A prosperous and enduring agriculture depends on an adequate supply of productive land, properly used and so protected from erosion that it will remain permanently productive. In my judgment, complacency with respect to the security and sufficiency of our land is what we have most to fear. Carrying out an effective nationwide soil conservation program is not a simple matter in a large country of diversified characteristics and interests. Actually, both are tied together in such a completely complementary way, there is no point in pursuing the subject beyond indicating that no man should have the right legally or otherwise, to recklessly or willfully destroy or unnecessarily waste any resources on which public welfare is dependent. Our American experience, however, has apparently developed a majority feeling to the effect that our soil conservation effort should, insofar as security permits, proceed along lines of cooperative action, without the use of compulsion at any point, at least not until there has been time for adequate education and farmer response.
Farmers have only temporary control over their land.
It can be theirs for a lifetime and no longer. Soil Conservation . McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1939. Out of the long list of nature's gifts to man, none is perhaps so utterly essential to human life as soil. National action may be led and aided by government, but the soil must be conserved ultimately by those who till the land and live by its products.