El Paso herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1901-1931, 1910-07-23
Branagh and His Latest Success in Growing Crops on
Less Than Four Inches Of Rainfall-Has Ground
Planted and Dry When First Summer Rain
Falls Then Crop Comes up Quickly and
Grows Very Rapidly.

new Moses has arisen among the
farmers of the west He is 2 plain, I'M
pretentious man. and he has no 'syS-
TENS" to sell. He has just worked out
for himself the problem Of raising
crop on land that has heretofore been
considered desert and worthless; he has
been working on it, Flooding, for 20
years. He is not rich and he does not
expect to make fortune out of his
discovery. He can't patent il and he is
making no attempt to do so, but to the
farmers west of the Missouri, millions
of them. Ms name will go down in his
tory as the greatest man of them all
There can be no mistake about this. His
work has proved itself worth all the
study and effort he gave TO it. He
has demonstrated that he can raise
crop on three inches of rain He has
demonstrated 1t not one year, not two,
but many He has yet to make his first
failure.
To farmers in the east who consider
nothing less than 80 inches of rain
seasonable year and less than 30
drouth, the work OF r. Branagh sounds
like fiction, but he has the proof 10
back it up and substantiate the old
saying that fiction is not in the run
ming with fact, or words to that effect.
Branagh is a dry farmer in every
sense of the word. A few years ago the
science of dry farming was apnOunc-
ed. 1t was really scientific farming.
That is what Branagh's is. but he has
gone a step further than the most OPP
timistic dry farmer" The first dry
farmers began TO teach scientific cul-
tivation of the soil TO retain the mois-
ture. They established the fact that
by properly blowing the ground, then
narrowing it and keeping the soil in
a sort Of mulch, that the rain would
soak in well when it fell and that by
further treatment of the top of the soil
to keep the earth in mulch, evapora-
ton could be prevented. This was
given a scientific test and proved
truthful. The breaking up Of the crust
that forms on the surface of the soil
after a rain, tests proved, broke up
the moisture tubes and prevented the
escape of the water that had soaked
in. Tests of cultivated and unculti-
waited ground soon showed that mois-
ture could be kept in the soil several
inches deep, sometimes several feet
deep while adjoining ground unculti
waited would be as dry as the proverb-
ial bone as deep as one wished to dig
Thus the value of scientific soil cultiva-
uen-"dry farming they called it for
lack of a better name, for scientific
soil cultivation might mean many
thingS-thOroughly established. The
United States governmental first re-
lucia ntly-established stations through
out the west, then the various states,
particularly Wyoming, Colorado, Utah,
Idaho and North and South Dakota
established state dry farm stations
and demonstrated the value of scientif-
ic cultivation-Of the conservation OF
the rainfall and the snowfall, and
thousands of farmers have been made
prosperous, and throughout the west
dry farm" associations flourish and
the international Dry Farm Congress
has branches now in South Africa.
Egypt, Australia, Brazil, Mexico and
everywhere where the rainfall is Sc
light that a crop after the old method
of cultivating without regard to meth
DDS and trusting to the rain to bring
results, was not possible Even In the
rainy regions this scientific method of
cultivation has brought splendid re-
suits in off years"
Snowfall Necessary.
But in most of the places where it
has been a SUGGESTIVE only places
in the arid belt where it has been
success every years. where there Is a
winter snowfall. Then the SEMITIC soil
culturist has been able to conserve
the winter moisture till spring, when
he planted his seeds and allowed the
summer rains TO bring them up-for
it always rains the heaviest and always
without fail in the summer time in
the semi-arid and arid regions In
the extreme southern part of the arid
Vest. however, there is no winter
snow and seldom are there winter rains.
When it did rain or snow, the dry
farmers made successful crops that
year. but when it failed to rain in the
winter-m hich was oftener than it
rained-they made nothing. The spring
planting time found them with very
little if any moisture and even if they
had enough TO bring up a crop, the
summer rains generally were too late TO
20 the young plants any good and in
nine cases out of ten the plants had
witheTed and died before the rains !
came down. The result was that the
farmers began to get disguised This
9pDHed particularly in New Mexico, !
Arizona, southern California, west