About six-tenths of the land surface of the globe must be farmed, if farmed at all, under some system of water-saving. Of this, about one-tenth is redeemable by irrigation, and the remainder by some system of utilization of deficient rainfall, or by what is inappropriately known as dry-farming. The complementary practices of irrigation and dry-farming will develop a wholly new scheme of agriculture and a new philosophy of country life [(page 44)].
Even in heavy rainfall countries there is often such waste of water from run-off that the lands suffer severely from droughts. No doubt the hilly lands of our best farming regions are greatly reduced in their crop-producing power because people do not prepare against drought as consciously as they provide against frost [(page 52)]. It is often said that we shall water Eastern lands by irrigation, and I think that we shall; but our first obligation is to save the rainfall water by some system of farm-management or dry-farming.
Agriculture rests on the saving of water.
The obligation of the farmer.
The farmer is rapidly beginning to realize his obligation to society. It is usual to say that the farmer feeds the world, but the larger fact is that he saves the world.
The economic system depends on him. Wall Street watches the crops.
As cities increase proportionately in population, the farmer assumes greater relative importance, and he becomes more and more a marked man.
Careful and scientific husbandry is rising in this new country. We have come to a realization of the fact that our resources are not unlimited. The mining of fertilizing materials for transportation to a few spots on the earth will some day cease. We must make the farming sustain itself, at the same time that it provides the supplies for mankind.
We all recognize the necessity of the other great occupations to a well-developed civilization; but in the nature of the case, the farmer is the final support. On him depends the existence of the race. No method of chemical synthesis can provide us with the materials of food and clothing and shelter, and with all the good luxuries that spring from the bosom of the earth.
I know of no better conservators than our best farmers. They feel their responsibility. Quite the ideal of conservation is illustrated by a farmer of my acquaintance who saves every product of his land and has developed a system of self-enriching live-stock husbandry, who has harnessed his small stream to light his premises and do much of his work, who turns his drainage waters into productive uses, and who is now troubled that he cannot make some use of the winds that are going to waste on his farm.