FARM » ORGANIZATION IN SOUTHERN ARIZONA. 21 



the farm direct would fall considerably short of furnishing a com- 

 fortable living and the education of the children to an average farm 

 family on the irrigated farms in southern Arizona, even if the family 

 were out of debt; and the shortage would be much greater if the 

 family were obliged to borrow much of the money required for the 

 purchase and development of the farm. 



TYPES OF FARMING. 



With the exception of a few small fruit and poultry farms, alfalfa is 

 the basis of all farming in the irrigated valleys of southern Arizona. 

 There are always a few hundred acres of experimental crops in this 

 region, for Arizona farmers have long been awake to the limitations 

 of alfalfa farming, and a few thousand acres of grain crops are grown, 

 the grain crops being used as a means of rotating the alfalfa fields 

 and for growth upon land not sufficiently well supplied with water 

 to make the alfalfa crop a reliable one; but in the main a thrifty 

 r.ifalfa field taking in most of the farm has been the ultimate goal 

 of by far the greater number of farmers who have settled in these 

 districts. 



On 627 farms, the records of which were used in the study of type, 

 there were 39,803 acres in alfalfa, out of a total crop acreage of 

 59,932. This is 66.4 per cent of the total crop acreage, and this per- 

 centage holds good for farms of all sizes except those smaller than, 

 20 acres ; and even in this group of small farms over 50 per cent of 

 the total crop acreage is in alfalfa. 



The type problem, then, for Arizona farmers has been largely to 

 find the most profitable form in which to market the alfalfa crop. 

 Efforts in this direction have resulted in the following types of farm- 

 ing: Hay farming, sale of pasture, production of alfalfa seed, daily 

 farming, fattening beef cattle, diversified farming, 1 and production 

 of miscellaneous types of live stock. These will be discussed in the 

 order named. In considering the tables herein presented, however, 

 it should be remembered that it is unsafe to draw conclusions from 

 averages where only a small number of farms appear in any group, 

 and that in general the larger the number of farms appearing in a 

 group the more reliable are the conclusions to be drawn from average 

 results. 



HAY FARMING. 



Of 627 farms 85 were engaged chiefly in the production and sale 

 of alfalfa hay, obtaining an average of 69.7 per cent of their total 

 receipts from this source, while 40 more combined the sale of hay 

 with some other enterprise, giving such enterprise about equal 



1 All farms are classified as diversified when the interest of the operator has heen about equally distrib- 

 uted among three or more enterprises. 



