The Country That Can Feed the World?

by FAIRFIELD OSBORN

1

THE misuse of forests, grasslands, wild life, and water sources in the United States is the most violent and the most destructive story in the long history of civilization. The velocity of events is unparalleled and we are still so near to it that it is almost impossible to realize what has happened, or, far more important, what is still happening. Actually it. is the story of human energy unthinking and uncontrolled.

Our people came to a country of unique natural advantages, of varying yet favorable climates, where the earth’s resources were apparently limitless. Incredible energy marked the effort of a young nation to hack new homes for freedom-loving people out of the vast wilderness of forests that extended interminably to the grassland areas of the Midwest. Inevitably t he quickest methods were used in putting the land to cultivation. Great areas of forest were completely denuded by axe or fire, without thought of the relationship of forests to water sources, or to the soil itself. Constantly there was the rising pressure for cultivable land caused by the rapid inpouring of new settlers.

By about 1830 most of the better land east of the Mississippi was occupied. In that year there were approximately 13 million people in this country, or less than one tenth of the present populat ion. In the meanwhile the land in the South, long occupied and part of the original colonies, was being devoted more and more extensively to cotton, highly profitable as export to the looms in England, and tobacco, for which there was a growing world market. These are known as clean-tilled crops — crops that leave the earth completely bare, except for the plantings, and therefore highly susceptible to loss of topsoil by erosion.

Today a large proportion, in many areas from one third to one half, of the land originally put to productive use for the growing of cotton and tobacco has become wasteland and has had to be abandoned. It is not unusual for Southerners to blame the Civil War and its aftereffects for their impoverishment. There are other reasons.

The westward surge of settlers over the great grass plains that lay beyond the Mississippi and on to the vast forested slopes bordering the Pacific, as dramatic as any incident in human history, was symbolized by the phrases “subjugating the land” and “conquering the continent.” It was a positive conquest in terms of human fortitude and energy. It was a destructive conquest, and still continues to be one, through our failure to understand that nature is an ally and not an enemy.

The prairies, the long-grass country, and the plains, the short-grass country, occupy nearly 40 per cent of the land surface of the United States. Here today are the greatest cornand grain-producing regions in the world — as well as the great natural ranges for cattle and other livestock. Here limitless areas of natural grassland have been plowed for crop production.

Proper land use can prevent continued and relentless land deterioration. But are we prepared and organized to apply the available knowledge regarding the correct utilization and long-term protection of productive soils? Shall we have the foresight and intelligence to act before we are met with the disaster that is steadily drawing nearer?

The land area of the United States amounts to approximately 1.9 billion acres. In its original or natural state about 40 per cent was primeval forest. Today the primeval or virgin forest has been so reduced that it covers less than 7 per cent of our entire land area. If to this there are added other forested areas consisting of stands of sccondor even third-growth forests, many of which are in poor condition, and if scattered farm woodlands are also included, it is found that the forested areas now aggregate only slightly more than 20 per cent of the total land area of our country.

The situation is becoming increasingly serious. Some idea of recent and present trends can be gained from the last annual report of the Forest Service of the Federal government. The estimated total stand of saw timber in the country in 1909 was 2826 billion board feet, and the estimate for the year 1945 totaled only 1601 billion board feet, indicating that in thirty-six years the nation’s “woodpile” has been reduced by 44 per cent. The report goes on to state that the drop in volume of standing timber since 1909 has been much greater than these figures indicate. Many kinds of trees which were considered of no value in 1909 are now being used and are included in the 1945 estimate. More than half of the present total saw-timber resource is in what is left of our virgin forests, and 96 per cent of the virgin timber is in the Western states.

While the drain on our forests for fuel wood, pidpwood, and manufacturing uses, together with losses resulting from fires, wind and ice storms, damage by insects and tree diseases, is almost being met by each year’s growth, the bulk of our forestry industry depends on saw timber. For this purpose the annual drain on the nation’s forests approximates 54 billion board feet, while the annual growth is only approximately 35 billion board feet. In other words, the annual loss exceeds growth by more than 50 per cent. It does not take much mathematics to prove that our country cannot go on this way much longer.

