AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT 



of the need of continuous fertilization; while in the 

 humid regions, the fertility of the land is currently 

 carried into the sea by the drainage waters, through 

 the streams and rivers, causing a chronic depletion 

 which has to be made up for by artificial and costly 

 means. What with the greater intrinsic fertility and 

 the great depth of soil available for plant growth, 

 much smaller units of land will suffice for the main- 

 tenance of a family in arid countries : a fact which 

 is even now being illustrated in the irrigated regions 

 of the United States in what we are in 



the habit of calling 'deserts;' the very sands of which 

 usually need only the life-giving effects of water to 

 transform them into fruitful fields and gardens."* 



Specific superiority of arid land soils will be 

 cited in connection with tillage, below. 



THIRD : THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF IRRIGATION ENTER- 

 PRISE. The local application of the teaching of the 

 world's experience concerning irrigation as an agri- 

 cultural art was at first believed to be indispensable 

 to the development of agriculture on the Pacific 

 Slope. This early conception was soon found to be 

 defective, as will be noted later. Irrigation is not 

 essential everywhere on the slope, though in some 

 locations it may be; nor is it essential to all crops, 

 though for some crops it may be. And when it is 

 remembered that somewhere on the slope may be 

 found every food crop grown in civilized countries 

 except those of strictly tropical climates, it must 

 be realized that the artificial use of water, with ref- 

 erence to natural conditions of climate and soil, and 

 with reference to the requirements of the particular 

 crop undertaken, is perhaps the broadest and most 

 needful of wisdom of all the agricultural arts. The 

 fact is that Anglo-Saxon people, born to the farming 

 of the humid countries of the world and unused 

 to any artificial use of water, except perhaps in 

 the irrigation of brandy, have within half a century 

 not only mastered an art unknown to them, that 

 of farming an arid country, but are producing food 

 products to a farm-value upwards of half a billion 

 dollars a year not to pursue the value thereof to 

 the market places of the world. Moreover, these 

 people have not only mastered an art to which they 

 were not born, but have discovered truer policies 

 and devised improved methods in the use of water 

 to such ends that representatives of the most an- 

 cient irrigated countries attend American irrigation 

 congresses to learn American ways with water. 

 There is probably nothing in American agriculture 



* Soils, by E. W. Hilgard (Macmillan & Co., 1906), pp. 

 417-420. 



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