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Thursday, November 29, 2007

 

RP: Lecture 7

Lecture seven, The Farmer and the Man, was about agriculture on the plains and how it changed over time. At the beginning of the lecture we learned that the Plains had changed from being a desert to the garden of the world. We then went on to discuss how the methods of farming and the way of life for farmers has changed. One method that we discussed was dry farming which was Hardy Webster Campbell's idea. This is where the farmers tried to use as little water as possible over the years and still make their crops grow. Hardy suggested that for this type of farming the farmers would plow deeper than usual and use one layer of dust as mulch. Unfortunatly this method didn't work because it didn't even hold water so all it was was dust. One of the most successful methods that we talked about is irrigation, which we still use today. This was where they would water their crops from above the ground through a system. The only problem with this was that becuase it took a lot of water, it dried up certain streams and thereflow affected the water flow. We have definetly have advanced over time becuase of technology changes, but we still use the same concepts that were used some time ago and to me this was the most interesting. I would have thought that becuase we are so much more advanced the way we farm today would be so completely different but it's not. This showed me that the farmers back then were using everything they could to their advantage and this helped us today get on the fast track.

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