2

AT THIS very moment a new body blow is being struck at our forests. This is a triple threat because a blow at forest reserves is one of synchronized impact upon water sources and fertile soils — as deadly as any delayed-action bomb. Highly organized minority groups are now engaged in determined attempts to wrest away the public lands of the Western states and turn these regions to their own uses. Within the boundaries of these public domains lie the extensive grazing lands that help to support the cattle industry of the West. These lands are open to use by individual cattle owners at nominal cost. Within these boundaries, too, lie almost all our last great forest reserves.

The public lands, in which every American owns a share, lie principally in the following eleven Western states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Wyoming.

The public lands came into existence in the earliest days of our nation. They were created as a solution to a vexatious question that arose in the deliberations of the thirteen original states at the time the Union was formed. The small seaboard states insisted that provision be made in the Articles of Confederation to prevent the land-rich states on the Appalachian frontier from expanding their boundaries indefinitely to the west and thus dominating the government. All the original states agreed to give up their claims to the Western lands and ceded them to the Federal government. As settlement progressed westward, it was planned that these vast tracts would be formed into new states with the same rights as enjoyed by the original states. In 1787 the Constitution that was evolved upon this basic understanding became a fundamental of American law.

Each of the states carved from the public domain has received a gift of land, in some cases consisting of many millions of acres, and yet, as each new state was created, there were retained in the name of the Federal government, for the benefit of all of the people of the nation, these areas of public lands. During the nineteenth century, land appeared to be limitless and few people were concerned about how it was used, although even as early as 1836 bills began to appear in Congress to provide some protecting regulations for the lands owned by the government.

The proportion of Federal lands remaining as public domain varies in each state, ranging from under 100,000 acres in Iowa to 87 per cent in Nevada. This disparity in the ratio of Federal lands to state and private holdings is one of the reasons for the present controversy. It should not be thought of as a major reason, however. The powerful attacks now being made by small minority groups upon the public lands of the West have one primary motivation and one consuming objective: to exploit the grazing lands and these last forest reserves for every dollar of profit that can be wrung from them. The profit motive, if carried to the extreme, has one certain result — the ultimate death of the land.

The eleven Western states which contain the largest proportion of Federal lands have become known as the “public land states.” In practically all of them either the cattle business or lumbering is the major industry. Use of the public lands by cattle owners has always been permitted, and, permits for controlled cutting in the national forests are regularly granted at extremely low cost.

Overgrazing in the public lands reached such an alarming point a number of years ago that legislation known as the Taylor Grazing Act was passed in 1934 to control the abuses. For a while this legislation did some good, but today powerful minority groups of cattlemen dominate its administration, their representatives comprising the personnel of the advisory hoards that were established in each of the cattle-industry states. In effect these boards are not advisory at all, having acquired over the years sufficient power to influence greatly the regulations as to both the number of cattle that can graze in a region and the fees for grazing rights to be paid by cattle owners. Half of the sums collected go to the counties in which the land is situated, mainly for the benefit of rural schools, and the other half to the Federal government.

The maneuvers of the powerful minority groups of livestock men, skillfully supported by their representatives in Congress, have a definite bearing on the preservation of the remaining reserves of forests in the Western states. Having taken over virtual control of the Federal Grazing Scrvice, they now aim at controlling the Forest Service — and, from their point of view, with good reason. The national forests in the Western states contain approximately 135 million acres of land, of which some 80 million acres are now being grazed by cattle or sheep. So far the Forest Service’s control of the number of animals permitted to graze in a region has been reasonably effective, although actually there has already been considerable overgrazing in some of the national forests.

