360 DRY-FARMING 
Washington learned dry-farming from their Cali- 
fornia or Utah neighbors, for until 1880 communica- 
tion between Washington and the colonies in Cali- 
fornia and Utah was very difficult, though, of course, 
there was always the possibility of accounts of 
agricultural methods being carried from place to. 
place by the moving emigrants. It is fairly certain 
that the Great Plains area did not draw upon the 
far West for dry-farm methods. The climatic 
conditions are considerably different and the Great 
Plains people always considered themselves as 
living in a very humid country as compared with 
the states of the far West. It may be concluded, 
therefore, that there were four independent pioneers 
in dry-farming in United States. Moreover, hun- 
dreds, probably thousands, of individual farmers 
over the semiarid region have practiced dry-farming 
thirty to fifty years with methods developed by 
themselves. 
Although these different. dry-farm sections were 
developed independently, yet the methods which 
they have finally adopted are practically identical 
and include deep plowing, unless the subsoil is very 
lifeless; fall plowing; the planting of fall grain 
wherever fall plowing is possible; and clean summer 
fallowing. About 1895 the word began to pass 
from mouth to mouth that probably nearly all the 
lands in the great arid and semiarid sections of the 
United States could be made to produce profitable 
