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Show PMA FARM NEWS Production Aim of Most Needed Conservation. Just what soil and water conservation con-servation practice or practices can be carried out that will do most to check erosion and deterioration and make the land more productive? produc-tive? That is the question that farmers farm-ers are asking themselves as they check their farms with their PMA community committeemen to determine de-termine their needed conservation. All of the conservation needs of eth farm are being considered and the Agricultural Conservation Program Pro-gram will be centered on those that are most nced.d. As J. Earl Smith, Chairman of the Utah County PMA Committee, explains the current effort, where erosion is taking a heavy toll of topsoil, program assistance will be taken to check this waste. Where both water and soil are being wasted was-ted through heavy runoff, practices prac-tices will be directed at this problem. prob-lem. The chairman stresses that ACP practices will be aimed at increased increas-ed production to assure the needed food and fiber for the nation's rapidly increasing population. This production, he points out, must come largely from the acres now being farmed, and the program is a means to this end. Farmers Levelling Land To S?ve Water During recent weeks the farmers farm-ers of Utah County have been taking tak-ing advantage of favorable weather weath-er and the availability of heavy dirt-moving equipment to put their land in shape for better irrigation next summer, says J. Earl Smith, Chairman of the County PMA Committee. Here in Utah county where water wa-ter is life to the land, the practice of levelling land is one of the most important conservation practices, the chairman points out. In many instances production of a field has been doubled through levelling. On uneven land -water must be backed Up to irrigate the high places, resulting re-sulting in over-irrigation of the low places and slumping on the high spots, resulting in uneven crops and greatly reduced yields. By levelling lev-elling their land farmers are tibie to do a more effective job of iiTi-gating iiTi-gating with less water. Mr. Smith says that the Agricultural Agri-cultural Conservation Program has tvien the me.n3 of getting a lot of this levelling done in Utah county. Through the program many farmers have been assisted to put their land in shape for more efficient use of water and this in turn has encouraged the purchase of heavy dirt-moving equipment by contractors. The chairman advises that land levelling for irrigated land is an approved practice in the Agricultural Agri-cultural Conservation Program for 1953. Technical assistance for staking sta-king out the land for levelling is provided by the Soil Conservation Service. Farmers planning this and other dirt-moving practices should make arrangements for such assistance through the local PMA committee. |