USING ARID LANDS BEYOND CAPABILITIES 23) 
cially where underground water is being used. In many areas these 
supplies are already being depleted faster than they are being 
replenished. 
Without irrigation, however, successful farming in the arid and 
semi-arid lands of the southwestern United States requires mainly 
that the farmers accept highly variable and fluctuating rainfall as 
a normal phenonemon. Once they understand this as a cropping 
limitation, they can develop their farm enterprises in harmony 
with the pattern. This means gearing the farm program to the dry 
phase of the weather cycle rather than to the wet periods, as so 
many have done in the past. The first course is an approach to 
successful farming, because it recognizes the capability of the land. 
Any other course courts almost certain failure. 
The attainment of these objectives over a significantly wide area 
of the arid lands requires exercise of local leadership that will move 
people to act as rapidly as facilities and resources will permit. 
Farmers throughout the United States now have suitable admin- 
istrative machinery for this in the form of locally organized soil 
conservation districts. Soil conservation districts now cover most 
of the agricultural lands of the nation, and include within their 
boundaries about 80% of these arid and semi-arid lands in the 
southwestern United States. Districts are regarded as highly effec- 
tive mechanisms for solving soil and water problems in an arid 
region as well as elsewhere in the nation. 
Needed Research 
Information gained from further research should prove helpful 
in keeping arid land use within the limits of capability. Such 
additional investigation might well be conducted along the follow- 
ing lines: 
1. Secure information that will make it possible to define more 
sharply the differences between the characteristics of arid land 
suitable for cultivated crop production and those unsuited for such 
use. 
2. Develop more adaptable grasses and legumes for these areas. 
3. Work further on the possible uses of commercial fertilizers 
for such lands. 
