choice of crops suitable for growth under arid conditions; the
application of suitable crop treatments, and the disposal of
dry-farm products, based upon the superior composition of plants
grown with small amounts of water. Around these fundamental problems
cluster a host of minor, though also important, problems. When the
methods of dry-farming are understood and practiced, the practice is
always successful; but it requires more intelligence, more implicit
obedience to nature's laws, and greater vigilance, than farming in
countries of abundant rainfall.

The chapters that follow will deal almost wholly with the problems
above outlined as they present themselves in the construction of a
rational system of farming without irrigation in countries of
limited rainfall.






CHAPTER II

THE THEORETICAL BASIS OF DRY-FARMING





The confidence with which scientific investigators, familiar with
the arid regions, have attacked the problems of dry-farming rests