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DRY FARMING CONGRESS. 



Platte, Nebraska; Hays and Garden City, Kansas. The independent sta- 

 tions are located at Belle Fourche, South Dakota; Akron, Colorado; Dal- 

 hart and Amarillo, Texas. An additional co-operative station will in all 

 probability be established at Williston, North Dakota, early in the spring, 

 making twelve stations that will carry on work during the coming season. 

 At five of these stations two years' results have been obtained; at two a 

 single year's results; and at the other five the land has been fitted and 

 the organization effected preparatory to beginning field work as soon as 

 spring opens. The general plan of the work at all these twelve stations 

 is the same, so the results obtained at each station are strictly comparable 

 with those of all the others. 



In planning this work I have freely availed myself of the counsel and 

 advice of practically all the investigators, both in the U, S. Department of 

 Agriculture and in the State Experiment Stations of the states of the Great 

 Plains who are engaged in investigations along lines having a bearing on the 

 problems involved in dry land agriculture. The technical details of the 

 field work are under the immediate supervision of trained experts located at 

 each of the stations, who act under the direction of the specialists of the 

 U. S. Department of Agriculture in the various lines of investigation. These 

 field men are all brought into Washington at the close of each season and 

 the results of their season's work carefully analyzed, compared and 

 recorded under the direction of the specialists in each of the several lines 

 of work already enumerated, and in the case of the co-operative stations the 

 results of each season's work is also sent to the State Experiment Station 

 co-operating and there subject to criticism and analysis. 



All of the stations are equipped with necessary tools, implements, etc., 

 for carrying on the field work and weighing and measuring the results. 

 The plats are very accurately laid off. Great care was taken in the 

 selection of the land in order to insure uniformity and the work has in 

 every way been conducted according to the most approved methods. Each 

 station also has a full set of instruments for measuring the various meteoro- 

 logical and physical factors, which work is under the supervision of Dr. 

 L. J. Briggs, Physicist of the Bureau of Plant Industry, who will have some- 

 thing to say to you on this subject. At nearly all of the stations work in 

 Cereal Investigations is being conducted by W. M. Jardine, Assistant Cer- 

 ealist, who will address you. At some of the stations investigations in Soil 

 Bacteriology have been carried on. The Soil Bacteriologist is present at 

 this meeting and may have something of interest to present to you. At 

 each station from seventy-five to one hundred and fifty plats are used for 

 the investigations in crop rotation and cultivation methods. They are 

 divided into three groups: one for testing methods of soil preparation, con- 

 tinuous cropping with and without special precautions for moisture con- 

 servation, alternate cropping and summer tillage; one for testing the effect 

 of crop sequence and time of plowing; and one for testing the effect of 

 humus conservation by the plowing under of green manure crops, both 

 legumes and nonlegumes being used. The work is so arranged as to allow 

 of an elaborate and accurate system of cross checking, not only between the 



