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Speeches of Hugh Hammond Bennett
Address by H. H. Bennett, Chief, Soil Conservation Service, U.
S. Department of Agriculture, American Association for the Advancement of
Science, Richmond, Virginia, December 29, 1938.
Land Use and Public Programs
During the decade since this country felt the first impact of world
depression, public interest in the problem of land use has become more intense
and realistic than it has ever been. Among other things, the depression set us
to looking for the causes of economic distress in agriculture; and many of them
we found to be rooted in a pattern of land use that was basically unsound. The
experience of the depression convinced many people that the recovery and
sustained welfare of agriculture would require a drastic renovation of our
national land-use situation. The recognition of this need, coupled with dust
storms, floods, and other unmistakable physical signs of land abuse, has created
a keen awareness of land problems in the public mind and brought a general
public demand for positive steps toward land reform.
Through the normal processes of democratic government this demand has been
translated into public programs of a kind that differ sharply from the
traditional. In the past, public agencies relied principally upon research and
education to solve the ills of agriculture. Today, they have moved beyond these
fields into the field of action, bringing the resources and facilities of the
new government into play directly on the land. The result has been to create a
new situation, full of new opportunities for dealing with the varied and complex
phases of the broad land problem.
Equally significant is the rapidly increasing interest of rural people in the
matter of land reform. The inertia of the individual which for so long impeded
agricultural action has disappeared to a large degree. As a result, agencies of
the government engaged in land-use programs are now receiving intelligent
cooperation from men who use the land day in and day out. There is a close
working alliance between farmers and the government which did not exist a decade
or so ago. Today, the actual land users of the country are beginning to build
their own programs of land-use readjustment out of their own grass-root
experience. Through county planning committees, soil-conservation districts,
rural zoning groups, and other democratic mechanisms of recent origin, our
present-day problems of land-use are being studied and analyzed; action programs
are being planned and carried out by farmers themselves with the help of public
agencies especially equipped and authorized to assist them. In a very accurate
sense of the term, this is land-use action from the ground up. One might say, in
fact, that public land-use programs nowadays are grown, not made, since they
spring directly from the land; and are carried out, in large part, by people to
whom these needs are a matter of everyday concern.
As a result, it now is possible through the cooperation of these local
groups, to bring public action program effectively onto the smallest unit of
land use-the single field. This in itself is a highly significant fact. Public
land-use action must, of course, be broken down into spheres-a national sphere,
in which the primary concern is with the broadest realignments; a regional
sphere in which readjustments must be made to fit the needs of major segments of
the country; a problem area sphere, and so on. Ultimately, there is the smallest
sphere-the field. We will attempt to rearrange national or regional, or problem
area land-use patterns to little avail if we are not able to rearrange the
pattern of land use on the individual acre of the individual farm. A region may
be unsuited to a given type of agriculture, but its agriculture can be changed
only field by field. It may be that the size of farms must be readjusted in a
given problem area, but still the readjustments can be made only field by field.
The formation of local land-use action groups, empowered to cooperate directly
with agencies of the government in formulating and executing plans for land-use
reform, brings the public program effectively into this important final sphere
of action.
Typical of this extremely interesting trend toward the assumption of land-use
responsibility by local people is the growth of soil conservation districts
during the last two years. In that relatively short time, twenty-six states have
enacted legislation authorizing the formation of these local cooperative
land-use organizations. As of November 15, 1938, 103 districts had been formed.
They cover an aggregate area of some 54 million acres of privately-owned farm
and grazing land.
Details of the procedure involved in their creation under state laws are not
relevant to this discussion. It will suffice to point out that they are formed
voluntarily by groups of land operators for the specific purpose of readjusting
and regulating land-use practices in the best interests of the community. The
entire process of formation and administration is completely democratic, with
ample opportunity for the expression of majority will at every important stage.
Stated, simply, the function of the district is to develop and help land
operators carry out a program of proper use for all the land within its
boundaries. The district itself may undertake to carry out the work; or it may
request the assistance of the Soil Conservation Service and other action
agencies of the government. Actually, the latter course is usually followed
since districts, in the beginning at least, seldom have the facilities for
extensive reorganization of land use.
The program drawn up and proposed by a new district embracing five counties
in north-central Georgia, will indicate the part these local agencies are now
taking in the national land-use picture.
