Dry-Farming | Page 7

purposes. Irrigation when fully developed may reclaim not to exceed 5 per cent of this area. From any point of view, therefore, the possibilities involved in dry-farming in the United States are immense.
Dry-farm area of the world
Dry-farming is a world problem. Aridity is a condition met and to be overcome upon every continent. McColl estimates that in Australia, which is somewhat larger than the continental United States of America, only one third of the whole surface receives above 20 inches of rainfall annually; one third receives from 10 to 20 inches, and one third receives less than lO inches. That is, about 1,267,000,000 acres in Australia are subject to reclamation by dry-farming methods. This condition is not far from that which prevails in the United States, and is representative of every continent of the world. The following table gives the proportions of the earth's land surface under various degrees of annual precipitations:--
Annual Precipitation Proportion of Earth's Land Surface Under 10 inches 25.0 per cent From 10 to 20 inches 30.0 per cent From 20 to 40 inches 20.0 per cent From 40 to 60 inches 11.0 per cent From 60 to 80 inches 9.0 per cent From 100 to 120 inches 4.0 per cent From 120 to 160 inches 0.5 per cent Above 160 inches 0.5 per cent Total 100 per cent
Fifty-five per cent, or more than one half of the total land surface of the earth, receives an annual precipitation of less than 20 inches, and must be reclaimed, if at all, by dry-farming. At least 10 per cent more receives from 20 to 30 inches under conditions that make dry-farming methods necessary. A total of about 65 per cent of the earth's land surface is, therefore, directly interested in dry-farming. With the future perfected development of irrigation systems and practices, not more than 10 per cent will be reclaimed by irrigation. Dry-farming is truly a problem to challenge the attention of the race.

CHAPTER IV
DRY-FARM AREAS.--GENERAL CLIMATIC FEATURES

The dry-farm territory of the United States stretches from the Pacific seaboard to the 96th parallel of longitude, and from the Canadian to the Mexican boundary, making a total area of nearly 1,800,000 square miles. This immense territory is far from being a vast level plain. On the extreme east is the Great Plains region of the Mississippi Valley which is a comparatively uniform country of rolling hills, but no mountains. At a point about one third of the whole distance westward the whole land is lifted skyward by the Rocky Mountains, which cross the country from south to northwest. Here are innumerable peaks, canons, high table-lands, roaring torrents, and quiet mountain valleys. West of the Rockies is the great depression known as the Great Basin, which has no outlet to the ocean. It is essentially a gigantic level lake floor traversed in many directions by mountain ranges that are offshoots from the backbone of the Rockies. South of the Great Basin are the high plateaus, into which many great chasms are cut, the best known and largest of which is the great Canon of the Colorado. North and east of the Great Basin is the Columbia River Basin characterized by basaltic rolling plains and broken mountain country. To the west, the floor of the Great Basin is lifted up into the region of eternal snow by the Sierra Nevada Mountains, which north of Nevada are known as the Cascades. On the west, the Sierra Nevadas slope gently, through intervening valleys and minor mountain ranges, into the Pacific Ocean. It would be difficult to imagine a more diversified topography than is possessed by the dry-farm territory of the United States.
Uniform climatic conditions are not to be expected over such a broken country. The chief determining factors of climate--latitude, relative distribution of land and water, elevation, prevailing winds--swing between such large extremes that of necessity the climatic conditions of different sections are widely divergent. Dry-farming is so intimately related to climate that the typical climatic variations must be pointed out.
The total annual precipitation is directly influenced by the land topography, especially by the great mountain ranges. On the east of the Rocky Mountains is the sub-humid district, which receives from 20 to 30 inches of rainfall annually; over the Rockies themselves, semiarid conditions prevail; in the Great Basin, hemmed in by the Rockies on the east and the Sierra Nevadas on the west, more arid conditions predominate; to the west, over the Sierras and down to the seacoast, semiarid to sub-humid conditions are again found.
Seasonal distribution of rainfall
It is doubtless true that the total annual precipitation is the chief factor in determining the success of dry-farming. However, the distribution of the rainfall throughout the year is also of great importance, and should be known by the farmer. A small rainfall, coming at the