But the livestock owners are not satisfied and want more privileges. The game is almost too easy, the methods of getting what they want almost too simple. The Grazing Service was emasculated when Congress reduced its field service budget to one third of what was needed to provide proper supervision of the ranges. There’s generally more than one way of accomplishing an end!

Overgrazing in forested areas is ultimately as damaging to forests, because of soil erosion, as slash cutting for the sawmill. As to the latter, let no American think that certain self-seeking groups in the lumber industry are not out to hack what they can from the public domain. They will pay for the right to cut, but they can never pay enough, because there are not enough forests left. Heretofore our national parks have been held inviolate, but now one of them, the Olympic in the state of Washington, is even threatened by legislation pending in Congress that would turn over to exploitation a tract of some 56,000 acres of virgin timber. Wilderness heritages going to the buzz saw!

The assault now being made upon the public lands finds expression in a number of bills that have been presented to Congress within the last two or three years. The purpose of this proposed legislation is, in the main, to transfer the control of these resources from the Federal government to the several states, with the implicit danger that thereafter they will fall into the hands of individuals for final liquidation. If any of this proposed legislation should be enacted into law, it would be the opening wedge; if the assault should be generally successful it would irremediably injure a great region whose living natural resources serve as a wellspring to the well-being of our entire nation.

3

A CONSIDERATION of the land resources in our country shows that, other than forests, there are about a billion acres that fall into the three categories of farm croplands, farm pasture lands, and open-range grazing lands. Of these, farm croplands are the largest in area, running to approximately 460 million acres. What has happened in regard to these resources and what is going on now?

The most recent report of the Soil Conservation Service of the government contains a number of pertinent statements. They point to a velocity of loss of the basic living elements of our country which, if continued, will bring upon us a national catastrophe. Already every American is beginning to be affected in one way or another by what is happening. This report indicates that of the above billion acres considerably more than one quarter have been ruined or severely impoverished and that the remainder are damaged in varying degrees. Furthermore, the damage is continuing on all kinds of land — cropland, grazing land, and pasture land. Here are other high-lights in the report: —

The loss we sustain by tills continuing erosion is staggering. Careful estimates based on actual measurements indicate that soil losses by erosion from all lands in the United States total 5,400,000,000 tons annually. From farm lands alone, the annual loss is about 3 billion tons, enough to fill a freight train which would girdle the globe 18 times. If these losses were to go on unchecked, the results would be tragic for America and for the world.

The results would not only be disastrous — they already are far too costly for the country to continue to bear. For example, in a normal production year, erosion by wind and water removes 21 times as much plant food from the soil as is removed in the crops sold off this land.

Nor is loss of plant food our only expense from erosion. The total annual cost to the United States as a result of uncontrolled erosion and water runoff is estimated at $3,844,000,000. This includes the value of the eroded soil material and the plant nutrients it contains, the direct loss sustained by farmers, and damages caused by floods and erosion to highways, railroads, waterways, and other facilities and resources.

The loss in the productive capacity of our farms cannot be figured so easily, but it is plain that farm lands which have lost so much topsoil and plant nutrients cannot produce as bountifully as they did before they were slashed and impoverished by erosion.

In that fact lies the significance of America’s erosion problem for America’s citizens. We do not have too much good cropland available for production of our essential food and fiber crops in the future. If we do not protect what we have, and rebuild the land which can still be restored for productive use, the time inevitably will come — as it already has come to some areas of the world — when United States farm lands cannot produce enough for us and our descendants to eat and to wear.

The Soil Conservation Service has been in existence only since 1935. It was created by Congress in that year not so much as a result of the government’s vision or strategy but principally because the people of this country had been struck with dread by the revulsion of nature against man that was evidenced by the Dust Bowl incident on May 12 of the previous year. On that day, it will be recalled, the sun was darkened from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic by vast clouds of soil particles borne by the wind from the Great Plains lying in western Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma, and eastern New Mexico and Colorado — once an area of fertile grasslands but now denuded by misuse, much of it to the point of permanent desolation.

