OCR Text |
Show j-1jAnnki A;itn;uirujtK Harold L. Ickes, Public Works Administrator, who writes in the Survey Graphic (February; on "Saving The Good Earth" describes de-scribes the Mississippi Valley Committee and its plan. He says in part: "Like our handling hand-ling of water and our treatment of topsoll, the distribution of farm-land in this country and the uses to which it is put show little evidence of 'the American genius for organization.' The homesteads and land drawings' in the North Central States, the glamor and excitement of the 'rush' for 'locations' when the Cherokoe strip was thrown open, have been typical of our hit-or-miss agricultural development. It is the policy of this administration adminis-tration not to allow a ngw piece of land to be brought under cultivation cul-tivation through reclamation without withdrawing an area of less desireable acres of equivalent equiva-lent productive capacity. It is with this policy in mind that irrigation and other reclamation reclama-tion projecto are studied today. The shift is to be not a restless moving from old land to new, but a change from less desire-able desire-able to more desireable farm'ing-land. farm'ing-land. Thousands of acres in the South and Midwest should clearly be put back to forests or otherwise other-wise taken out of farming use. Turning under every third crop row is a temporary expedient. Turning land equivalent to every other haif-secoion 'back into woods would encourage better methods of agriculture, contribute contri-bute to the upbuilding of the Valley and provide new employment employ-ment opportunities in scientific forestry. The time nas come when we must take to heart the lessons of the wise and economical economi-cal agriculturalists of Europe and of the older American civilizations. civiliza-tions. The careful Danes and Belgians, the French farmers who for seven hundred years, father to son, have tilled and genuinely improved their small farm,s, the Incas who so wisely treasure their megar water supply sup-ply and spade back the topsoil that the rain washes into the hedges these husbandmen are all more skilled than we in the great arts of agriculture. We must recognize erosion and dought as national perils, and the need to plan in terms of decades rather ra-ther than months. |