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Show The Situation Acreage limitation applies only to irrigable land. It is a limitation not upon the size of the farm, but upon the number of acres for which a single owner may receive water from a Federal project. A single owner may be a man, his wife, or a minor child, so long as the ownership is actual. The farms may generally be operated as a unit, so that the actual limitation is 160, 320, 480, or more acres, even though the ownership is only 160 acres. On some of the proposed units, notably the Lower Marias in the upper basin, and on a few units in the central part, a relatively few ownerships contain considerably more than 160 acres each. Most of the ownerships have little, if any, excess irrigable land. Two highly dissimilar units show the excess land situation. The first, the Lower Marias unit in northern Montana, is a block unit, and the other, the Fort Clark unit along the Missouri River, in North Dakota, is a shoestring pumping unit.22 Ninety-eight percent of the land in the Fort Clark unit is privately owned; on the Lower Marias unit, 90 percent is privately owned or Indian land. Irrigable land by size of ownership in the Fort Clark unit is shown in the following summary: 1 Less than 0.5 percent. Private landholdings of irrigable land on the Lower Marias unit vary from less than 40 acres to 22 "Block" and "shoestring" describe the shape of the tracts rather than their size. Shoestring units usually parallel the stream. more than 2,000 acres per single ownership. Sixty percent of the ownerships contain 160 acres or less of irrigable land and comprise 22 percent of the irrigable land. Almost 78 percent of the irrigable land is held by 39 percent of the owners; each of these holdings exceeds 160 irrigable acres. Hold- ings larger than 320 acres of irrigable land number 121 and comprise 60 percent of the irrigable acre- age in the unit. On shoestring valley units, such as the Lower Yel- lowstone pumping units, and pumping units along the main stem of the Missouri River in the Dakotas and on the western tributaries in the Dakotas, ir- rigable land in general constitutes a small portion of each ownership with the result that there are relatively few ownerships which contain excess irrigable land. Most of the excess land will probably be sold by the time projects are ready to operate. Its owners may not care to irrigate at all or may hesitate to irrigate more than a few acres for the production of hay and other forage to feed livestock grazed on adjacent nonirrigated land. With a vigorous ad- ministrative policy, and a reasonable grace period, the excess land could probably be sold in parcels of family-farm size without undue hardship. Acreage limitation in reclamation law is based upon three fundamental principles. First, it is de- sirable that the benefits from Federal expenditures on reclamation projects be widely dispersed to the largest feasible number of settlers; second, the fam- ily farm should be fostered as a desirable institution; and, third, speculation in land whose value will be increased by Federal irrigation work should be dis- couraged. In general, 160 acres of irrigable land will sup- port a family in the basin. About the only excep- tions are mountain valleys, where the land will be used only to produce hay and forage. A family would need more than 160 acres of such land unless the farm included a substantial acreage of range land or nonirrigated cropland. In some parts of the basin, notably along the Platte and Republican Rivers, much less than 160 acres of irrigated land would constitute an adequate family farm. Few families in the basin are able to own or oper- ate more than 160 acres of irrigated land. They have neither the labor force nor the capital for a larger farm. Furthermore, many irrigation farm- ers in reclamation units, particularly those on the shoestring units and on the periphery of block units, also operate dry cropland or rangeland or both. 227 o- IrSlc Acreage class------------------------------------ Num- Per- . Per-ber cent Acres cent 10 or less................. 3 12 8 Q) 11-40.................... 8 34 208 11 41-80.................... 4 17 225 12 81-120................... 4 17 418 22 121-160.................. 1 4 151 8 161-200.................. 2 8 363 20 201-240.................. 1 4 229 12 241-280.................. 0 0 0 0 281-300.................. 1 4 280 15 Total............... 24 100 1,882 100 |