In the years since its inception this government service has gained extraordinary results in advancing the science of proper land use and in assisting soil conservation districts, set up in all the states under state law, to encourage voluntary and cooperative action among farmers. At best, however, this vital program — one of the most elemental affecting the lives of the people of our country — is only well started.

Appropriations of the Federal government towards conservation purposes of every nature — soils, forests, wild life, water control, reclamation projects, and others — are less than 1 per cent of our present national annual budget. Even including moneys spent for conservation by individual states, the aggregate of governmental expenditures is but a fraction of what is needed to protect the basic elements of our nation’s strength.

It would be a grave error to think that the increasing emergency facing our country is easy to meet. Soil erosion is only one factor in a disturbance of continental magnit ude. It is t he end result of other conditions, both physical and economic, and even social and political.

Iti its physical aspects the battle to control soil erosion will not be won until we have reached the point of protecting our forests so that the annual drain upon them does not exceed their annual growth. A great part of the vast expenditure now being made in flood control will in the years to come be written off as dead loss unless the watersheds are protected through adequate forest cover and through the curbing of erosion in the grasslands and croplands that lie within them.

So far we have not come to the point of synchronized effort. Our flood-control engineers are not looking upsl ream. In the Rio Grande watershed in New Mexico, for example, flood-control and river-development plans are in the making that are est imated to cost more than $100,000,000, regardless of the need for the establishment of a contemporaneous plan work upon the eroding and silt-producing lands of the abused watershed. This region has been referred to as “the doomed valley, an example of regional suicide.” There are other such critical points — too many. The assault on the public lands of the West, it successful, will breed more.

4

How about the valley of the greatest river of them all, the Mississippi, its bed so lifted, its waters so choked, so blocked with the wash of productive lands, that the river at flood crests runs high above the streets of New Orleans? Nature in revolt will one day overwhelm the bonds that even the most ingenious modern engineer can prepare. It should by now be clear that natural forces cannot be dealt with in this way. Like echoes from the long past, there are discernible among the earlier causes that have brought the Rio Grande valley to its present difficulties the age-long and disastrous conflict between the herdsman and the agriculturist — echoes from the wasted lands of Asia Minor, of Palestine, of Greece, and of Spain.

Today the story has different overtones. The raids of the herdsmen of earlier times find their twentieth-century counterpart in the work of political pressure groups representing powerful livestock owners in the halls of Congress. Representatives of the lumber industry are there too, striving to effect arrangements so that the profits of their corporations may be assured and, if possible, increased. There is nothing unethical about all of this under the present scheme of things. For the moment, it is the American way of doing business. But in the light of the provable facts, the use of our productive land and our renewable resources — forests, wild fife, and waterways — must now be directed solely to the benefit of all the people.

Under our present criminal code anyone who steals food from a groceryman’s counter can be put in jail. His act hurts only the proprietor of the store. But if, for the benefit of his own pocketbook, the owner of timberlands at the head of a river source strips the hills of their forests, the net result is that food is taken not from one “proprietor” but from all the “proprietors,” or farm owners, down the valley, because the removal of forest cover on an upper watershed will inevitably damage the water supply in the valley below, even to the point of causing the complete drying up of wells and springs. Countless thousands of landowners in America have in this very way been brought to bankruptcy. In the face of such things, how equitable are our present moral codes?

There is nothing revolutionary in the concept that renewable resources are the property of all the people and, therefore, that land use must be coordinated into an over-all plan. This principle has been recognized in other democracies. In several countries in western Europe, for example, an individual owning forests can under no circumstances cut a tree down on his property unless such cutting conforms with the principles of sound forest treatment prescribed by the Forestry Department of his government. In effect, private ownership of the country’s resources is countenanced only if the use of such resources is directed towards the interests of the people as a whole.

