THE BENEFITS OF TILLAGE 109 



Besides Durum wheat, Turkestan alfalfa, Kaffir 

 corn, sorghum, emmer, dwarf milo maize, and a 

 number of forage grasses are grown under dry 

 farming. Rye and barley are also grown some- 

 what. It is important to sow less seed than in 

 humid farming, 30 to 35 Ibs. per acre is usually 

 enough. This seed should be grown in semi-arid, 

 not in humid, sections. 



The present interest in dry farming in many 

 parts of the West amounts to little less than a 

 speculative fever. Dry farming companies are 

 being organised to plant farms of 3,000 acres or 

 larger. The values on " desert" land are appre- 

 ciating rapidly, in some cases running from $2.50 

 to $50 an acre in two or three years. Undoubtedly 

 dry farming is doing much and will do vastly more 

 to reclaim land formerly considered worthless be- 

 cause of lack of water for irrigation. Next to 

 irrigation it is the most important agricultural 

 practice of our times in the arid West. Yet it is 

 altogether likely that land will be used for dry 

 farming which ought never to be cleared of sage 

 brush. The present enthusiasm over dry farming 

 bears some of the ear-marks of a boom. There are 

 bound to be some disappointed and some ruined 

 practitioners of dry farming, just as there were 

 thousands of disappointed and ruined "rain- 

 belters" in western Kansas, Nebraska, and the 

 Dakotas twenty years ago. Undoubtedly the 

 area that can be brought under profitable dry farm- 

 ing may be greatly extended, as better methods for 

 husbanding scanty rainfall become more gener- 

 ally known and practised. But there is an 

 unusual amount of risk connected with it, and no 

 man should undertake this kind of farming until 

 he has investigated it thoroughly. Whenever 



