Arizona republican., 1911-10-20
DRY FARMING
 |S SUBJECT
Interesting Facts On This Popular Theme Are Brought Out at the Meet ing Now in Progress at Colorado Springs.

COLORADO SPRINGS. oct, l3.-At
 the Dry Farming congress. now in session here. Howard H Gross. presi- dent of the National Soil Fertility league. Chicago, discussed methods of getting the farmer to adopt better agricultural methods He said. in
 part:
 No country on earth stands so
 much in need of agricultural help as
 does ours This may be regarded as an extraordinary statement, when we
 look at the American farmer and un-
 derstand the qualities of the man. No
 one will question his intelligence. in
 dustry or high purpose. yet. judged
 by average results. he is one of the
 worst farmers in the world today
 The wheat average of the United
 States is less than half that of west ern Europe. and the European yields are upon lands that have been under the blow n thousand years or more
 The most efficient factor in the establishment of this new European agriculture was the sending of trained demonstrators to the actual farm homes. The result was an imme- diatc improvement along all farm lines. which went on from year to year until the yield was doubled The | United States experiment stations and the agricultural colleges are getting two and three times as large a yield | upon their lands as the average. sim | ply because their methods are better. l The information sent out from these | stations. however. iS. as a rule. too | technical and does not apply to all | the varied soil conditions met with in | practice. Very few. if any. Of the | farmers can understand them. and | the bulletins are seldom read and | very seldom followed
 The next step in agriculture is to send into every agricultural county a | trained farm demonstration to study | the local conditions. learn what ought | to be done, and then help the farm CTS to apply it to their respective farms. This plan has been tried in | the south to a considerable extent. | and it has made good in every in stance"
 The speaker figured that while such 1 a service as this would mean an | aggregate per capita expense of 10 cents per year. the present average farm yield is about SlO0 per capita. and that within ten years after the field demonstrators have been placed | in the counties the yield will be doubled Stating il another way. the total expense of thus doubling the yield would be one cent per acre The | speaker advised cooperation between the United States government, the individual states and the counties themselves for the maintenance of such a body of men.
 L. W. Ellis. traction expert of La port. Ind. discussed the question of Power and Flowing" He said:
 Six hundred million tons of soil to the half section lie in the surface II foot of earth, which is the workshop II of the intelligent farmer. At least once in two years this enormous weight must be turned bottomside up. II My mission is to raise the question of how this shall be done in sub humid agriculture. and even more prominent in the answer than the figure of the blow is the thought of power. Power shapes our modern world and nowhere is the solution of the power problem more important than upon the farms of our vast dry farming area.
 Power on our farms is tending more and more to become mechanical in it's nature. The stationary engine aids or replaces the dry farmers own muscle The tractor comes to assist the animal as well as man. With the traction engine to take care of the heavy rush work and look after itself the rest of the time. and with the number Of horses determined by l the odd jobs that need attention the |; year around the power problem is solved and the type of ;