This difference should be and now is recognized in
the prices paid. In fact, shrewd dealers, acquainted with the
dryness of dry-farm wheat, have for some years bought wheat from the
dry-farms at a slightly increased price, and trusted to the increase
in weight due to water absorption in more humid climates for their
profits. The time should be near at hand when grains and similar
products should be purchased upon the basis of a moisture test.
While it is undoubtedly true that dry-farm crops are naturally drier
than those of humid countries, yet it must also be kept in mind that
the driest dry-farm crops are always obtained where the summers are
hot and rainless. In sections where the precipitation comes chiefly
in the spring and summer the difference would not be so great.
Therefore, the crops raised on the Great Plains would not be so dry
as those raised in California or in the Great Basin. Yet, wherever
the annual rainfall is so small as to establish dry-farm conditions,
whether it comes in the winter or summer, the cured crops are drier
than those produced under conditions of a much higher rainfall, and
dry farmers should insist that, so far as possible in the future,
sales be based on dry matter.
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