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Show Millions of Acres Ruined by Wind Erosion j By WILLIAM UTLEY at 11IS buffalo grass should I never be plowed. The land I will Just dry up and the wind will blow It away, and you with It" That's what the cattlemen of southern Colorado told the homesteaders home-steaders HO years ago. The homesteaders home-steaders plowed the buffalo grass. Today the wind has blown away the land and many have been forced to move. Had the farmers of the Great Plains of Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Okla-homa, Texas, Arkansas and Nebraska Nebras-ka cultivated their lands with a little more foresight In the years gone by, they would not today, perhaps, per-haps, have been forced to watch the great red and yellow plague of soil erosion blow their farms from the face of the earth or more literally, lit-erally, blow the face of the earth from their farms, which Is the same thing. During the World war wheat prices soared sky high. Short-grass Short-grass prairies were the only virgin soil which remained for wheat production, pro-duction, and to these plains rushed thousands of farmers with their plows. The harvest was rich Indeed, In-deed, with several seasons of good rainfall. Then came years of drouth. With them was the return to something some-thing like normal and less In wheat prices. What land was not abandoned was farmed only In a haphazard manner. Wheat acreage was further decreased de-creased 15 per cent by the administration's admin-istration's wheat allotment program. Production ceased on much of this land; the remainder got very little lit-tle attention. Probably this was the land where the recent dust storms first began to get "body." With this power of aggravation It was an easy matter mat-ter for the dust-laden winds to collect col-lect more and more of their devastating devas-tating burden from the land In western west-ern Kansas which Is handled by nonresident non-resident farmers who "hog-In" their crop by the "cut-and-cover" method of farming which covers large territories ter-ritories quickly, but so poorly that the topsoil blows easily, and when It starts to blow, no one Is there to stop It. Dust Travels Far. From this start the storms which, during March, raged at terrific heights for from four to twelve days, spread through neighboring Top, Ranch in Colorado Piled High With Dust. Below, Left, Dr. Rexford Tugwell, in Charge of Erosion Control. Right, City Folks Also Have Their Battle With Dust encircle the world 37 times at the equator, says R. E. Uhland, of the United States soil erosion service. He pointed out that figures of loss do not take Into account the damage dam-age done to highways, railways, reservoirs, res-ervoirs, streams, ditches and harbors. har-bors. He said that northern Missouri's Mis-souri's 50 per cent loss of fertile top surface soil represents more than 50 per cent fertility wastage because in the top four or five inches of the original soil was concentrated a very large part of the readily available plant nutrients. He declared de-clared that the soil is lost as surely sure-ly as if It were burned In a fire. "Unless Immediate steps are taken and this rapid destruction is stopped by 19S0," said Mr. Uhland, Uh-land, "Missouri will have to produce pro-duce the major portion of her crops on one-fifth of the land now on crops." The Missouri condition is, of course, typical of the whole stricken area. The work of erosion control, before be-fore the latest tragedy, was spread among the Department of Agriculture, Agricul-ture, the Department of the Interior In-terior and the Civilian Conservation Conserva-tion corps. To meet the present crisis all erosion control has been placed under the Department of Agriculture with Rexford Guy Tug-well, Tug-well, undersecretary, supervising the work. He will unify the efforts of the Interior department soll-erosion soll-erosion control, the AAA, the forest for-est service, the bureau of chemistry chemis-try and soils, and the bureau of agricultural engineering. One million dollars was the amount agreed upon for Doctor Tug-well's Tug-well's crews to begin work, after a visit to Washington of Gov. Alfred M. Landon of Kansas to plead for funds for the project. The FERA expressed willingness for its workers work-ers to be turned over to the job. The work will be extended over the states badly affected. i of forestry at Syracuse university, but It 1 a process that will take many decades to finish. Prof. S. O, fleiber? savs that 10 per cent o I 1 " " of forestry at Svracuse university, y but It 1 a process that will take i " many decades to finish. Prof. S. O, f. - neiber? savs that 10 per cent o By WILLIAM UTLEY f . at g I1IS buffalo grass should t j -i I , I 'j I neer be plowed. The land - 3 ' ' I I will Just dry up and the f" , I v,Ind vs lit blow It away, V '. ' tSj' r - ( j and you v. 1th It" V" j That's what the cattlemen of 'y' i - S .', .