10 



AGKICULTUKE IN THE SEMIARID GREAT PLAINS. 



been pointed out that agricultural factors are of two classes, natural 

 and artificial, and one of these sets of factors is as important as the 

 other. It is just as essential to have a market as to have a crop. 

 Wliile the forces of the first group are fijced, those of the second are 

 constantly changing. Whatever differences there may be between 

 the conditions that surround the settler on the dry lands to-day and 

 those that faced the settler of a generation ago on the same land, 

 these differences are not in soil, climate, or native vegetation. They 

 are economic and industrial differences — differences in the macliinery 

 available, the methods of cultivation practiced, the varieties of crops 

 at hand, and the prices of products. The changes in these respects 

 are great, so great that the total combination of all conditions make, 

 as it were, almost another country. The improvement in machinery 

 is so great that Prof. Snyder, of the substation at North Platte, Nebr., 

 has said, ''Take away the disk, the press drill, and the corn macliinery 

 and western Nebraska would still be a place for the cattleman." 

 A parallel statement with regard to the crops that have been intro- 

 duced during the last 15 years may be made, but great as is the 

 effect of these changes the advance in prices of products is of still 

 greater importance. 



Where success has been attained it has in almost every instance been 

 due to more than normally favorable seasons combined with high 

 prices. There does not appear to have been any great and general 

 revolution in methods of cultivation except what has been brought 

 about by the introduction of new machinery. In spite of the fact 

 that many periodicals have published glowing accounts of a wonder- 

 ful revolution in methods that has turned the dry region into the most 

 prosperous of farms, there is little foundation for such stories. Other- 

 wise than to use new machinery, the average farmer of the dry country 

 has improved his practices but little. His increased prosperity is due 

 more to unusually favorable seasons and to high prices of grain and 

 stock than to better methods of cultivation or management. 



Nevertheless, a very few exceptional farmej 3, unusually progressive 

 men, who study their work and the conditions to be met, have changed 

 their methods radically and have met with better success. 



EXTENT OF THE SEMIARID REGION. 



Some writers and experimenters consider the semiarid region as 

 including all the Plains as far east as the ninety-eighth meridian, and 

 thus include a large area of land receiving an average of as much as 

 27 or 28 inches of rainfah annually, which has supported a prosperous 

 agricultural population for a generation, and in many portions of 

 which farms are readily salable at $70 to $100 an acre. Some of the 

 greatest winter wheat, corn, and hog producing counties in Kansas 



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