DRY LANDS AND FORESTS 117 



of gross returns in the same region, and Kafir 

 corn produces fifteen million dollars a year in 

 the Far West. 



It is apparent from a consideration of the 

 factors affecting agriculture in the Far West 

 that the problem is not merely one of addi- 

 tional expansion, but principally to hold what 

 ground has already been gained. Witness the 

 retreat of settlers from thirteen million acres 

 in southwestern Texas in the ten years ending 

 1910. Even when the prospective settler is 

 in possession of the last word on seasonal 

 rainfall and temperature and high winds 

 (which any day may pick up his summer- 

 fallowed field and lift it over the fence as a 

 present to his neighbor), when he is in pos- 

 session of official advice as to what highly spe- 

 cialized crops to plant and how to plant and 

 cultivate them, yet he is still as much in the 

 dark concerning the capacity of his own par- 

 ticular acre of half-section as an individual 

 who seeks to determine how long he will live 

 by consulting an actuary's table. 



Every influence making for good or bad 

 in this region of scant rain is an individual 

 problem to each acre. The one rainfall of a 

 season may be so torrential in its downpour 



