Dr. W. E. Smythe in his fascinating book “The Conquest of Arid America” calls attention to the fact that the real dividing line between the east and the west is the 97th meridian which divides in twain the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. East of this line is the region of fairly assured rainfall. To the westward stretches the vast area of arid land with a rainfall insufficient to sustain agriculture; and with only three or four people to the square mile, though with resources enough to support a hundred million people. With a climate matchless for health and a varied and beautiful scenery, coupled with untold mineral deposits and a soil fertility that is remarkable, this great section is slowly coming to its own, through the method of irrigation, from the mountains and the streams.
With characteristic western spirit the above author remarks, “Even in humid regions nothing is so uncertain as the time and amount of the rainfall. In the whole range of modern industry nothing is so crude, uncalculating and unscientific as the childlike dependence on the mood of the clouds for the moisture essential to the production of the staple necessities of life.” The superiority of irrigation as a certain means of water supply which can be regulated at will is a thesis easy to maintain. The results make a marvelous story. “The canal is an insurance policy against loss of crops by drought, while aridity is a substantial guarantee against injury by flood. The rich soils of the arid region produce from four to ten times as largely with irrigation, as the soil of the humid region without it. Twenty acres in the irrigated West should equal 100 acres elsewhere. Certainty, abundance, variety—all this upon an area so small as to be within the control of a single family through its own area, are the elements which compose industrial independence under irrigation.”
The small farm unit, usually from five to twenty-five acres, brings neighbors close together, abolishing loneliness and most of the social ills of farm life in the East. Beautiful irrigated villages are springing up which rival in comfort and privilege most places on earth, and combine both city and country privileges, where rural and urban meet. The spirit of cooperation is strong in irrigated communities, enforced by the common dependence upon the common enterprise and water supply. This is well illustrated by the Mormon commonwealth, the pioneer irrigators of the West.
The enthusiastic irrigating farmer asserts that irrigation is “the foundation of truly scientific agriculture.” “The western farmer who has learned to irrigate thinks it would be quite as illogical for him to leave the watering of his potato patch to the caprice of the clouds as for the housewife to defer her wash-day until she could catch rainwater in her tubs.” Irrigation certainly furnishes the ideal method for raising a varied crop, giving each crop individual treatment, serving each of thirty varieties of plants and trees with just the amount of daily moisture they individually need, so as to produce maximum products. No wonder three crops in a year sometimes result, and sometimes five crops of alfalfa in the Southwest. Here we come to the highest development of intensive farming where the utmost value of agricultural science has free play and rivals the results of research and skill in any other line of human effort.
Dry Farming Possibilities
Wonderful as these irrigation projects are, we must not fail to notice that this method of reclaiming arid lands can only be used where there are mountains, rivers or water courses which can be tapped. Ultimately an area as large as New England and New York State will probably be blessed by irrigation. But this is only a small fraction of the arid West. How shall the rest be reclaimed from the desert? Obviously by some method of dry farming, depending on and conserving the meager rain-fall.
A few simple principles have been discovered, and some specialized machinery developed, by which successful dry farming is now conducted on an extensive scale along the arid plains between the Missouri river basin and the Sierra Nevada mountains. In brief these principles are: deep plowing, sub-soil packing, intensive cultivation, maintaining a fine dust mulch on the surface, the use of drought-resisting grains, especially certain varieties of wheat, allowing the land to lie fallow every other year to store moisture, and keeping a good per cent. of humus (vegetable matter) in the soil to resist evaporation. In every possible way the dry farmer conserves moisture. The dry mulch is particularly effective. Only a few years ago it was discovered that by capillary attraction much of the water absorbed by the spongy soil during a rain is lost by rapid evaporation, coming to the surface, just as oil runs up a wick. But by stirring the surface the “capillary ducts” are broken up and the moisture tends to stay down in the sub soil; for the two inches of dust mulch on the surface acts like a blanket, protecting the precious moisture from the dry winds.
III. Some Results of Scientific Farming.
Agriculture Now a Profession
In such a brief treatment it is not to be expected that the writer could do justice to the subject of modern agriculture. In fact there has been little reference to the topic of general farming in this chapter. In its main outline it is a familiar topic and requires little attention here. The descriptions of certain varieties of specialized agriculture have been given as illustrations of the more remarkable phases of the application of scientific methods to country life. We hope two results have thus been attained, that the dignity and efficiency and scientific possibilities of modern agriculture as a profession have been brought to the attention both of our readers in the city and of the discontented farm boys in the country. Both need a higher appreciation of country life. It should be evident to all that agriculture to-day is thoroughly scientific when rightly practiced, which is simply saying that the practice of the new agriculture is a profession. It is among the most difficult and highly technical of all professions. No profession, with the possible exception of medicine, has a broader scientific basis or is at present deriving a greater benefit from vast inductive work in world-wide experimentation at both public and private expense. This profession has made wonderful gains in recent years in both extensive and intensive efficiency, and has written among its triumphs many of the most romantic stories of modern mechanical skill, inventive genius, economic profit and scientific achievement.