
h m Agriculture of America Contents * The Rainfall * The Temperature * The Plant Life * The Corn Belt * Farm and Village * Diversification 1. THE RAINFALL In the Northern Hemisphere, the western portions of continents are especially favored by the prevailing winds. This is because the western lands gather the rains as they come off the ocean, blown by storms that circle from west to east. Unfortunately, the Cascade Mountains and the Sierra Nevada Mountains, so dose to the west coast, catch the largest share of the rain off the Pacific Ocean before it can go further Inland. As a result, there is too little rain for almost the whole western half of the United States, which lies in the ,,rain shadow” of the mountains. In a great part of that territory, therefore, farmers must depend on irrigation water from the snows or rains that are trapped by the mountains. One of the most importan