The declared objectives of the program of this district are in general to
"enable farmers to raise and maintain a suitable standard of living and to
perpetuate agricultural resources within the district." More specifically,
the objectives are, first, to bring about the adoption of necessary practices
for the conservation of soil resources; second, to make the adjustments
necessary to a wise land-use program, such adjustments being directed toward an
increased income for individual farmers; and third, to develop necessary
land-management practices, such as would provide for the efficient utilization
of extra feed and pasture resources resulting from the realignment of
farm-cropping systems.
In approaching these objectives, this district proposes a number of land-use
readjustments, including an increase in total crop land of approximately 12,500
acres; an increase in pasture land of approximately 7,500 acres; a decrease in
woodland pasture of approximately 8,000 acres; a decrease in idle land of about
60,000 acres; the reforestation of some 30,000 acres of eroding land currently
in crops; the purchase and development of approximately 200,000 acres of
submarginal land; the rehabilitation of some 2,900 farmers through loans by the
Farm Security Administration; the protection and improvement of 26,000 acres of
farm woodlands; the development of food and cover for wildlife; and the
installation of sound conservation practices, such as strip-cropping, terracing,
cover cropping, and planned rotations on all cultivated land vulnerable to
erosion.
Into this district, at the specific request of the district supervisors, the
Soil Conservation Service is bringing the facilities of a major public action
program. It has the authority to assist in planning and applying
soil-conservation measures on individual farms; in establishing good woodland
and pasture management practices; in reforesting or regrassing crop lands
retired from cultivation; in purchasing the areas of submarginal land
recommended for permanent retirement by the district, and so on. In other words,
through alliance between the district, as an agency of the community and the
Service, which administers Federal aids to better land use, the people of the
five counties are given maximum public assistance in readjusting land use
farm-by-farm. Public action is brought effectively into play in making single
farm realignments and in fitting them into the larger pattern of desirable land
use in the district as a whole.
The Soil Conservation Service is mentioned in this connection simply to
illustrate the close and highly effective alliance which is now possible between
public agencies and local people. There is no intended implication that the
program of public aids administered by the Soil Conservation Service represents
more than a partial answer to all problems of land use. Indeed, it seems
apparent that no single type of public assistance is adequate to cope with those
problems in all their ramifications.
But close cooperation between a number of public agencies now engaged
directly or indirectly with the problem will have the effect of creating a
single broad-gauge program adequate to help the people bring about most if not
all of the necessary changes in our national land-use picture. Not all of these
agencies are part of the Department of Agriculture: The Indian Service,
controlling vast areas of Indian land; the Division of Grazing, with authority
over the public range; the General Land Office and the Park Service, are parts
of the Department of the Interior. The work of the Farm Credit Administration,
the Federal Housing Administration, and many other governmental organizations
bears a certain influence upon land use. All of them, as well as the
Agricultural Adjustment Administration, the Bureau of Agricultural Economics,
the Farm Security Administration, the Bureau of Public Roads, the Forest
Service, the Soil Conservation Service, the Biological Survey, and various other
agencies of the Department of Agriculture must take a coordinate part in
national land-use effort if the scope of that effort is to encompass all lands
now ill-used and all of the enormous ramifications of the problem. The
activities of all these agencies and of various agencies of the states must
merge, out on the land, into a line of action in which administrative divisions
disappear, objectives coincide, and methods harmonize.
Realistically this is not an easy situation to bring about. But very tangible
steps already have been made in the right direction. The relationship between
many of these agencies is very close today; programs and objectives are mutually
understood; distinctions based on purely administrative lines are rapidly
disappearing, and there is every reason to believe that in general the
activities of public agencies in the field of land use are better coordinated,
more carefully adjusted to one another at the present time than they have ever
been.
From the national standpoint, naturally, the Department of Agriculture
occupies a predominantly important position in the field of land use. Nearly
every phase of the Department's activity either directly or indirectly affects
land use. The work of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration in the field of
economic stabilization and agricultural conservation is a direct influence for
better use of the land; the rural rehabilitation program of the Farm Security
Administration, likewise bears directly on these problems. So also does the work
of the Forest Service in the management of national forest holdings, and the
work of various other departmental agencies in the fields of planning, research,
and education.
Most directly concerned with land-use problems on the vast bulk of
privately-owned agricultural land, however, is the Soil Conservation Service,
which seeks through several lines of work, to assist farmers in correcting the
physical land practices contributing to land decline. The Service now
administers activities involving the conservation of basic soil and water
resources, the purchase and improvement of submarginal land areas, the promotion
of farm forestry, the treatment of watershed lands for flood control, and the
development of farm and ranch water facilities in arid and semiarid regions of
the West.
