AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT 



Cr0 ps S o great is the difference in the ability of 

 different plants to transform water into "dry sub- 

 stance" during an exceedingly long growing season. 

 The Spanish irrigation farmers of the south- 

 west, both in the interior and at the missions on 

 the coast of California, did not understand the 

 efficacy of tillage in increasing the duty of water. 

 They ran the water on the land and when it baked 

 and cracked they turned on more water, and when 

 the whole soil mass became hateful, they either 

 hewed it out with mattocks and hauled in fresh 

 soil from the outside (in the case of fruit trees and 

 vines) or they turned the water some other way 

 upon new land which natural processes had made 

 loamy and friable. The early American settlers 

 in California soon found that by the use of the 

 cultivator and hoe, as practiced in eastern corn- 

 fields, they could get a crop by using less water 

 and at the same time keep the soil in good con- 

 dition. They also found that they could get crops 

 of plants which would grow during the rainy sea- 

 son, without irrigating at all; or, on some retentive 

 soils, they could conserve the winter rainfall by 

 cultivation so as to use it for summer crops and 

 bring them through also without irrigation. And 

 so there were in California many "non-irrigators," 

 who made a virtue of their creed and their practice, 

 and though they often claimed too much relatively, 

 they did demonstrate the feasibility of dry farming 

 by tillage, and for half a century or more, grain 

 crops (which at one time made California the 

 greatest grain State of the Nation), forage crops, 

 winter truck farms, summer crops of beans, toma- 

 toes, etc., and the greater area of orchard and vine- 

 yard, except of citrus fruits and raisins, were grown 

 by dry farming with an average rainfall of 15 to 18 

 inches, taking the whole area together. This was 

 the earliest large scale demonstration of the efficacy 

 of tillage to render a small rainfall enough to pro- 

 duce a valuable crop. It was incidental to the 

 progressive demonstration of the relations of tillage 

 to irrigation, as has already been claimed, but it 

 was fundamental in the dry farming movement 

 which has recently attained such prominence in the 

 interior. California is probably capable of doing 

 more by dry farming than the interior States be- 

 cause tne season of precipitation is the season of 

 growth, through the high temperatures prevailing 

 during the so-called "winter months" hardy grains 

 and grasses and in some places potatoes, etc., do 

 not encounter frost enough to injure them. This 

 brings maturity of grain, hay, etc., in April and 



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