12 DRY FARMING IN THE GREAT BASIlSr. 



and orchard fruits are important features among the agricultural 

 industries of the area. The latter are both intensive crops, yielding 

 high returns per acre. There were grown 7,500 acres of sugar beets 

 and 16,000 acres of orchard fruits in 1899. These areas seem small 

 for a whole State, but it should be remembered that only a relatively 

 small part of the State has yet been utilized for agriculture. There 

 remains much valuable land to be developed, both with and without 

 irrigation. During the decade from 1889 to 1899 the irrigated acre- 

 age^in Utah increased 138.8 per cent, or from 263,473 to 629,293 

 acres, and progress has been fully as rapid since, so that these figures 

 may be increased safely by 50 per cent in estimating the present 

 status of the agriculture of the area, and the indications are that the 

 acreage devoted to dry farming has increased more rapidly even 

 than the irrigated acreage. 



In the State of Xevada, which lies almost wholly in the Great 

 Basin, there is at present practically no farming without irrigation. 

 The Twelfth Census reports for the State for 1899 a total in specified 

 crops of 328,458 acres, of which 323,352 acres, or all but 5,000 acres, 

 Avere irrigated. The difference, or unirrigated land, was nearly all 

 in wild hay and probably irrigated naturally by overflow. There 

 are without doubt numerous valleys in Nevada where dry farming 

 is possible, but there is no evidence that any of these have yet been 

 developed. 



The portion of Oregon included in the Great Basin is as yet almost 

 entirely without settlements, so that whatever resources it may have 

 in the way of lands adapted to dry farming are still unknown. 



Probably the most striking feature of the agricultural practice of 

 Utah farmers is the lack of an intertilled annual crop to be grown in 

 rotation with the cereals and hay. The discrepancy between the com- 

 bined acreage of the three important intertilled crops (corn, potatoes, 

 and sugar beets) as compared with the cereal and hay crops is very 

 marked, there being only about 30,000 acres of this class of crops 

 as compared with more than 550,000 acres of cereals, alfalfa, and 

 tame grasses, or 1 acre of intertilled crops to 18 acres of the others. 

 This discrepancy shows the acute need of finding varieties of such 

 crops as corn and sorghum that can be used profitably in rotation 

 with the cereals and forage crops, for it is difficult to secure the best 

 results in general farming without the use, at least occasionally, of 

 an intertilled crop in the rotation. This is particularly true in farm- 

 ing without irrigation, for crops that can not be cultivated during 

 the growing season permit the waste by direct evaporation of a large 

 amount of soil moisture, while with crops that can be intertilled 

 there should be but little more moisture removed from the soil than is 

 required by the crop itself. 



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