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Show Today's Farming Methods Determine Quality Of Tomorrow's Land - Bertooh What will your land be like in 10 years? In asking that question of the farmers of Duchesne county, Douglas H. Bertoch, chairman of the County PMA committee, points out that the way the land is farmed today has a lot to do with what its condition will be in 10 years. Some land, he points out, will be improved and made more productive through the conservation measures being taken now. Other land will be less productive and some will be ruined for further crop production pro-duction because of the careless farming methods used today. "Not only are some of the methods of farming burning the bridges behind for those who will take over later, but some are burning the bridges ahead for the. farmers who are operating operat-ing he and today," Mr. Bertoch Ber-toch iid.. There are a number of warning warn-ing signs for the owners and operators of farm land. Exces sive run-off with the water loaded with silt means that the top-soil the most fertile part of the land is being lost. Light spots on the hillsides and hilltops hill-tops where the top-soil has worn away leaving the subsoil exposed ex-posed indicate that the best part of the land has been carried car-ried off. Poor farming methods speed up the destructive processes, he explains. Furrows up and down the slope of the land indicate 1 the . farmer is cooperating with the forces which will destroy his soil. Continuous growing of cultivated cul-tivated or so-called cash crops soon exhausts the humus and organic matter in the soil, speeding speed-ing up erosion. "Where little attention is given to control of erosion and building up the land, the losses are excessive and tragic. Tragic because the penalty is not limited to the farmer alone but to all who depend on the land for food, fiber and the other essentials es-sentials which come from the land." |