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     A comparison of conditions today with those of some fifteen years back shows a much healthier state of affairs now than then. Much has been learned of farming under dry conditions. The game has been going on long enough to have accumulated a considerable fund of experience. Out of the experiences of the farmers themselves there has been slowly crystallizing some very sound and definite information. This has been added to by technical investigations, all of which have helped in bringing about a more thorough understanding of conditions. Crops better adapted to conditions have been introduced or developed. Machinery more suitable to the extensive type of farming has been obtained. Prices of farm products have risen. The better understanding of conditions, together with crops and machinery more adapted, has resulted in fewer crop failures. When crop failures do come they are less serious because the farmers have accumulated a working capital sufficient to tide them over adverse seasons, or have an effective working credit.
     A considerable portion of Nebraska lies in what is known as the dry farming territory. It would be impossible to lay down a definite line of demarcation where humid farming ceases and dry farming commences. The imaginary line between the two sways eastward or westward as the seasons vary. Some seasons are so favorable that any and all methods are profitable in all sections of the state. In other seasons, real dry farming conditions extend eastward of the normal line.
     Many types of soil are to be found in the dry farming country. Considerable areas are so sandy or rough as to be quite unfitted for grain production, and live stock farming is necessarily almost the sole dependence. In the main, however, the soils known as "hard land" are very fertile. They have

not been broken and cropped long enough to have lost much of their virgin fertility. Dry farming soils might be characterized as being rather deficient in humus and rich in mineral matter. They are peculiar in having no distinct line of demarcation between soil and subsoil as is found in the more humid sections. Having a low percentage of clay, dry farming soils are very easily tilled: consequently a given equipment will tend more land than in more humid sections. The soils are usually deep, allowing deep feeding by crop roots and a large capacity for water storage. Shallow soils underlaid with impervious strata or coarse gravel are less adapted to water storage, and on such soils crops are dependent upon seasonal rainfall.
     Unusually dry conditions are generally accompanied by high temperatures, rather constant winds, and consequently a high rate of evaporation. In the lower altitudes and more southern portions of the western part of the state, winds are apt to become hot and very damaging to crops. These are, however, factors largely dependent upon seasonal rainfall. On the whole, unless some factors, as hail or injurious insects, enter in, the yield of crops is largely dependent upon available water supply,--the amount and distribution of rainfall, together with the amount of water in the soil at seeding time, determining the harvest. Climatic conditions are more important than tillage methods, and extremely unfavorable climatic conditions cannot be entirely overcome by cultivation. In what are spoken of as the favorable seasons, profitable crops are produced under almost any system of cultivation. Under the extremely unfavorable climatic conditions, which sometimes occur, profitable crops are not produced by any system of cultivation. While there have been good and bad years in the past, and doubtless will be in the future, conditions have, on the average, been good enough to bring fair and profitable yields of all crops.
     All of the ordinary grain crops suitable to Nebraska are successfully grown in the western part of our state. In some sections, peculiar conditions limit the production of certain crops and favor the production of other crops. Wheat, either spring or winter, is quite generally grown excepting on what is known as the "sandy soils." Oath and barley are grown in lesser degree, but in the same territory with the wheats. Corn is successfully grown through the entire section. In the southwestern part of the state serious, though thus far unsuccessful attempts have been made to replace corn with grain sorghums like kafir corn and milo. Alfalfa grows abundantly in such bottom lands as are fertile, subirrigated, and free from an excess of alkali. It also grows in a less certain degree on the uplands of the more favorable sections. Millets and such forage sorghums as cane and Sudan grass are grown in all sections.
     While dry farming cannot be said to be a distinct system of farming, there are a few important points in which dry farming differs, at least in degree, from farming under more humid conditions. Dry farming is ordinary farming modified to meet the special conditions. Naturally the same actors that produce plant growth operate in all sections. In the eastern sections, drouth may be a relatively unimportant factor and soil fertility the important factor. Under dry farming, water supply is the important factor and soil fertility, at this time, a more minor factor. Under dry farming, therefore,

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the tillage methods are planned to make the most use of the water supply. Crops are planted at a lighter rate of seeding in order to have a fewer number of plants to a given area, to use the water that comes.
     If climatic factors, which are not controllable, become more and more important, and tillage methods less important, in determining yields, there is a lessening in the amount of labor practicable to expend on a given area of land, and the farming system becomes extensive rather than intensive. In sections where tillage is relatively important, one would naturally be justified in expending more labor on a given area. On the other hand, where climatic conditions are apt to cancel the beneficial effects of tillage, there is an early limit to the amount of labor one should expend. It is thus seen that it is largely a matter o degree in the relative importance of the various contributing factors. Where differences of yield that come from climatic causes are normally much greater than differences due to other factors, cost of production becomes the most important factor and the system of farming tends to become increasingly extensive.
     With the understanding of existing conditions, a realization that such conditions will continue to exist, and with the proper attitude towards meeting these conditions, western Nebraska offers opportunities for good farmers. Good farming means practicing such methods as will produce the largest crop at the lowest relative cost. Such farming may involve methods either somewhat intensive or very extensive. It is just as poor farming to go to too much expense as it is to go to too little expense to accomplish a given result. Lessening the cost of production without proportionally lessening yield is good farming.
     In order to equalize conditions, live stock is unusually important in