Dry Farming
a recent term applied to scientific treatment of soil under semi-arid conditions. There is a vast amount of rich land in the Great Plains region and westward that lacks water only to become as fertile as the Mississippi Valley. There are in New Mexico, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Colorado, Idaho, not including sections of all the states situated near the hundredth meridian, over 80,000,000 acres of naturally fertile, but dry land that needs water to become fertile. It is estimated that irrigation projects, present and future, may convert a possible ten per cent of this land into agricultural land of high value. While not belittling the efforts of those interested in irrigation, intelligent farmers are of the opinion that more effort and money should be expended in making people acquainted with methods of dry farming. By proper treatment of the soil it is considered practicable to raise a crop each year wherever the yearly rainfall is not less than thirteen inches; and crops each alternate year where the annual rainfall is not less than ten inches.
Dry farming is not an attempt to train crops to grow with little moisture, for Nature's demands are fixed. The roots of the wheat plant need to imbibe a fixed amount of water to produce a given yield of straw and of grain. Dry farming addresses itself to the problem of saving the rain that falls and of seeing to it that the roots of useful plants, not weeds, get it. Under the leadership of Mr. H. W. Campbell, now of Lincoln, Nebraska, common sense experiments have been carried on for over twenty-five years. Mr. Campbell began his work on a farm in South Dakota. He became famous as a worker in farmers' institutes, and was employed by the Burlington Railway to establish demonstration farms along its lines of road in the semiarid region. By following a few carefully thought out principles of soil tillage, he was able to raise abundant crops of wheat, oats, potatoes, beans, peas, millet, sugar beets, and kaffir corn; while the crops in fields across the road from his, having precisely the same soil, but farmed by ordinary methods, suffered from drouth to such a degree that they were not worth harvesting. The difference between forty bushels of wheat and failure, and between sixty bushels of oats and nothing, right out in the open, without fertilizers and without other moisture than rainfall, was sufficiently striking to arrest attention and revolutionize agricultural methods in this region.
Mr. Campbell's methods have been tested and approved by practical farmers and agricultural stations. They have been found as effective as they are simple. They require horses, implements, unceasing industry, and vigilance. The main principles of dry farming are:
1. Deep ploughing--not less than seven inches. This is to allow the rain, when it does fall, to enter the soil and not run away. The problem is the very opposite of drainage.
2. Subsoil packing. Continued cultivation with a disk-harrow tends to pack the soil three inches below the surface. A disk with an outer edge so shaped that it acts like a wedge to force the soil particles together has been found to work well. The object of subsoil packing is to keep the water from evaporating. Mr. Campbell was started thinking by noticing that the tracks made in his fields by wagon wheels and the footprints of his team retained moisture and gave an increased yield.
3. Surface cultivation. The rule is to plow as soon as the crop is off and disk after every shower. The idea is to turn the moist surface into the soil bed and prevent evaporation. Gardeners who get out in the early morning and hoe the dew into the soil find their reward even in regions not so dry.
4. Frequent disking even in the dryest of weather. This is to create and maintain a loose surface covering of dust. It is found that dust, by breaking up the capillarity of the soil, is one of the most effective mulches known. Ground covered with dust does not dry out readily. If the dust be scraped aside, the soil beneath will be found to be as moist as though it had been protected by litter or leaves. After crops are sown the disk is abandoned for a toothed tool, a horse hoe, or the Campbell surface cultivator. It is so essential to keep up the dust blanket that even at the risk of uprooting a chance stalk of grain, farmers cross and recross their growing grain fields all through the early summer, stirring the soil especially after a shower, that a layer of dust may be formed to prevent the escape of precious moisture.
5. Eradication of weeds. Inasmuch as a growing plant imbibes moisture through its roots and allows it to escape through its leaves, it follows that weeds are wasteful of water, the dry farm's chief treasure. Garden, orchard, potato field, and all fields must be kept free from wasteful weeds.
6. In regions having from ten to thirteen inches of rainfall, it is found best to summerfallow each second year. The ground is plowed to admit water. A dust mulch is maintained to prevent the escape of water. Weeds are not allowed to pilfer the supply. A second season finds the soil with a store of moisture sufficient to raise a crop.
To meet conditions requiring one-half of the land to lie idle each year, the government permits homesteaders to take a half section of public land in regions of scant rainfall. As stated, men, teams, implements, and untiring industry are requisites to succeed in dry farming, but the results already attained mark a signal triumph for American agriculture.
It remains to be noted that Mr. Campbell's success and reputation are due to seeking the cause of as simple a matter as the increased productivity of a wagon track. One of his first discoveries was that a broad track like that of a heavy roller did not produce the desired result. The track, he found, needed to be so narrow that earth falling from the sides formed a dust mulch. In other words, he discovered that subsoil packing and a dust cover, not surface rolling and packing, were what was needed to hold the moisture to be drawn upon by the growing plant.
The other outstanding feature of the meeting (Billings, 1909) was a sort of divided opinion as to correct scientific procedure for producing the best results upon the land in the semi-arid regions. This issue was defined by a letter read from Secretary of Agriculture Wilson, setting forth that, in his estimation, the line of procedure should be toward the introduction and development of drouth-resistant crops and the use of suitable rotations. The original advocate of the deep plowing, packing and thorough surface cultivation and summer tillage of fallow land in the west is W. H. Campbell, of Lincoln, Nebraska, who has preached and demonstrated the doctrine for twenty-five years, and who is justly considered the father of the dry farming movement. Mr. Campbell, in a spirited address, took direct issue with the views of Secretary Wilson, setting forth the positive results obtained by the following system, which has produced crops of 40, 50, even 68 bushels of heavy wheat per acre in western Nebraska, Kansas, and other points, and the comparatively small progress made by the department in the introduction of resistant varieties. Generally speaking, the government men present sided with the secretary's views, and the state experiment station men and practical farmers were somewhat divided. Many had found a combination of both successful.--E. L. Petty.