Each of these lines of action is important in itself as a means of land-use
readjustment. The adoption of sound soil-conservation practices on a farm or in
a watershed suffering from severe erosion, usually requires a realignment of
present cropping and tillage methods. Frequently, these realignments, when
carefully planned, result in a better economic status for the individual farmers
and the community The promotion of forestry as an integral part of the farm
economy likewise changes the use of land. The purchase of submarginal areas and
their development along lines properly suited to their use obviously affects the
land-use pattern in any locality. Adequate facilities for stock water,
irrigation, and water spreading in the West make it possible to correct abusive
grazing practices, improve the range, and develop certain areas for the
production of crops. In other words, in carrying out each of these several lines
of action, patterns of land use actually are altered.
Combined into a single, integrated attack upon the diverse land-use problems
of an area or a region, these several action programs constitute a rather
well-rounded approach to the correction of the physical ills of the land.
An interesting example of the application of such an integrated program to a
given area is the soil conservation demonstration project of the Service in the
low-rainfall area of he Wind River Basin, in west-central Wyoming. Heavy
over-stocking of the range, and poor grazing management had brought about
serious depletion of forage over much of the Basin, resulting in severe erosion
and the waste of water from denuded and eroding lands.
Some 45,000 acres known as the Riverton Tract, in the Shoshone Indian
reservation, were selected in 1936 for a demonstration of improved land-use
possibilities. In this tract, originally wellgrassed, some 3,335 sheep were then
being grazed under a leased management, along with about 500 trespass sheep. The
only available water was that of Wind River, which for a short distance forms
the extreme northwestern border of the tract. Because of this inadequate
distribution of stock water, only about half the area was being utilized for
grazing. Much of this was being so severely over-used that the productivity in
animal units was steadily declining, along with the land and the forage on the
land.
As the basis of developing a practical plan for better use of the area,
surveys were made to determine the character and distribution of the soils, the
nature and distribution of erosion conditions and potentialities, the present
and potential carrying capacity of the range, and favorable locations for water
development.
With this information, a systematic grazing plan was worked out for the
entire area and put into effect. It consisted of the establishment of two
grazing routes for 2,000 sheep each, and the timing and regulation of grazing
over these routes (Figure 1). Forty-one water holes were established over the
tract, and bedgrounds located so that each would be used no more than three
consecutive nights on the average. In favorable situations some water spreading
structures were installed, and the area was fenced against trespass stock.
In spite of the increased number of animals using the area, range forage has
increased 25 percent in carrying capacity, and numerous eroded areas are
revegetating in a most encouraging way. The indications are that from time to
time additional sheep can now be turned on this tract without unduly checking
the improvement in forage.
The results obtained here, moreover, fit nicely into a large project covering
more than a million acres of range and irrigation land in the Wind River Basin.
Some portions of this larger area have such little vegetation left that
recuperation will be impossible without a reduction in the number of animals
using the land. But the Riverton tract, together with other managed areas on
which the forage is improving steadily, will relieve the pressure on neighboring
lands by taking care of part of the animals now overtaxing them. Still other
relief will be derived from the production of supplemental feed by a more
conservative and effective use of available irrigation water.
Within the broader pattern of improve land-use for the entire area, still
other adjustments in present use have been planned and to a large extent
installed. Grazing, for example, has been excluded from certain critical areas
from which flash runoff has resulted in serious flood damage to irrigated lands
downstream. This control of upland grazing, together with the installation of
small retention reservoirs, contouring, and water-spreading structures,
apparently has resulted already in the material diminution of flood flows.
Also, it should be noted, the project was developed only after a careful
study of the economic situation of the land users, both irrigation and livestock
operators, to determine how far land-use changes might be carried without
overtaxing the economy of the individual rancher or irrigation farmer. These
studies have considered the interrelation of the ranch and farm enterprise and
indicate, for example, the opportunity for increased production and use of
soil-conserving feed crops and the effect of such increases on the total
production of sheep by the whole land-use enterprise.
Equally fundamental adjustments in physical land-use practice have also been
brought about in farming sections of the humid region through cooperative action
by the Soil Conservation Service and farmers. Typical of such realignments are
those accomplished in the demonstration project at Lindale, in northeast Texas.
This project, it should be pointed out, is representative of the practical
possibilities of effecting needed land-use adjustments in a large problem area
embracing some 48 million acres: The Interior West-Gulf Coastal Plain in
southern Arkansas, northwestern Louisiana, and northeastern Texas (Figure 2).
