The Irrigation Skeptics Proven Wrong
A local farmer fights regional agricultural myths with thirty tons of seed potatoes.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
W. N. Perry of Fruitvale has proved the fallacy of the statement that potatoes grown in irrigated districts are not fit for seed. Mr. Perry has grown and planted his own seed for the past five years and now has over thirty tons of fine potatoes in pits on his ranch north of town. He has contracted one ton to a rancher in the Highlands at Kennewick at $80. Mr. Perry says that seed grown here will be more in demand as time goes on, as the seed purchased in the Palouse has largely proved untrue to name.
“Mr. Perry has proved the fallacy of the statement that potatoes grown in irrigated districts are not fit for seed.”
This reflects the ongoing tension between traditional Palouse dryland farming and the then-experimental irrigated agriculture of the Tri-Cities. Perry's triumph was a small but vital victory for the 'boom' era of irrigation expansion that transformed the high desert into an agricultural powerhouse.
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