The Loss To The Nation Is Great

A conservative estimate of the area of land formerly cultivated in the United States and now permanently destroyed for farming purposes by erosion is not less than thirteen million acres. But this destroyed area does not represent the worst features of erosion. The slower type of land wastage known as sheet erosion is the real evil genius. By this process every rain heavy enough to cause water to flow takes its toll of soil, and takes it from the top, the richest part of the field. Rainwater does not run away from cultivated hillsides as crystal-clear liquid, but rather as a turbid mixture of soil and water. In this manner it is estimated that each year not less than 126,000,000.000 pounds of plant-food material, washed from cultivated fields and pastures, are carried into the sea or deposited upon slopes and over valley bottoms where it is not needed.

Our agriculturists have devoted a vast amount of work to the problem of replenishing the plant food removed from the soil by cropping, and have given but little attention to the far more serious problem of erosion. Certainly erosion removes from our fields more than twenty times as much plant-food material as is lost in crop production, and little is being done to solve the problem. Furthermore, the crops take the elements of plant food, something that can be restored; but erosion takes the whole soil, which cannot be restored. Annually our farmers are losing at least $200,000,000 by erosion. The actual loss to the Nation is far greater than this; it is incalculable.

As a soil is worn down it becomes less productive, not at a uniform rate, but at a progressively increasing rate. After the removal of the forest mold, the mellow topsoil goes, exposing raw subsoil, usually clay that is less fertile and more difficult to till. After this comes the bedrock on which neither trees nor tilled crops can be grown. Erosion probably modifies the character of the earth's surface more than any other natural force. Volcanoes, earthquakes, tidal waves and tornadoes modify the earth but little in comparison. Over the United States erosion in one day moves soil material exceeding the weight of all the car loadings and all the freight entering and for a period leaving the ports of North America for a period of twelve months.

The problem is the biggest one confronting the farmers of the rolling areas of the country. In the field of conservation it is more important than the problems affecting all other natural phenomena. If the land is conserved many other essentials could be replaced by the products of a fecund soil. When our petroleum is gone, for example, alcohol for fuel can still be made from sugar cane, potatoes, cassava and many other soil-grown products. We are doing very little to counteract the evil of soil erosion but much to accentuate it.