This problem area includes much submarginal land, a considerable part of which,
although subject to serious erosion under present farming practice, is under
cultivation. Approximately 60 percent of the land has slopes ranging from 2 to 8
percent, and is subject to moderate to severe erosion; while about one-tenth of
the area exceeds 8 percent in declivity-a slope generally too steep for
cultivation because of susceptibility to very severe soil washing. Thirty-five
percent of the region is in cultivation, 45 percent is forested, 13 percent
consists of pasture, and 7 percent is idle.
In cooperation with land operators in the 23,000-acre watershed comprising
the Lindale demonstration project, 80 farms were surveyed to determine the
extent and distribution of individual soil types, erosion types and
potentialities, and the slope classes; as well as to show the location of farm,
field, and pasture boundaries, fences, drainage ways, and other cultural
features. With this information, readjustment and conservation plans were worked
out individually for each farm, indicating not only the specific needs of each
parcel of land, field, pasture, woodlot, and idle area, but the measures
necessary to effect required readjustments and conservation (Figure 3). The
program for each farm was adjusted as nearly as possible to the income
requirements of the operator. Careful consideration was given to prospective
yields under the rearranged farm system to the problem of utilizing the products
grown under the reorganized plan, and to the opportunities for developing
supplementary income from properly managed woodlands and game resources.
Some of the major results thus far effected in the project have been: Control
of erosion to a degree of effectiveness estimated at 85 to 90 percent; reduction
of runoff by 25 percent; retirement of 33 percent of the original cultivated
area to the permanent protection of grass, trees, or shrubs; reduction of 46
percent in the area devoted to soil-impoverishing crops; with an approximately
corresponding increase in the acreage of soil-conserving crops; increase of 100
percent in the pasture area; improvement of all pastures by contouring,
reseeding, and other measures; control of all gullies; improvement of all
woodlands by thinning, planting and selective cutting; and treatment of all idle
lands for erosion control.
When the project began 52 percent of the area was under cultivation; 21
percent was in pasture; 25 percent in timber; and 2 percent idle. Under the
readjustments made thus far, the corresponding percentages of use are; 35
percent under cultivation; 41 percent in pasture; and 22.4 percent in timber.
Because of the trend toward livestock development in the area, eroded upland was
for the most part retired to pasture instead of timber. Other areas of eroding
upland were retired to pasture instead of timber. Other areas of eroding upland
were retired to a permanent cover of grass, and a comparably productive area of
timbered bottom land was brought into cultivation in order that production
volume could be maintained. This accounts for the slight reduction in the area
devoted to trees.
Such local land-use changes as those made in the Riverton range area of
Wyoming, and at Lindale in the farming section of East Texas, must be fitted, of
course, into the larger picture of regional adjustment. They are, as a matter of
fact, the individual pieces out of which regional and national land-use patterns
must be designed.
Rapidly, now, those larger patterns are taking shape. In the semiarid
Southern Great Plains, for example, both the nature and the extent of physical
land-use needs have been determined by careful surveys covering nearly 100
million acres.
On the basis of these surveys, proper physical use of the land over this
large segment of the Southern Plains will mean an increase of 10 percent in the
aggregate area devoted to grazing, an increase of 20.7 percent in the area
devoted to farm pasture, and an increase of 22.6 percent in the acreage of feed
crops. These increases will call for a decrease of 30.3 percent in the acreage
in wheat, 16.6 percent of the acreage in cotton, 12.9 percent in the acreage of
miscellaneous cash crops, and 8.1 percent in the acreage of corn. These
readjustments reflect the need for a general shift from a hazardous cash crop
agriculture to a more certain grain and livestock type of farming in the
Southern Plains. To make this shift toward a stable agriculture in the Plains,
the total area devoted to grazing and farm pasturage, must be increased from
57,899,000 acres to 64,399,000 acres, and the total area of cash crops must be
decreased from 28,823,000 acres to 21,576,000 acres. The area in feed crops also
must be increased from 3,298,000 to 4,045,000 acres.
Extensive alterations of this kind over entire regions call for action along
lines broader than the purely physical, of course. The same is equally true of
the more local readjustments which together will make up the changed pattern of
the region. The correction of physical land ills depends to a very large extent
upon the economic and social factors which exercise such a tremendous influence
on the way men use the land. The price of farm products may determine whether a
man is able or willing to use his land well or badly. Rural roads area a most
important factor in determining the feasibility of using land for one purpose as
opposed to another. The tenancy situation in any locality has a marked effect on
the use of land, since tenants often lack a true incentive to use the land as it
should be used. Complicating factors of this kind could be listed almost
indefinitely to indicate the diversity of forces which must be dealt with if
better land use in this country is to be a fact.
