Dry Farming
Westward Expansion Activity
Define
Dry farming is a way of farming that utilizes ways of watering other than watering manually. Such ways can be the soil being already moist enough or the location has enough rain.
Detail
Dry farming was used in the 19th century to speed up the production of crops such as wheat and save limited resources specifically water. The land in the Great Plains already was very moist, so the farmers did not need to water the crops manually. This saved farmers money and time.
Dry farming needed to have a fallow period (a time where no seeds were planted) to allow the ground to capture moisture.
If farmers in the Great Plains were unable to use dry farming to grow their crops, then there wouldn't be as much if not any farmland in the Great Plains. Also, dry farming left the ground very vulnerable to to the weather.