Dry-Farming : A System of Agriculture for Countries under a Low Rainfall

by John Andreas Widtsoe

IMPLEMENTS FOR DRY-FARMING

Cheap land and relatively small acre yields characterize dry-farming. Consequently Iarger areas must be farmed for a given return than in humid farming, and the successful pursuit of dry-farming compels the adoption of methods that enable a man to do the largest amount of effective work with the smallest expenditure of energy. The careful observations made by Grace, in Utah, lead to the belief that, under the conditions prevailing in the intermountain country, one man with four horses and a sufficient supply of machinery can farm 160 acres, half of which is summer-fallowed every year; and one man may, in favorable seasons under a carefully planned system, farm as much as 200 acres. If one man attempts to handle a larger farm, the work is likely to be done in so slipshod a manner that the crop yield decreases and the total returns are no larger than if 200 acres had been well tilled.

One man with four horses would be unable to handle even 160 acres were it not for the possession of modern machinery; and dry-farming, more than any other system of agriculture, is dependent for its success upon the use of proper implements of tillage. In fact, it is very doubtful if the reclamation of the great arid and semiarid regions of the world would have been possible a few decades ago, before the invention and introduction of labor-saving farm machinery. It is undoubtedly further a fact that the future of dry-farming is closely bound up with the improvements that may be made in farm machinery. Few of the agricultural implements on the market to-day have been made primarily for dry-farm conditions. The best that the dry-farmer can do is to adapt the implements on the market to his special needs. Possibly the best field of investigation for the experiment stations and inventive minds in the arid region is farm mechanics as applied to the special needs of dry-farming.

Clearing and breaking

A large portion of the dry-farm territory of the United States is covered with sagebrush and related plants. It is always a difficult and usually an expensive problem to clear sagebrush land, for the shrubs are frequently from two to six feet high, correspondingly deep-rooted, with very tough wood. When the soil is dry, it is extremely difficult to pull out sagebrush, and of necessity much of the clearing must be done during the dry season. Numerous devices have been suggested and tried for the purpose of clearing sagebrush land. One of the oldest and also one of the most effective devices is two parallel railroad rails connected with heavy iron chains and used as a drag over the sagebrush land. The sage is caught by the two rails and torn out of the ground. The clearing is fairly complete, though it is generally necessary to go over the ground two or three times before the work is completed. Even after such treatment a large number of sagebrush clumps, found standing over the field, must be grubbed up with the hoe. Another and effective device is the so-called "mankiller." This implement pulls up the sage very successfully and drops it at certain definite intervals. It is, however, a very dangerous implement and frequently results in injury to the men who work it. Of recent years another device has been tried with a great deal of success. It is made like a snow plow of heavy railroad irons to which a number of large steel knives have been bolted. Neither of these implements is wholly satisfactory, and an acceptable machine for grubbing sagebrush is yet to be devised. In view of the large expense attached to the clearing of sagebrush land such a machine would be of great help in the advancement of dry-farming.

Away from the sagebrush country the virgin dry-farm land is usually covered with a more or less dense growth of grass, though true sod is seldom found under dry-farm conditions. The ordinary breaking plow, characterized by a long sloping moldboard, is the best known implement for breaking all kinds of sod. (See Fig. 7a a.) Where the sod is very light, as on the far western prairies, the more ordinary forms of plows may be used. In still other sections, the dry-farm land is covered with a scattered growth of trees, frequently pinion pine and cedars, and in Arizona and New Mexico the mesquite tree and cacti are to be removed. Such clearing has to be done in accordance with the special needs of the locality.

Plowing

Plowing, or the turning over of the soil to a depth of from seven to ten inches for every crop, is a fundamental operation of dry-farming. The plow, therefore, becomes one of the most important implements on the dry-farm. Though the plow as an agricultural implement is of great antiquity, it is only within the last one hundred years that it has attained its present perfection. It is a question even to-day, in the minds of a great many students, whether the modern plow should not be replaced by some machine even more suitable for the proper turning and stirring of the soil. The moldboard plow is, everything considered, the most satisfactory plow for dry-farm purposes. A plow with a moldboard possessing a short abrupt curvature is generally held to be the most valuable for dry-farm purposes, since it pulverizes the soil most thoroughly, and in dry-farming it is not so important to turn the soil over as to crumble and loosen it thoroughly. Naturally, since the areas of dry-farms are very large, the sulky or riding plow is the only kind to be used. The same may be said of all other dry-farm implements. As far as possible, they should be of the riding kind since in the end it means economy from the resulting saving of energy.

The disk plow has recently come into prominent use throughout the land. It consists, as is well known, of one or more large disks which are believed to cause a smaller draft, as they cut into the ground, than the draft due to the sliding friction upon the moldboard. Davidson and Chase say, however, that the draft of a disk plow is often heavier in proportion to the work done and the plow itself is more clumsy than the moldboard plow. For ordinary dry-farm purposes the disk plow has no advantage over the modern moldboard plow. Many of the dry-farm soils are of a heavy clay and become very sticky during certain seasons of the year. In such soils the disk plow is very useful. It is also true that dry-farm soils, subjected to the intense heat of the western sun become very hard. In the handling of such soils the disk plow has been found to be most useful. The common experience of dry-farmers is that when sagebrush lands have been the first plowing can be most successfully done with the disk plow, but that after. the first crop has been harvested, the stubble land can be best handled with the moldboard plow. All this, however, is yet to be subjected to further tests.

While subsoiling results in a better storage reservoir for water and consequently makes dry-farming more secure, yet the high cost of the practice will probably never make it popular. Subsoiling is accomplished in two ways: either by an ordinary moldboard plow which follows the plow in the plow furrow and thus turns the soil to a greater depth, or by some form of the ordinary subsoil plow. In general, the subsoil plow is simply a vertical piece of cutting iron, down to a depth of ten to eighteen inches, at the bottom of which is fastened a triangular piece of iron like a shovel, which, when pulled through the ground, tends to loosen the soil to the full depth of the plow.