At the Utah Station the possible conquest of the sagebrush deserts of the Great Basin without irrigation was a topic of common conversation during the years 1894 and 1895.  In 1896 plans were presented for experiments on the principles of dry-farming.  Four years later these plans were carried into effect.  In the summer of 1901, the author and L. A. Merrill investigated carefully the practices of the dry-farms of the state.  On the basis of these observations and by the use of the established principles of the relation of water to soils and plants, a theory of dry-farming was worked out which was published in Bulletin 75 of the Utah Station in January, 1902.  This is probably the first systematic presentation of the principles of dry-farming.  A year later the Legislature of the state of Utah made provision for the establishment and maintenance of six experimental dry-farms to investigate in different parts of the state the possibility of dry-farming and the principles underlying the art.  These stations, which are still maintained, have done much to stimulate the growth of dry-farming in Utah.  The credit of first undertaking and maintaining systematic experimental work in behalf of dry-farming should be assigned to the state of Utah.  Since dry-farm experiments began in Utah in 1901, the subject has been a leading one in the Station and the College.  A large number of men trained at the Utah Station and College have gone out as investigators of dry-farming under state and Federal direction.

The other experiment stations in the arid and semi-arid region were not slow to take up the work for their respective states.  Fortier and Linfield, who had spent a number of years in Utah and had become somewhat familiar with the dry-farm practices of that state, initiated dry-farm investigations in Montana, which have been prosecuted with great vigor since that time.  Vernon, under the direction of Foster, who had spent four years in Utah as Director of the Utah Station, initiated the work in New Mexico.  In Wyoming the experimental study of dry-farm lands began by the private enterprise of H. B. Henderson and his associates.  Later V. T. Cooke was placed in charge of the work under state auspices, and the demonstration of the feasibility of dry-farming in Wyoming has been going on since about 1907.  Idaho has also recently undertaken dry-farm investigations.  Nevada, once looked upon as the only state in the Union incapable of producing crops without irrigation, is demonstrating by means of state appropriations that large areas there are suitable for dry-farming.  In Arizona, small tracts in this sun-baked state are shown to be suitable for dry-farm lands.  The Washington Station is investigating the problems of dry-farming peculiar to the Columbia Basin, and the staff of the Oregon Station is carrying on similar work.  In Nebraska, some very important experiments dry-farming are being conducted.  In North Dakota there were in 1910 twenty-one dry-farm demonstration farms.  In South Dakota, Kansas, and Texas, provisions are similarly made for dry-farm investigations.  In fact, up and down the Great Plains area there are stations maintained by the state or Federal government for the purpose of determining the methods under which crops can be produced without irrigation.