Lessons From the Old World
In this discussion on lessons from the Old and New Worlds in conserving the vital
heritage of our people, I have laid special emphasis on saving the physical body of soil
resources rather than their fertility. Maintaining fertility falls properly to the farmer
himself. Conserving the physical integrity of the soil resource falls to the Nation as
well as to the farmer and landowner, in order to save the people's heritage and safeguard
the national welfare. If the physical body of the soil resource is saved, we as a people
are safeguarded in liberty of action. We can apply fertilizer and plant a choice of crops
in accord with market demands and national needs. If the soil is destroyed, then our
liberty of choice and action is gone, condemning this and future generations to needless
privations and dangers. So big is this job--of saving our good land from further damage
and of reclaiming to some useful purpose vast areas of seriously damaged land-that full
cooperation of the individual interest of farmers with technical leadership and assistance
of the Government is not only desirable, but necessary, if we are to succeed.
Another conclusion from our survey of the use of land through 7,000 years, where
economic conditions have changed for better or for worse more rapidly than climate, is
that land after all is not an economic commodity. It is an integral part of the Nation
even as its people are and requires protection by the individual owner and by the Nation
as well. Nowhere have we found more telling evidence of this than in California where gold
in 1849 lured a host of people to the State, but soils of its valleys have maintained its
settlement.
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