Nor is the ultimate effect of alterations in land-use practice limited to the
physical betterment of the land. It is conceivable, for example, that extensive
reorganization of our national land-use pattern will bring about a more even
distribution of cash crops and a more regular volume of production, with
consequent good effect upon surpluses and farm prices. It has already been
demonstrated that through the establishment of good land-use systems on tenant
farms it is possible to bring about a higher degree of satisfaction on the part
of both tenant and owner and a greater inclination toward long term leases on
both sides.
To cite an interesting illustration in this general connection; In certain
localities the filling of stream channels with the products of erosion has
caused the formation of marshes and stagnant pools of water along the streams.
As a result, malaria has become a menace to the population, where formerly the
disease was unknown. Mosquito control by draining the marshes would be only a
temporary palliative if erosion were permitted to continue over the uplands. The
readjustment of land-use practices to prevent soil erosion on the upland
shedding water into these streams is consequently essential to the public
health.
Important also is the effect of land-use changes in one section on conditions
in other sections, adjoining or distant. Necessary readjustment in the physical
pattern of land use may sometimes call for the removal of people from one
section to another. This process, however, cannot go beyond the productive
capacity of the land available for the transfer of these people. Displacement of
the population by retiring the whole of a large area of erodible land for
cultivation, for example, will make it necessary to raise the level of
productivity in some other area if the displaced people are not to suffer
economic and social hardships. On the other hand, if the erodible area should be
continued in production without increasing the productive capacity of the non-erodible
area, the same kind of economic difficulty would arise with the ruin of the
former area for agricultural use. The remedy in such a situation is to find an
economically productive use for the land retired from cultivation, such as the
development of a salable wildlife resource or the establishment of a productive
orchard on a soil-conserving basis. This, of course, assumes that immediate
absorption of displaced farm people into industry or other fields of livelihood
will not be very great, and that most of them will be forced to continue in
agriculture. Possible difficulties of this kind indicate the importance of the
relationship of land-use adjustment on one tract of land to the physical welfare
of some other tract of land, as well as to the economic and social welfare of
those who live on the land or are dependent on its produce.
Ramifications of the land problem thus could be explored almost endlessly. It
will be sufficient merely to suggest that they extend into the fields of physics
and chemistry, economics and sociology, health and sanitation, education,
engineering, and into other fields as well. Obviously, there is no panacea.
Whatever is accomplished will be brought about only by coordinating the progress
of many programs in many fields toward a common objective.
Although the Soil Conservation Service is going ahead with definite action
programs in all these fields, the need for effort along other lines is no less
acute. There is need for a vast amount of research into many of the complex
aspects of the problem; into the economics and the sociology of land reform as
well as the purely physical problems of readjustment. Likewise, there is need
for continuing educational effort so that the gains made by action and research
will not be lost as time goes on. People must be taught to think as a matter of
course in terms of good land use if what we accomplish now is to be permanently
effective.
And unless the United States goes ahead vigorously, persistently, and
speedily to defend and conserve the soil and to make far-reaching adjustments in
our complex land economy, national decadence lies ahead. We must continue to
capitalize upon experience and to advance through research. From the standpoint
of our soil resource alone the need for action is now clear enough. Failure to
act has caused the essential ruin of some 280 million acres of farm and grazing
land and the injury of 775 million acres more. The average citizen does not yet
fully understand the deep significance of this waste, nor realize the hardships
it has caused in lowering tens of thousands of land users virtually to the level
of pauperized farming with its attendant discouragement and inertia. Nor have we
yet fully probed the social and economic implications of this single facet of
the problem.
There is no longer a question of the need for coping with these evils. There
is no longer a question as to whether we can cope with them. We know that we
can. Millions of acres already have been anchored against erosion; new and
practical conservation measures are being developed through research and
experience on the land; many of our economic and social difficulties are being
solved. We are moving constantly ahead, though not yet with sufficient speed.
It should be remembered that today's necessity for public action is the
outgrowth of yesterday's failure to look more carefully to our land. Hindsight
is easy; but foresight during the last century when our present land-use picture
was in the making, would have produced a different result. Today we are simply
retracing our steps across this land in an effort to correct past mistakes in
the interest of the future.
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