TRACTION ENGINE IN DRY -FARMING 255 



This one advantage, capacity, has made him master of his 

 environment. Were there no other consideration in its favor, 

 the tractor would still hold an important place in dry-land 

 agriculture. Methods vary with conditions and with people. 

 Each section gains its ends independently. Yet into every 

 part of the great semi-arid plains the traction engine has found 

 its way, and proved its usefulness. A review of farm practice 

 in dry-farming districts reveals no condition where it is not a 

 most useful servant. 



Dry-land agriculture has its degrees in dryness. There are 

 regions having from five to ten inches of rainfall annually, 

 where, with the best methods of soil tillage and moisture con- 

 servation, a crop may be raised no oftener than every other 

 year. There are regions with from ten to fifteen inches of 

 rainfall, where two crops may be grown in succession on the 

 moisture stored up during a fallow year, plus that which is 

 precipitated during the two growing seasons. Then there is 

 the dry-land agriculture in which, with eighteen to twenty-two 

 inches of rainfall, as in western Nebraska and Kansas, a crop 

 may be grown every year. Rainfall is not the only factor, 

 however. In the northern sections the evaporation is much 

 less than in the southern, and an area with a rainfall of thirty 

 inches in Texas or Oklahoma may entail drier dry-farming than 

 one in Saskatchewan with half the annual precipitation. 



In western Canada, the winter temperatures are low, 

 and the summer season short. Evaporation is not so rapid 

 as farther south, and crops may be grown successfully with 

 much less rainfall. In breaking the virgin prairie, it is cus- 

 tomary to allow the grass to obtain a good start, then to break 

 it rapidly, as shallow as possible. By plowing only two to two 

 and one half inches deep, the crown and the roots of the grass 

 are separated. The long, gently curving moldboards of the 

 breaker plows turn the sod upside down, leaving the surface 

 in smooth, ribbon-like furrows. The best farmers roll the land 

 immediately, so that no large air spaces may be left between 



