DRY-FARMING CONGRESS, WICHITA, 1914 



37 



pioneer irrigation state, and we claim it to be the pioneer dry-farming 

 state. I wish to convey the sincere regrets of Doctor* Widtsoe on his in- 

 ability to attend, due to illness in his family. 



Away back in 1847, when the pioneers blazed their way across these 

 prairies and located in the sagebrush of Utah, they began the work of 

 taking the streams from the mountains and putting the water on the land. 

 They are the first people in modern times successfully to have practiced 

 irrigation. An insufficient water supply was found in some sections and 

 some of the farmers found to their dismay that they would have to get 

 along without irrigation at all and so they began dry-farming. To the 

 surprise and astonishment of those people, the crops grew and thrived and 

 succeeded and for many years thereafter they cultivated those mountain 

 sides; and Major Powell in 1863, reports he found splendid fields of grain 

 grown by dry-farming. We have had, during the past year, magnificent 

 examples of cultivation of soil by dry-farming methods. Never before have we 

 had such splendid methods of farming, and for this we give credit to this 

 organization, the Dry-Farmnig Congress, which we had the pleasure of 

 entertaining some years ago at Salt Lake City. 



It is useless, of course, to plant wheat on the desert Unless we can 

 take care of that wheat. Our great problem has been to get the farmers 

 to utilize the wheat land to better advantage. You will realize we are 

 very close to that splendid growing section of Southern California, a sec- 

 tion of the country that is growing more rapidly than any section of the 

 United States today, and so our efforts are being made .to get the farmers 

 to raise the beef steers, hogs, etc., and I can say we have had marked suc- 

 cess along these lines during the past few years. 



The state maintains in Utah a number of experiment farms located in 

 different sections conducted in cooperation with the United States Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture. The one at Nephi is well known; in fact, the fame of 

 that station is worldwide. It had a great deal to do with the permanent 

 success of dry-farming efforts throughout the West. The annual precipi- 

 tation at Nephi is about 14 inches, and I was glad to see exhibits of the 

 farmer who lives within two miles of our station. The average yield was 

 67 1-5 bushels per acre. Of course, the precipitation factor is only one of 

 the factors. I take it the question of evaporation is as great a question. 

 Then there is the factor of soils — how will the soil retain the moisture, etc. 



I might say just a word in addition with relation to the lands where 

 the precipitation is less than 10 inches, soils deep, rich and fertile, located 

 on the coast, where the climate is ideal, but yet so far have not been cul- 

 tivated. Underlying a large acreage, we have a large body of water, vary- 

 ing in depth from 20 to 50 and 70 feet. The state has undertaken the work 

 of developing this land and as a result of this farming, we have had located 

 in this valley more than 350 families during the past six months. 



I believe in the work of this Congress — I believe in the reclamation of 

 the desert — I believe in the establishment of homes for the multitude of 

 people who are bound to come to us from Europe. We had hoped, in the 

 Southwest, that with the opening of the Panama-Pacific Exposition next 



