16 CIRCULAR NO. 132, BUREAU OF PLANT INDUSTRY. 



of his enthusiasm before the summer is over and conclude that his 

 neighbors are not so far wrong in wishing to sell out and move back 

 East to the coast. Such defeats and disappointments are inevitable 

 unless settlers can be warned in advance and understand that they 

 must provide themselves with new agricultural weapons in the 

 way of special crops and methods of growing them, if they are to 

 overcome the difficulties and enter into permanent possession of 

 tlie agricultural resources of the southwestern country. 



The agricultural possibilities of the Southw^est are only faintly 

 suspected on the basis of tlie few crops now raised; likewise the 

 possibilities of making existence enjoyable in places that now seem 

 hopeless deserts. The present methods are not only inadequate, 

 but are often actually destructive, as when the use of too much water 

 brings up alkali that might otherwise lie harmless m the lower 

 layers of the soil. Methods of extensive farming, proper enough 

 in other parts of the United States, are being used, to the general 

 neglect of the much more important possibilities of intensive farm- 

 ing. The idea that a family can live w^ell and accumulate a com- 

 petence on a small farm of 5 or 10 acres, as so often stated in pros- 

 spectuses of hrigated lands, is not to be realized without radical 

 changes of methods. Even the present system of sending supplies 

 of hrigation water through earth canals, at intervals of a week or 

 longer, may prove inadequate for the desired results. Cement 

 channels to afford continued supplies of water may prove economical 

 hi the end m spite of their great initial cost. There is an immense 

 waste of water as well as of land m the present system of earth 

 ditches. These are not engineering questions alone, but must be 

 considered ultimately from the standpoint of the farmer and his 

 crops. There can not be farmers without crops or crops wdthout 

 farmers. 



Perhaps the best way to think of the possibilities of agricultural 

 development is to remember that an irrigated district in a desert is an 

 oasis and that the plants that have thriven in the Southwest, the cot- 

 ton, alfalfa, date palms, olives, pomegranates, etc., are those that have 

 come from other dry countries where irrigation is practiced, in Africa 

 and Asia, instead of from other parts of the United States or from 

 Europe. Many other crops, and especially food plants, that are 

 raised under irrigation in other countries have yet to be established 

 in the Southwest. 



A further consideration is that ma-ny of the oasis food crops are 

 not raised by the methods now" used in the Southwest, where it is cus- 

 tomary to plant everything out in the sun, but as subcultures, that is, 

 under the partial shade of date palms or other trees, so that the 

 exposure to heat and light is soniewhat reduced. The subculture 



[Cir. 132] 



