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
largely on the known relationship of the water requirements of
plants to the natural precipitation of rain and snow. It is a most
elementary fact of plant physiology that no plant can live and grow
unless it has at its disposal a sufficient amount of water.
The water used by plants is almost entirely taken from the soil by
the minute root-hairs radiating from the roots.
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