THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



103 



IRRIGATION IN THE SOUTH. 



BY FRANK BOND, 

 Assistant in Irrigation Investigations, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture. 



In no other portion of the humid sections of the 

 United States has agriculture by irrigation received 

 such an impetus as in the States which border the 

 Gulf of Mexico. The success which waited upon the 

 artificial application of water to the rice fields of 

 southwestern Louisiana and southeastern Texas has 

 encouraged the application of the principle to the di- 

 versified farm crop, and especially to 

 the growing plants of the market gar- 

 dener's truck patch. But as yet ag- 

 riculture by irrigation, so far as the 

 same is applied to market gardening, 

 is in the experimental stage in the 

 South. It may be said, however, that 

 no failures have yet been experienced 

 by those farmers who have used irri- 

 gation in their fields or patches of 

 vegetables, grain, tobacco, or orchards. 

 The irrigation of sugar cane may be 

 anticipated at an early date, for the 

 observant cane grower has learned 

 that during every week of drouth the 

 joints on the cane 

 grow shorter and 

 shorter, the ripened 

 stalk often showing a 

 shortage below what 

 a sufficient rainfall 

 would have produced 

 of 10 to 25 per cent. 

 In a cane field cover- 

 ing thousands, or even 

 hundreds, of acres, 

 this loss is tremendous 

 in comparison to the 

 cost of an irrigation 

 plant capable of pre- 

 venting it. The writ- 

 ar believes that irri- 

 gation of sugar cane 

 in districts subject to 

 drouth conditions is 

 one of the certainties 

 of the near future. In 

 southern Texas the 

 irrigation of truck 

 farms from compara- 

 tively shallow artesian 

 wells has already be- 

 come established, and 

 with marked success, 

 and the farmers of 

 Alabama and Georgia 

 also are awakening to 

 the fact that they have 

 within their reach a 

 means of preventing 

 the failure of crops 

 which has become so 

 regular the past few 

 years that farming 

 was being considered 

 a doubtful occupation. 

 In southern Georgia 

 800 bushels of onions 



MR. FRANK BOND. 



Courtesy Division of Publications. 



SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE WILSON. 



per acre, worth $1 per bushel, is a common crop when 

 opportune rains in May and June come to mature the 

 plants. During these months in 1901 and 1902, how- 

 ever, the necessary rains did not come, and complete 

 loss of crop followed, the healthful but odoriferous 

 vegetable withering away in the dry and shrivelling 

 heat. One good irrigation each year would have saved 

 the crop and made the returns maximum in quantity 

 and irreproachable in quality measured from an onion 

 standpoint. 



The irrigation of corn and peas near Rome, Ga., 

 during the past season has demon- 

 strated the great value of this aid to 

 agriculture in the humid States. In 

 addition to saving valuable crops by 

 artificial application of water, there is 

 no doubt that these worn-out lands 

 will be greatly benefited in another 

 way. Greater diversification of crops 

 will be possible, causing a renewal of 

 soils and thus increasing their produc- 

 tivity. 



The chief crop of the South at the 

 present time which is dependent upon 

 irrigation is the rice crop. The ex- 

 periment which was begun upon the 

 "plantation of the Ab- 

 bott Brothers, of 

 Crowley, La., Michi- 

 gan farmers who went 

 South "to grow up 

 with the country" ten 

 or a dozen years ago, 

 has developed into an 

 industry of the great- 

 est importance to the 

 people of the United 

 States. Prior to 1889 

 the upland prairie re- 

 gion of southern Lou- 

 isiana was an im- 

 mense grazing coun- 

 try, occupied almost 

 wholly by the descend- 

 ants of those unfor- 

 tunate French sub- 

 jects who were de- 

 ported from Nova 

 Scotia by British ships 

 about a century and a 

 half ago. Longfellow, 

 in entrancing verse, 

 and George W. Cable, 

 in touching prose, 

 have made pleasant 

 reading out of the 

 hard facts of their 

 exile without mitigat- 

 ing the horror of an 

 exodus that will al- 

 ways seem as unnec- 

 essary as it was de- 

 plorable. During all 

 the years following 

 their exile in 1755, 

 the Acadians, who 

 spoke their native 

 French and taught it 

 to their negro serv- 