The United States has, within the last decade, begun to move in this direction. The first step of coördinating land resources into a unified program found expression in the Tennessee Valley Authority created by Congress, after much heart searching, in 1933. This enterprise is an experiment in the unified planning and development of a great river valley and of its water and land resources. It directly affects the lives and fortunes of more than 3 million people. Ably administered, it has, within the span of little more than a decode, justified itself not only as a social experiment but as an effort to harmonize human needs with the processes of nature. Above all, it provides an example from which lessons can be drawn from the solution of the problem that faces the entire country. The interdependence of all the elements in the creative machinery of nature points clearly to the fact that any program devised to meet the situation calls for a supreme coördinated nation-wide effort. Many conditions are involved — social, financial, political, as well as physical. Such a program still is awaiting formulation.

5

THE Soviet government has undertaken what is perhaps the most extraordinary effort of its kind ever made by man. In scope and complexity it considerably exceeds the Tennessee Valley development in the United States. Part of the bold plan is the attempt to harness and control the Volga River so that the spring flow, which is equivalent to 70 per cent of the annual flow, can be retained and used for irrigation throughout the season. It is a noteworthy fact that the forests in the upper watersheds of the Volga were so ruthlessly cut in the decades prior to the revolution that water from melting snow during the spring thaws was not absorbed into the earth but rushed violently seaward, resulting in damaging floods in the spring and lack of water during the rest of the year.

It was realized that if the Volga waters were to be diverted to irrigation, the level of the landlocked Caspian Sea, into which the Volga flows, would fall substantially because outgo by evaporation would be greater than the water received from the river. This would result in leaving ports, towns, and industries upon the shoreline high and dry, and would severely injure the important fishing industry. A search was then started to find additional water that might be siphoned into the Volga in order to increase its flow sufficiently to keep the Caspian at its normal level.

It was determined to divert the waters of some of the northern rivers that flow into the Arctic Ocean, by a series of dams and reservoirs, into the Volga basin, and even to tap the Don River at a point nearest the Volga, close to the town of Kalach, the level of the Don at that point being higher than the Volga. This plan also had its complications and could be adopted only if it were found that the Don could spare enough water and still retain an adequate supply for its own various functions, including navigation, water supply for the cities lying along its course, and even the protection of the shellfish beds in the Sea of Azov at the Don’s mouth that would not survive any material change in water conditions. Consideration for aquatic resources, a not unimportant source of food supply, is typical of the care that the Russians have taken to observe all of the interrelated factors. All in all, it is a project of titanic proportions.

Questions occur to one. Would this whole costly enterprise be necessary if so much of the forestcovered slopes of the Volga watershed had not been ravaged in earlier years? Will the reservoirs eventually be rendered useless by becoming choked and filled with silt as has occurred frequently in the United States? The Russians have been thorough in this plan, that is apparent enough. Have they thought of everything? Nature works as an integer. Is a component part being overlooked? If so, as time goes on, the plan may become another monument to man’s lack of understanding. One recalls the great irrigation systems in the pre-Christian era in Mesopotamia, now a desolate and abandoned land. Have we yet learned enough to mold our civilization to the permanent and omnipotent forces of nature?

The efforts of the Soviet government to gain greater productivity from the land are even extending to the tundra, that great cold and treeless land that stretches all the way across the entire northernmost part of the country along the Arctic Ocean. Northern Siberia is one of the last few great pioneering lands outside of certain regions in the tropics, and into it the Russians have gone and are going in large numbers. The government has organized programs of systematic exploration, some for military-strategic reasons but others to find out to what extent land in the far north can be used to support human life.

In this remote and forbidding country the ground is permanently frozen to great depths, even sometimes to 2000 feet below the surface. However, plant life in the arctic thrives in the active layer of soil that thaws out during the summer, and the tundra blooms with a riot of verdure during the brief spell of frostless days, varying from 70 to 125 a year. Plant specialists are at work even in the Taimyr Peninsula, the most northerly land mass of Russia, extending to within about 840 miles of the North Pole. Carried forward by exploratory enthusiasm, they have found that arctic raspberries and flax will ripen in the flood plains of the rivers. These plants, they claim, require as much solar heat to ripen as do barley and potatoes. During the long polar day, plants grow with tropical speed, and growth must actually be controlled by spreading tarpaulins over the hothed frames in order to create artificial night.

