506 



THE IERIGATION AGE.' 



ARID AGRICULTURE 



BY 

 B. C. BUFFUM, M. S. 



Managero f the Wyoming Plant and Seed Breeding Company, 

 Worland. Former Professor of Agriculture in the Uni- 

 versity of Wyoming and the Colorado Agricultural 

 College, and Director of the Wyoming 

 Agricultural Experiment 

 Station. 



PROF. B. C. BUFFUM. 



Irrigation Farming. 



The small boy eats too many 

 green apples just to keep them from 

 going to waste, and the farmer ac- 

 quires too much land just because 

 he wants the earth. The relation 

 between the size of a farm and its 

 economical working and management 

 has not been given the attention it 

 deserves. Under humid conditions a 

 man could hold much land without 

 feeling any especially baneful effects. 

 Under irrigation the whole problem 

 is changed. In the West, land is 

 abundant, water is scarce ; land is 

 cheap, water is expensive. Invest- 

 ments in water rights are too val- 

 able to lie idle. The farmer has less time to do things and 

 get them done in season. Intensive culture characterizes ir- 

 rigation agriculture. When a crop needs irrigating, the need 

 is urgent. It cannot be put off for the whole crop and the 

 margin of time may be too small to make it profitable to put 

 off farm operations on any part of the field. Maximum re- 

 turns are only made on small fields, well tilled and irrigated. 

 A farmer may be self-supporting on ten to twenty acres. He 

 finds all he can attend to on forty acres to sixty acres and 

 generally has too much land if he tries to farm more than 

 eighty acres. This will depend largely on the kind of crop 

 raised. If intensive cropping is done with sugar beets or 

 potatoes in proper rotation the small farm pays best. If 

 the land is all in alfalfa and pasture, larger areas can be 

 managed. 



It is safe to say that a great majority of new comers to 

 the West buy at the start from two to ten times as much 

 land and water right as they should. 



There are many specialties in irrigation farming. Rais- 

 ing crops for sale is pure farming. This kind of farming re- 

 quires special knowledge of the subject in order to keep up 

 the soil fertility, and practice culture suitable to the crop 

 produced. 



Mixed farming is surer requires more general and less 

 special knowledge, helps in the economy of living, diversifies 

 the farmer's interests, keeps up soil fertility and makes one 

 thing pay expenses while another may build a bigger bank 

 account. The products from poultry, cows and pigs distribute 

 the money income through the year, and make it less neces- 

 sary to borrow money at the bank, at interest, to pay expenses 

 until crops may be sold. Garden and animal products se- 

 cured with home labor save important items of cash outlay 

 in the household expenses. There may be more or less 

 pasture or range to use which will decrease the expense of 

 keeping stock. The general farmer will succeed better if he 

 keeps stock and markets his crops on four feet. 



Our soil culture directions for dry farming pertain as 

 well to irrigation, except the summer-fallow, which is un- 

 necessary, with plenty of water to be applied when and where 

 needed. With water and advanced knowledge of how to main- 

 tain soil fertility, there is no need of letting any land rest 

 from crop production. Soil culture needs to be given care- 

 ful and intelligent consideration and special systems are being 

 worked out for the separate intensive crops. Plowing need 

 not be done so deep at first and on some soils shallow plowing 

 may give better results than deep plowing. More attention 

 needs to be given to leveling and smoothing the land where 

 irrigation is practiced. The right kind of land preparation 

 is a permanent improvement which pays from the first be- 

 cause it saves much future expense and trouble. Irrigation 

 farming is a "new agriculture'' in the West, and a man needs 

 to know it in order to meet with the success which should 

 crown his efforts. On the same soils and under the same con- 



ditions the man who knows how will get fifty bushels of 

 wheat while the one who does not will get twenty-five bushels. 

