Show I i I i Contour Plowing Helps To Save The Soil HOW TOP IS IMPORTANT TO ITS Productive land on which good or forests will grow Is the most valuable resource on Whether you live In the city or the the land feeds and clothes and you most of the other things you Productive land is essential to the well being of any nation and the people living in the Most nations do not have enough good land They have wasted too much of it In the We are fortunate in the United but even we do not have any to We have been destroying our land at a prodigal flood top soil and water are the main things that make the land You cannot make fer tile top soil In a few yeara on most it take- nature centuries to do Top soil can bo removed from good land In a few years by careless It has been removed or severely damaged on millions of acres of our American When the top soil Is the productivity of the land Is usually Then the people who depend on the land have poorer diets and a lower standard of Is why the conservation of our good land Is important to every Kach tract or land is The kind of the the degree of and the and physical condition of the land vary from place to and the climate there are millions of different kinds of In no two patches of land are exactly The Important things for a conservationist to know about are what It should be used for and how It should be protected to keep it Soil who make conservation study each tract of They consider all of the things that might affect Its use and They make simple maps which show the capability of each These maps divide land into eight Following are descriptions of the eight LAND SUITED FOK CULTIVATION Is very good land that may be cultivated safely with ordinary good farming nuns a. Is good land thai can be cultivated safely with easily applied conservation Class Moderately good land can be used regularly for cultivated crops In n good rotation but needs Intensive conservation i. i MOTTO won LIMITED TI Fairly good land is best suited to pasture hay but can be Cultivated occasionally If handled with great LAND NOV BUTTED FOR CULTIVATION lass Land that is too wet or stony or In otherwise not fit for cultivation but needs only ordinary good management to be used safely for trees or Class Land that Is too wet or for cultivation but ig suited for grazing or forestry if carefully i.-i-s Land that is very eroded shallow or dry but can be used for forestry or grazing if handled with great Class Land that has some limitation that makes It unfit for grazing or forestry but that may be valuable for recreation or water shed It includes such areas as badlands and Soil is not Under many conditions It Is very When water or wind move across bare ground they usually carry some soil with They may not move It hundreds of miles or only a few but eventually they will remove large amounts of soil from any area where it Isn't tied Dense plant growth helps to slow down the movement of soil by water or This gives nature time to replace what little soil Is removed by Nature does this by forming new top soil from the underlying subsoil or rock and the decayed remains of plants and l ills slow process of constant erosion and new soil formation Is known as or It has been going on for millions of It Is usually beneficial instead of Most of our good agricultural soils were formed this But where land Is cultivated or loft another and faster Kind of erosion takes This is called accelerated When land is cultivated there Is no dense growth or plants to protect the soli and erosion may be a thousand times Taster than an area erosion also damages grasslands where the grass Is thinned by over It damages woodland that This Is what we now know as soil Unless it Is checked It may-ruin most of our good Erosion had damaged or ruined for practical use hundreds of millions of acres of once productive land all over the In some places such as North the Near and parts of erosion has ruined so much of the land that formerly rich agricultural areas are now almost like deserts or waste Even we find this here In some areas of the United has Beverly damaged I about million acres of the crop and grazing lands in the United million acres is equal to the combined areas of Nebraska and Another million of our grazing and ry land has eroded to some We now have left about million acres of good crop land that is suitable for growing This besides land now in crops about 85 million acres that need irrigating or other Improvements to make them That's all we have we cannot discover or create All but about 95 million of this million acres Is erosion lr It Is not We still have enough good land left In the United States to support but we can't keep our present standard or living 11 we lose much Yet we are allowing about a half million acres ruin each year through WHAT AKE WE TO CHECK Soil conservation is the use and care of It means using the land to produce the greatest amounts of the most needed and at the time protect It so it win Its Each acre must be used for things it best suited to do and must be protected according to its All measures that help the land productive are organic grass crop strip stubble drainage Irrigation and many ures are conservation louts Soli conservation includes any all measures that will make the land produce more Without aging Soil conservation does more than the It creases crop yields and the cost of U check drought damage to pasture and It reduces silting in and It reduces flood crests on both major and minor streams It helps to lessen damage to oyster beds and breeding and feeding grounds of crabs and other valuable aquatic lire It helps Improve the nutritional value of food grown from the farmers who are practicing conservation estimate that it lias increased their yield by more than 30 also Increases the yield Of grazing and forest Soil conservation did not receive much attention in the United States until the As long as we had plenty of unsettled conservation did not seem A few farmers took good care their but many let it erode until it was worn out and then they moved onto another tract or We didn't have a National program of soil conservation in the United States until the soil service was created in the Emergence Agency In the United States Department of the Interior in In 1935 Congress passed our first soil conservation It transferred the Soil Erosion Barries to the Department ot Agriculture named it the Sod Conservation along with several other The early work of the Soil Conservation Service was mainly research to find better conservation methods and demonstration ol those to Demonstration projects were set up In all parts of the country from 1938 to Farmers In area cooperated with the Service by installing complete conservation i arming programs on their These demonstrations created a lot of Interest in soil In 1937 various other states began to pass laws that permitted farmers to organize their own soil conservation Then the soil conservation service began to do its work in cooperation with these We have made fairly good pro-cress since our national soil conservation program It is up to every one of us loyal Americans to help carry on ibis program to protect this top and conserve our lands to preserve our standard of living and protect that for the future generations to by Jimmie |