108 IRRIGATION ROUND TABLE 



pose we use manure and fertilizer freely; suppose we exercise every 

 precaution to get good seed, perhaps raising our own; suppose we 

 bring all these factors under control. They are all of no avail 

 unless the last one is brought under control, and that last one may 

 be and frequently is the one we are going to talk about this after- 

 noon, or it may be another one. Before we get through, we will 

 have to emphasize the fact that irrigation is of little value unless 

 we make right the other factors that I have mentioned. 



But for the present, let us emphasize the fact that all our out- 

 lay, or a very large proportion of it, is wasted unless the water is 

 there. A plant cannot live and carry on its work without water 

 any more than can a man, and it isn't any better satisfied with an 

 abundance of food without water than is a man who lines up to a 

 banquet but who hasn't had a drink for a month. 



We have heard a great deal about irrigation; we have heard 

 about it in the West. We think about it in the arid regions where 

 they have only eight or ten inches of rainfall a year. We hear about 

 regions where they have twenty inches a year, and where they are 

 growing good crops without irrigation. We look at the weather 

 map of our own State, and we find that our rainfall runs from thirty 

 to thirty-five or forty inches. We would naturally conclude from 

 this that we have an abundance of rainfall; but the problem is not 

 based upon the amount of rainfall we have, but rather upon the 

 distribution. If we make a map or chart showing the rainfall by 

 months for a given year, we will not find that the rainfall gradually 

 increases as the growing season opens, comes to some satisfactory 

 point and stays there until crops are mature. A rainfall tracing 

 runs away up some single months. We have had as much as eight 

 or nine inches in one month here at Ithaca, and have suffered from 

 drought in other months of the same year. Perhaps during the 

 months following or preceding you will find the rainfall below an 

 inch. Thus it is a question of distribution. 



How are we going to meet this situation? Our investment is 

 placed. It is placed permanently. We have put a great deal of 

 money into our preparation for a crop. This one factor stands 

 between us and the returns that we think ought to be ours. The 

 question before us this afternoon is : Can we apply water to our crops 

 in such a way as to bring us increased returns without unduly in- 

 creasing the cost.^ We must keep this point in mind. It makes no 

 difference how nice a gasoline engine we have, and how perfectly 