- 1 T' 1 t southern Colorado told the home- ' ' . r,-l'"-vyW 1 . 1 tenders ."() jears ago. The home V''t V, " steaders plowed the buffalo grass r ' " " l Today the wind has blown away wsasasa' - ' 1J states. Huge cloud-palls of white, yellow and red-black dust reached as far as Denver, St. Louis, Cleveland Cleve-land and even Washington In a weird reversal of the "back-to-the Boll" movement that struck the more unfortunate element of metropolitan met-ropolitan populations a little while back. In the stricken Great Plains area highway traffic was stopped to prevent pre-vent accident. Schools and business busi-ness houses shut their doors. Health officers warned everyone to stay at home, If possible. Railway traffic traf-fic was stilled. Several children and adults died of "dust pneumonia." pneu-monia." Live stock refused to eat grass and hay even when they could find It' under the drifts of eroded soil that were so high in -many places that one could walk up a drift to the roof of a tall barn. Even In the cities it was necessary to sleep and often work with wet cloths tied over nose and mouth. In Chicago and central Illinois the dust united with showers of rain and the weather man said to the Inhabitants, "Here's mud in your eye I" They soon found out he meant It only too literally. The great storm of May 11, 1934, which stretched from Montana to the Atlantic and hung a 10,000-ton cover of dust over the National Capital was something of a calamity. calam-ity. The storm of March, 1935, was a major catastrophe. Fertile areas, once garden spots, became, as the dust clouds gained momentum, like barren deserts. Good farmers as well as bad were driven from their land and their homes, knowing not whither to turn. Now the government govern-ment Is beginning to wake to a full realization of the seriousness of the problem of erosion. FIfty-mllllon acres of crop-producing land have been destroyed In the United States by wind and water soll-eroslon. Another 120.-000,000 120.-000,000 acres have lost the topsoil, and 100,000,000 additional , acres are approaching this condition, according to the Department of Agriculture. Ag-riculture. A total of 75 per cent of all the farm land used for clean-tllled clean-tllled crops Is subject to erosion and damage, which the department estimates at $10,000,000 a year. Causes Heavy Loss. The 3,000,000,000 tons of soil lost every year through erosion would 11 train of freight cars that would Weapons of War. Chief weapons in the war against wind erosion will be "listing" and plowing methods which have worked out satisfactorily In the Texas Panhandle Pan-handle demonstration;, center of the soil erosion service. Farmers and the states themselves will furnish the fleet of 20,000 tractors necessary neces-sary for the job. "Listing" consists of plowing deep furrows across fields at right angles to prevailing prevail-ing winds In affected areas; this tends to break the force of the wind and cause It to drop dust that It Is carrying. This is Governor London's Lon-don's favored method. Nebraska urges Its farmers to plant soil-rotating crops and grasses. Texas would plant sorghum, which retains soil and moisture. It Is advisable to use machines which do not pulverize the soil, but develop de-velop a cloddy and roughened surface. sur-face. The soil should be cultivated at the proper time to conserve what moisture It contains. Machinery used should be of the kind that will incorporate stubble and other plant residues In the surface soli. The Fort Hays (Kan.) agricultural experiment station advises the replanting re-planting of all eroded land which was once grazing country with buffalo buf-falo grass, and has perfected a method for the replanting. In an attempt to learn the true origin of dust storms and try to put an end to them, the federal government gov-ernment has begun a soil erosion project at Huron, S. D. In addition, addi-tion, there are 180,000 acres of land In South Dakota where the soil-erosion soil-erosion service will try to build a barrier to wind erosion and build .up the soil by terracing, strip cropping, crop-ping, counter-cultivation