
and it is the hope of the men and wo-
men, who crowded out of the longest
ed East, desire to carve out new
homes in the West and transmit to
their children a family roof-tree.
1t should be remembered in passing
h most liberal estimate ever
placed upon the amount Of arid and
seni-arid land which it is possible to
reclaim by irrigation, If all the waste
waters were utilized, is ten per cen
of the total area, and this doubtless is
twice too much.
After counting out the irrigated and
the mountainous lands, the worthless
lands, the timbered lands, the mineral
lands, the government reserves and
all other lands suitable for grazing
purposes only, we may nave left
twenty per cent of the whole section
reclaimable by dry farming.
The arid and the semi-arid West for
forty years Or more has been largely
a sheep and cattle pasture, and it is
conservatively estimated that it re-
quires from twenty to n hundred &C
res to support one animal, the average
being about ~thirty,ive.
1t will be readily seen, therefore,
that il after all the available water
has been used for irrigation, there is
still an agency by which other millions
of acres may be reclaimed, then cosy
homes will replace the sheep wagon
and the school children will romp
where only lambs focked before.
What, then, us dry farming? In
plain words, it is farming successfully
with the natural precipitation, which
must be so conserved and used as to
obtain results. The world has plodded
along for several thousand years, and
yet it has occurred to but few people,
within a decade, that it is pos
sible to store up the moisture as it
falls and use it when desired. When
rains come n the snow melts upon
the native sod in the arid and semi
arid West, the moisture is either
quickly evaporated from the surface
passes into the ground, from which
it is almost as quickly drawn by the
process of evaporation.
When the land is plowed and per-
to lie without subsequent til
lag, the moisture, whether from rain
or melting SHOWS, soaks into the
ground, possible to the depth of the
furrow, from which it is again with
by evaporation. Influenced by
the heat of the sun and the aridity of
the atmosphere, the surface bakes and
a cruise is formed. The untutored and
u~ninitiated, as it were, in the dry farm
cult, would no doubt, assume that
the crust so formed would act as a
against the drawing" inf1u-
ence of the air and sunshine, and
therefore, prevent evaporation.
The reverse is true, I'M herein is the
key that unlocks the secrets of dry
farming. The trust so formed is eel
lular. 1t is full of little holes, thru
which practically all If the moisture
beneath passes out into the air.
|
Conservation of Moisture.
In h arid and semi-arid West, par
ticularly in the rarer atmosphere Of
higher attitudes, the evaporation
takes place 81 rapidly that the resi-
dents of those regions almost invari-
ably underestimate the annual rain
fall. The average altitude of the arid
and semi4arid region is about one |
mile above Sa level. |
Since dry farming has been reduc-
ed to a science 1t will not be amiss to |
scientific terms where they eluci-
late rather than obscure the subject.
The process of evaporation through
he c~elleular rus above referred to is
the result of a force known as capil-
A familiar and effective exam
pie of capillary attraction is that of
the edge of a hump of sugar
water and watching the moisture
move steadily toward the top. Or bet
ter example still. In which capiIfarffyI