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DRY-FARMING CONGRESS, WICHITA, 1914 



Address tof Mr. Sherman 

 DRY-FARMING AND LIVESTOCK. 



The United States, developed as no other nation ever developed in the 

 world's history, has been a country of diversified production. 



Necessity compelled the pioneer to supply most of his needs from his 

 own land, and it may be that this, probably more than anything else, diver- 

 sified farming which is at the foundation of our wonderful progress. 

 When the strength of the North was measured against that of the South 

 in the War of the Rebellion, the North conquered, and it may be that while 

 slavery played an important part, at the same time, the diversified farming 

 of the North against the more special crop of cotton in the South played 

 no unimportant part in deciding the conflict. No single-product country 

 has ever been able to progress in any way compared with a country of diver- 

 sified products. This lesson, in its broad general application, should be in 

 the minds of everyone engaged in agriculture in any form in the dry- 

 farming region. 



Already, there is under way in the great dry-farming region an ex- 

 tended movement to grow feed for livestock, but this tendency can be, and 

 is, susceptible of enormous extension. 



I have seen fairly good crops of sorghum grown in the Sulphur Springs 

 Valley in Arizona. Draws, low-lying places where the soil is good, can be 

 found in nearly all localities where ten acres, 100, and sometimes 1000 acres 

 in one body can be made to produce forage crops suitable for cattle feed. 



With a silo, it may not be necessary to use this feed a good grazing 

 year, but as it can be carried over from year to year, it is available not 

 only during bad winters; but, also, in those years of drought summers 

 where neither grass nor anything else will grow. This is a characteristic 

 of the dry-farming region — years of plenty and years of pronounced 

 scarcity. Preparation during the years of plenty for the bad years is a 

 problem in conservation that, generally speaking, the dry-farming region 

 has not attacked. Preparation for the hard times is not one of the char- 

 acteristics of the great Western people, whether it be in the dry-farming, 

 or in other agricultural region. 



While the silo may be the best method of storing and carrying over the 

 forage from one year to another, it is not the only method. It must be 

 remembered, however, that a silo costs money, and the farmers are, many 

 of them, circumscribed in their resources. What they would like to do, and 

 what they can do, are two very different things. I have fed corn fodder 

 that had been in stack two years, and I know it was relished by the cattle. 

 If corn fodder can be carried over in stack, so can any of the varieties of 

 the sorghums if they be well stacked. Again, running any of this forage 

 through a shredder — or an old threshing machine will often times serve 

 in place of a shredder — makes better feed the second than it was the first 

 year. As to its keeping properties, the peth within the stalk that is ex- 

 posed by the process of shredding absorbs the rain or snow falling upon it 

 so that it can't penetrate within the stack. Provided that it is dry when 



