150 RURAL CALIFORNIA 



strated adaptation to the needs of small farmers in 

 interior valleys, which is conspicuous to this day. It 

 was on the demonstration by the colonists -that large 

 production was later undertaken and found profitable. 

 However, in California the planting of sorghums 

 has usually been for temporary needs, the land soon 

 going into alfalfa or fruit-growing. For this rea- 

 son, the crop in this State has not reached the large 

 figures of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and New Mex- 

 ica which, with California, produced in 1919 nine- 

 teen-twentieths of all the grain sorghum credited 

 to the seven states listed as commercial producers. 

 These states produce, in fact, nearly the whole sor- 

 ghum grain and forage production of this country, 

 largely because in the southern extensions of the In- 

 dian corn-belt into regions where heat is high and 

 the air scant of moisture, sorghum is more depend- 

 able and productive than maize. This is the chief 

 ground of the popularity of sorghums in California. 

 Since the uses of sorghum grain as a substitute for 

 corn and barley in large scale feeding of swine and 

 poultry have been amply demonstrated and its 

 availability recognized as a summer catch-crop to 

 follow winter-grown grain, if a moderate irrigation 

 supply is available, and as sorghum rivals corn as a 

 silo crop, its production was largely extended by the 

 exhortation to grow all possible stock feed to "help 

 win the war." The sorghum grain product of 1918 

 in California was estimated to be worth $7,889,000 

 (and in 1920 four and a half million bushels worth 

 $4,850,000), while the capacity of the State for its 