 Right culture will give one man 300 sacks of potatoes per 

 acre and wrong culture another man 50 sacks per acre. There 

 is a considerable profit to the man who gets 300 sacks of 

 potatoes if he uses $40.00 expense per acre to raise the crops, 

 over the man who gets 50 sacks by an expense of $15.00 

 per acre. One man nets $185.00 per acre and the other makes 

 $22.50 per acre. The man with the large yield probably works 

 only a forty-acre farm, and from twenty acres of it in po- 

 tatoes banks $3,700.00 for that crop. The second man is 

 probably trying to farm eighty acres, and from forty acres 

 in potatoes he banks $900.00. The little farm well tilled has 

 brought its owner over four hundred per cent the largest 

 net income. The point made is that good tillage for irrigation 

 means thorough tillage and special systems of soil and crop 

 management to produce the best returns. 



Fertility is measured by the power of soil to produce 

 crops. As we have shown, moisture is an essential element 

 of fertility. Other elements are nitrogen and minerals which 

 are direct plant foods. In much of the irrigated region the 

 waters used contain large amounts of dissolved fertilizing 

 elements. It has been shown that waters which contain much 

 silt carry with them large amounts of dissolved plant foods. 

 Studies of the waters used in irrigation from the Rio Grande 

 River showed that where water was used to the depth of one 

 foot it deposited 955 pounds of potassium, 58 pounds of phos- 

 phoric acid, and 53 pounds of nitrogen to each acre. This 

 would be a sufficient supply of nitrogen for more than thirty 

 bushels of wheat per acre, enough phosphoric acid for thirty 

 bushels per acre, and enough potassium to last for thirty 

 years, if as much wheat was raised on the land each year. 

 Such large amounts of soil fertility are unusual, however, 

 but even our clear waters from mountain streams carry with 

 them a considerable amount of silt and plant food in the 

 late spring and early summer. Under irrigation such large 

 annual crops are taken off the soil that the subject of avail- 

 able plant food becomes an important one. Our soils will 

 wear out unless a good farm- practice is inaugurated which 

 will keep them productive. With a proper system of 

 rotation and cropping, adding plant food to the soil in 

 the form of barnyard manure, the waste of feed pens, 

 green manure and growing of leguminous crops will keep 

 the soils always richly productive. Only in special loca- 

 tions or with special crops will the use of any artificial 

 fertilizer be found advisable. 



There has been much useless alarm about alkali. Our 

 soils are very rich in soluble salts and in places these 

 accumulate to such an extent that they destroy produc- 

 tiveness. The alkali salts are dissolved by water, and 

 where there is not good drainage below, this water evap- 

 orating again from the surface, leaves the alkali behind as 

 a white incrustation where it is most detrimental to plants. 

 In nearly all cases the alkali accumulation is the result 

 of bad management, generally of over-irrigation or of 

 continuously leaving the water running on the soil. In 

 many parts of the West where the native sod is irrigated 

 for the production of hay, the water is allowed to run 

 for weeks or months over the same land, and such irriga- 

 tion is apt to produce bad results. Some irrigation waters 

 contain large amounts of alkali salts which are deposited 

 with the water applied. 



There are two kinds of alkalj which are found in dif- 

 ferent sections of the arid region. In the mountain states 

 where the climate is cool, the white alkali predominates. 

 White alkali is a mixture of the sulphates and chlorides of 

 soda and magnesia. In the warmer regions the alkali is 

 composed of carbonate of soda and is called black alkali. 

 One-tenth of one per cent of black alkali will prevent the 

 growth of useful plants on the soil, while some crops will 

 stand as much as one per cent of white alkali salts in the 

 surface soil. These alkali salts in small amount are im- 

 portant aids in the fertility of the land. They make plants 

 grow faster and better than where they are not present. 

 The black alkali destroys the soil tilth, puddling it and 

 making it dark in color. The principal detrimental effect 

 of white alkali seems to be that it retards or prevents the 

 germination of seed. If the salt can be diluted or washed 

 out before planting and a good stand of plants obtained 

 from the seed, .the crop may grow to maturity and make 

 a good yield. 



The black alkalies of California have been corrected 

 by changing them into white alkali which is less detri- 







