Jerusalem corn, Brown Durra, and Milo.  The work of Ball has made Milo one of the most important dry-farm crops.  As improved, the crop is from four to four and a half feet high, with mostly erect heads, carrying a large quantity of seeds.  Milo is already a staple crop in parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and New Mexico.  It has further been shown to be adapted to conditions in the Dakotas, Nebraska, Colorado, Arizona, Utah, and Idaho.  It will probably be found, in some varietal form, valuable over the whole dry-farm territory where the altitude is not too high and the average temperature not too low.

It has yielded an average of forty bushels of seed to the acre.

Lucern or alfalfa

Next to human intelligence and industry, alfalfa has probably been the chief factor in the development of the irrigated West.  It has made possible a rational system of agriculture, with the live-stock industry and the maintenance of soil fertility as the central considerations.  Alfalfa is now being recognized as a desirable crop in humid as well as in irrigated sections, and it is probable that alfalfa will soon become the chief hay crop of the United States.  Originally, lucern came from the hot dry countries of Asia, where it supplied feed to the animals of the first historical peoples.  Moreover, its long; tap roots, penetrating sometimes forty or fifty feet into the ground, suggest that lucern may make ready use of deeply stored soil-moisture.  On these considerations, alone, lucern should prove itself a crop well suited for dry-farming.  In fact, it has been demonstrated that where conditions are favorable, lucern may be made to yield profitable crops under a rainfall between twelve and fifteen inches.  Alfalfa prefers calcareous loamy soils; sandy and heavy clay soils are not so well adapted for successful alfalfa production.  Under dry-farm conditions the utmost care must be used to prevent too thick seeding.  The vast majority of alfalfa failures on dry-farms have resulted from an insufficient supply of moisture for the thickly planted crop.  The alfalfa field does not attain its maturity until after the second year, and a crop which looks just right the second year will probably be much too thick the third and fourth years.  From four to six pounds of seed per acre are usually ample.  Another main cause of failure is the common idea that the lucern field needs little or no cultivation, when, in fact, the alfalfa field should receive as careful soil treatment as the wheat field.  Heavy, thorough disking in spring or fall, or both, is advisable, for it leaves the topsoil in a condition to prevent evaporation and admit air.  In Asiatic and North African countries, lucern is frequently cultivated between rows throughout the hot season.  This has been tried by Brand in this country and with very good results.  Since the crop should always be sown with a drill, it is comparatively easy to regulate the distance between the rows so that cultivating implements may be used.