A serious matter connected with fallowing in the Great Plains area
is the blowing of the loose well-tilled soil of the fallow fields,
which results from the heavy winds that blow so steadily over a
large part of the western slope of the Mississippi Valley. This is
largely avoided when crops are grown on the land, even when it is
well tilled.
The theory, recently proposed, that in the Great Plains area, where
the rains come chicfly in summer, the growing of hoed crops may take
the place of the summer fallow, is said to be based on experimental
data not yet published. Careful and conscientious experimenters, as
Chilcott and his co-laborers, indicate in their statements that in
many cases the yields of wheat, after a hoed crop, have been larger
than after a fallow year. The doctrine has, therefore, been rather
widely disseminated that fallowing has no place in the dry-farming
of the Great Plains area and should be replaced by the growing of
hoed crops. Chilcott, who is the chief exponent of this doctrine,
declares, however, that it is only with spring-grown crops and for a
succession of normal years that fallowing may be omitted, and that
fallowing must be resorted to as a safeguard or temporary expedient
to guard against total loss of crop where extreme drouth is
anticipated; that is, where the rainfall falls below the average.
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