106 SOILS 



farming, but the term is commonly understood to 

 mean the growing of crops in the arid or semi-arid 

 regions without irrigation. In recent -years much 

 interest has been manifested in dry farming, and 

 its methods have been applied with increasing 

 success over a constantly widening territory. The 

 sections where it is practised are chiefly eastern 

 North Dakota, eastern South Dakota, western 

 Kansas, western Oklahoma, central Texas, eastern 

 Washington, eastern Oregon, and scattered areas 

 in Idaho, California, Utah, Montana, Colorado, 

 New Mexico, Wyoming and Arizona. These 

 regions include approximately 300,000,000 acres. 

 Nevada is said to be the only arid state in which dry 

 farming cannot be practised successfully. 



For the most part dry farming is practised on the 

 border land of aridity, and on land in arid regions 

 that it is impossible or impracticable to irrigate. 

 There are many millions of acres of land in the 

 arid and semi-arid regions that are above the 

 "ditch line"; that is, they lie so high that the ex- 

 pense of bringing water to them would be greater 

 than the returns. Of such a nature, for example, 

 are the high bench lands in the Cache Valley, Utah. 

 Moreover, the amount of water in the arid and 

 semi-arid regions that is available for irrigation is 

 sufficient to water but a small portion of the entire 

 area. Dry farming is the only kind of farming 

 possible on millions of acres of land in the West. 



Dry farming is an attempt to grow the common 

 crops with the minimum amount of moisture. 

 Most of the sections in which it has been successful 

 have a rainfall of from 10 to 15 inches, from 2 to 

 5 inches of which, and often more, is lost by drain- 

 age and seepage. Some dry farming sections have 

 less than 10 inches of rainfall, yet crops are grown 