and moisture mois-ture cultivation. Projects are also under way In nearly every part of the country to defeat "gully" erosion that caused by the washing of storm waters which has destroyed 35,000.000 acres of good farm land. An interesting inter-esting step in this direction was a law passed In Wisconsin In late March, which exempts fenced, wooded wood-ed slopes from taxation. One Hundred-Mile Barrier. Wind removed the topsoil of the Great plains and air, coupled with sunshine, will replace It If the right vegetation Is planted, according accord-ing to the New lork state college the topsoil Is decayed plant matter. The other 90 per cent Is actual air and sunshine converted Into loam carbon extracted from tne air by plants In breathing carbon dioxide Into sugars and starches, which remain re-main there. Joining the combat against wind erosion, the forest service will set up a $15,000,000 shelter-belt of trees, to stretch from North Dakota Da-kota to the Texas Panhandle. This-forest This-forest barrier, 100 miles wide and more than 1,500 miles long, following follow-ing roughly the line of 18 Inches rainfall, is intended to restore the water level, improve living conditions condi-tions within the belt, act as a snow-fence snow-fence and hold wind-blown dust. During the next ten years the forest for-est service will plant 3,500,000,000 trees in hundreds of narrow strips, each a hundred feet wide and a mile apart. Only the trees suitable to the climate will be chosen, and there will be gaps in the ranks, where the soil Is too poor to justify planting. The recent dust storms and the terrible havoc in their wake are by no means peculiar to America, says the National Geographic society. The same thing has happened In Syria, Palestine and North Africa. Experts say that such regions, where the rainfall is less than 25 inches a year, should be left to live stock and not cultivated. Darwin reported that In South America, during the seasons of 1827-1830, so much dust was blown about that boundaries were obscured ob-scured and property rights confused. con-fused. In October, 1928, chocolate dust from Australia stained the snow peaks of New Zealand, 1,500 miles away. In' the spring of the same year, some 15,000,000,000 tons of earth from the Ukraine were scattered over Europe . Blame the Sahara. The Sahara Is the source of sup- ply for most of the European dust storms. Hot sirocco winds carry the dust over the Mediterranean and northward as far as the Baltic. China Is famed for dust storms. In winter they sweep over the North China plain, covering trees, houses, crops and people with yellow yel-low sediment. Dust storms of another an-other age built the Loess highlands that lie between the North China plain and the deserts of central Asia. This fertile, yellow earth, often reaching a depth of 300 feet, covers thousands of square miles in the northern provinces. Crops may be raised on loess without fertilizing; fer-tilizing; wind renews the soil as the Nile does in Egypt The fine, yellow silt has a tendency to split in a vertical direction, furrowing the region with steep cliffs and canyons. can-yons. The natives often carve cave dwellings in these cliffs, climbing to the roofs of their homes to plow their fields. To look at them coldly, such dust storms as we have had may be blessings in disguise, according to J. C. Mehler, secretary of the Kansas Kan-sas board of agriculture. They will be, says he, if they lead farmers to adopt diversified farming, turning turn-ing much of the land back to grazing. graz-ing. They will also prove beneficial in Inaugurating tillage methods which will cut down the loss from soil blowing. Relief from the terrible drouths which have helped to make powder of the soil In recent seasons Is promised by John B. Kincer, head of the climate and crop weather service of the United States weather weath-er bureau. Kincer, who does not believe In definite changes In climate, cli-mate, but rather In definite cycles of rainfall variations, holds to the view that the United States has been in the descending curse of a "moisture cycle" for the last 25 years. An Illuminating sidelight on city folks' appreciation of the rigors of the dust storms was revealed to the writer while dining recently In a metropolitan restaurant I complained com-plained to my waitress that the spinach was gritty. "Thank the saints yez are eatin' It here," she replied In her best Hibernian Hi-bernian brogue. "Phwat If yez were eatin' It out in Kansas!" ). Weetern Newspaper Unloa. |