48 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



THE NATIONAL LESSON AT TULSA. 



The Dry Fanning Congress Was Not a Congress 

 of Dry Farmers. 



By Douglas Malcolm of the I. H. C. Service Bureau. 



Omitting the brass bands, the military display, 

 the fireworks both pyrotechnical and verbal, the 

 Eighth International Dry Farming Congress which 

 was held at Tulsa, Okla., from October 22 to 31, 

 inclusive, marked another milestone of that progress 

 which should be the goal of every farmer and 

 farmers' wife of the Northern Hemisphere. It was 

 the most stupendous testimony to the modern the- 

 ory of agriculture, that head work plus hand work 

 means success, that the writer ever witnessed. 

 From origins which as recently as ten years ago 

 were considered leagues beyond the dead line came 

 wheat weighing 62 l / 2 pounds to the bushel and 38 

 bushels to the acre, potatoes weighing over 5 

 pounds each, squashes over 3 feet long, alfalfa 

 making 5 tons to the acre ; and corn that would 

 make the average corn belt farmer envious and sad. 



Five large buildings were required to furnish 

 sufficient room for the exhibits which poured in, 



the long rows of soil products, was an indirect but 

 deadly protest against American carelessness in 

 farm methods. It was shown at Tulsa that to a man 

 who is familiar with the general farming from 

 Florida to the Dakotas, dry farming is nothing more 

 nor less than applying, to land which suffers from 

 lack of rain, principles which produce the best re- 

 sults when applied to land enjoying plenty of rain. 

 It was a nation-wide lesson on good farming. 

 It proved that the successful rules of good farming 

 were the good rules of successful farming. The 

 pioneer settlers on practically desert land were left 

 to demonstrate by practical results what farm jour- 

 nals, government schools and the service bureaus 

 of the big machine companies have tried to teach, 

 that the fundamentals of farming are deeper plow- 

 ing, better cultivation, more animal fertilizer, and 

 better seed selection. It was claimed by those who 

 had experimented for years that in breaking up the 

 sod it is more profitable to turn it under from 10 to 

 12 inches than from 4 to 8, which is the popular 

 depth. By actual experiment between two acres in 

 the same field, land treated by deep tillage yielded 

 $100 more in produce in 10 years than a similar 

 acre plowed only 6 inches. In another case in 



J. W. Lough & Mark Co.'s Irrigation Farm, Scott County, Kansas. Irrigated from Underflow by Layne & Bowler Pumps. Some of this 

 Land Sown to Alfalfa Shows a Clear Profit of $80.78 per Acre. This Land was Valued at $25.00 per Acre before It was Irrigated. 



not only from states and counties, but from indi- 

 vidual farmers. Many thousand dollars, much farm 

 machinery, and several cups were awarded as prizes 

 to the various exhibitors. But these awards and 

 prizes were merely symbols badges of recognition. 

 The real winners, as shown by the Congress, were 

 the two nations, Canada and the United States 

 winners in that the food problem was being solved 

 within their borders, and winners in the possession 

 of a rural population with the spirit to brave un- 

 friendly natural conditions and the brains to con- 

 quer them. 



The American farmer, since first he stretched 

 his hand out to McCormick for his reaper, has stood 

 apart from other nations because of his progressive- 

 ness. He has stood apart, also, because of his in- 

 gratitude to the soil upon which he depended. Land 

 which in England or France has been yielding boun- 

 tifully for a thousand years would have been hope- 

 lessly depleted in a generation by the average 

 methods followed in this country. 



The Dry Farming Congress, from the speeches 

 of the illustrious agriculturists who were there, to 



bringing out the value of humus as a factor in in- 

 creasing the water holding power of soils, it was 

 found that in 100 pounds of ordinary sandy soil 

 there was 19 pounds of water, while on the other 

 hand, the same amount of garden soil, well filled 

 with humus, contained 53 pounds of water, or nearly 

 three times as much. By deep plowing before the 

 rains, followed by good cultivation to save the 

 stored water, the amount of water available for 

 plants can be increased nearly fifty per cent. With 

 such an increase there should never, even in the 

 driest sections, be such a scarcity of water as to 

 cause a loss of the crop. The best insurance against 

 drouth next summer is deep plowing this winter 

 and early spring. Turn the land, if possible, to a 

 depth of at least eight inches, and then follow this 

 plowing with some implement in each furrow that 

 will stir the soil at least another four or six inches. 

 With such preparation before the rains come, such 

 soil should and will absorb enough water to insure 

 a crop next summer. 



Another significant event which characterized 

 the Tulsa Congress was the assembling of the third 



