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Show Stealing Farms Erosion is annually taking twenty one times as much plant food from our farm lands as the crops which are produced on them, according ac-cording to H. H. Bennett, writing In the New York Times. He says. "In America last year 3.000.0UO,-000 3.000.0UO,-000 tons of soil washed out of fields and overgrazed pasture:-. Fully 100,000 acres of farm land were made hopelessly poor. Under the normal price conditions thin would have cost our farmers $400 -000,000. "Our original wealth in soil ha;: served to prevent any general realization that all land is not permanently fixed. Unrestrained soil erosion Is rapidly building a new empire of wornout land in America- land stripped of its rich surface layer down to poor subsoil, and land gullied beyond the possibility of practical reclamation. recla-mation. This wastage of the nation's na-tion's basic asset is speeding up. "Three-fourths of the agricultural agricultur-al area of the nation is slopinc enough to invite ruinous cutting away. Already more than 100,000.-000 100,000.-000 acres of the 350.000,000 in cultivation cul-tivation have lost all or most of the original top-soil. "Bedrock has been reached in countless places and deep gullies have torn asunder millions of sloping acres. All of this has been abandoned; yet, all of it could have been saved. "Probably no other nation or race has permitted such rapid depletion de-pletion of large areas of its agricultural agri-cultural lands. "We have looked upon our vast domain of agricultural land as limitless and capable of enduring-forever. enduring-forever. What are the menacing aspects of this evil of erosion? "The area of the more facorable soils is steadily diminishing. Acreage Acre-age yields are declining. "C u 1 1 1 v a t ion is more difficult and costly. Water flows across the impervious clay exposed by the stripping of the mellow, absorptive absorp-tive top-soil more rapidly to augment aug-ment floods. "Stream channels are silting up and overflows are becoming more frequent and destructive. Vast areas of extraordinary original productivity are being covered with infertile sand and gravel." The Pyramid has already, in n recent issue, called the attention of farmers to the facts as presented pre-sented by Mr. Bennett. Too much emphasis, however, cannot be laid on the waste caused by erosion and every farmer should take steps immediately to prevent or check this stealth of the richest part of his land. |