Considerable doubt has recently been cast upon the doctrine that one
of the beneficial effects of fallowing in dry-farming is to store
the rainfall of successive seasons in the soil for the use of one
crop. Since it has been shown that a large proportion of the winter
precipitation can be stored in the soil during the wet season, it
merely becomes a question of the possibility of preventing the
evaporation of this water during the drier season. As will be shown
in the next chapter, this can well be effected by proper
cultivation.
There is no good reason, therefore, for believing that the
precipitation of successive seasons may not be added to water
already stored in the soil. King has shown that fallowing the soil
one year carried over per square foot, in the upper four feet, 9.38
pounds of water more than was found in a cropped soil in a parallel
experiment; and, moreover, the beneficial effect of this. water
advantage was felt for a whole succeeding season. King concludes,
therefore, that one of the advantages of fallowing is to increase
the moisture content of the soil. The Utah experiments show that the
tendency of fallowing is always to increase the soil-moisture
content.
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