These activities are symptomatic of human need and endeavor in these times when people are forced to find new places to live because of population pressures, or are drawn to remote portions of the earth in order to exploit its mineral wealth or other resources.

Two powerful nations, one in the West, the other in the East, are today locked in maneuvers of a fateful nature. Conjectures as to the eventual consequences to them, as well as to all other nations, are not pertinent here, but it is of high significance that both these nations are aware, to a greater or lesser degree, that all is not well with their living resources. Each country has, within the last few decades, commenced to take corrective steps. Each is proceeding along the lines of its own political or social ideology.

In view of the fact that in Russia practically all the land belongs to the state, the directives concerning the use of forests, agricultural lands, water sources, and animal life are formulated and imposed by the government. This procedure is, of course, virtually the opposite of that prevailing in our own country, where all but a small proportion of our natural resources are privately owned and the government can do no more, in effect, than encourage and suggest wise and proper use of the land. There exists in northern Europe today a third system, under which forests and productive lands, while resting in individual ownership, are strictly subject to the uses and regulations established by the governments. Such countries as Denmark and Sweden exemplify a successful amalgamation of the interests of the individual and the state in so far as natural resources are concerned.

It is a startling coincidence that at this time the United States and Russia have, in relation to their respective populations, almost identically the same amount of land that is suitable for agriculture. Both countries are facing the future on approximately equal terms as far as the basic assets for existence are concerned. The future holds the answer as to which nation will be the more successful in using and conserving them.

In view of the alarming developments that are now occurring in the United States the people of our country will soon be faced with a momentous decision. Either we shall permit the continuance of conditions whereby the diminishing, living natural resources of this great continent may be exhausted to the point of national disaster or, through the adoption of a new concept regarding the responsibilities of ownership, these resources will be used and managed in a way to protect the interests of the public as a whole. The arousing of opinion as to what is going on, in order to bring about active and voluntary coöperation between people and government, is the American way; but will this awakening come in time?

A democracy can rise in its might and organize itself all-powerfully to fight a successful war. This happens only when the people as a whole see the issue at stake. The issue facing America in regard to the preservation of its living resources is as critical, if not as immediate, as the threat of any war. Our democracy has heretofore met with no equivalent test. If America permits the continuing exhaustion of the elements that are the source of her life and strength, any other social or political creed might serve her as well. It will not matter so much then, because the theory of a democracy presupposes a condition of reasonable well-being for all. Ideals and aspirations are rarely nurtured by want.

In the United States there are now real grounds for hope. Within the last decade more has been accomplished than in all the previous years of our history. Federal and state agencies are steadily doing more effective work, and unlimited credit should be given to the able and intelligent men who are accomplishing everything within their power to save America for its children. Yet under the pressure of a growing population, of industrial demands, and of world responsibilities, we have not even begun to strike a balance in preserving the living assets of this country.

One may well ask, Why should government do this job? Theoretically, in a land of free enterprise the responsibility for preserving the resources of a nation should rest upon individual initiative, but this can only be counted upon when there is general public understanding of a situation and of the means of dealing with it. This knowledge is lacking in the urban population which comprises considerably more than half of our people. In the rural population there is, fortunately, a growing consciousness that the productivity of our land is threatened, together with an increasing knowledge of the steps that must be taken to avert this peril.

Only an over-all coördinated program can give assurance for the future. It will involve complete coöperation on the part of both government and industry backed by the public’s insistence that the job shall be done. It will call for tremendous work in the years lying immediately ahead. In the meanwhile we are still riding the downward spiral that has carried other nations to eclipse and even to oblivion.