Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-09-10
j. s. PAYS PRICE
FOR LAND GIFTS
DR.. Gray Tells Agricultural
Conference Control May Be
Gained by Education.

Uncle sam gave away too much land
and will have hard JOB getting 1t back,
Dr. l.. G. Gray of the Bureau of Agri-
cultural Economics told the inter- Amer
lean Conference on Agriculture, Forestry
and Animal Industry meeting at the
Pam American Union today.
Back in the homesteading days the
Government gave away good land, poor
land and indifferent land and now is
paying the price of its ll-advised haste,
DR.. Gray indicated.
In fact" he said, "the existing
economic instability and disorganization
in extensive rural sections of our coun-
try are essentially the outgrowth of a
land policy which threw enormous areas
into private ownership far beyond the
needs of the population for agricultural
land
Unfortunately practically all the
potentially agricultural land is now in
private ownership and the Federal Gov
eminent lacks power Of direct control
of land utilization through ownership,
and is constitutionally handicapped for
the regulation utilization or settlement
of private lands"
Control Through Education.
Such control, he believes, can be at
tanned through education and reaquisi-
ton. For this purpose, he said, it is
essential to have an economic CLASH
f1cation of the areas of doubtful agri-
cultural utilization, which represent
about third of the continental United
States.
An economic classification of land"
he continued, would supply a large
amount of data concerning the physl-
cal condition of land resources in sub
marginal areas, and would result in a
decision as to whether reorganization
or abandonment should be the pro-
gram in areas where farmers are I'M
able to maintain satisfactory standard
of living. 1t would indicate the areas
which are capable of successful land
settlement and automatically hinder
many ill-advised land settlements"
Enough land to support nation, ex-
ceeding the total arabic land of Japan,
has been rendered useless for cultiva-
ton in the United States through gull
living, or has been SO severely washed
that farmers cannot afford its cultiva-
ton or reclamation, said DR.. H. H.
Bennett of the Bureau of Chemistry
and Soils. A minimum estimate of APP
proximately 1880, 900 acres have been
destroyed in this way, he pointed out
Lands Not Inexhaustible.
"The Nation is fast coming to the
realization" he said, that its agri-
cultural lands are not inexhaustible and
that the losses bear heavily on the
shoulders of many thousands of farm
ers. Plant food extracted from the
land by crops can be restored in the
form of fertilizers and self-improving
crops, but the materials of fertility re-
moved by erosion cannot be restored,
because the washing process takes the
entire body of the soil, plant food and
ALL Recent estimates indicate that the
amount of plant food washed out of the
fields of the United States every year
is 81 times greater than the annual loss
by the crops taken out of the fields.
The Mississippi River alone discharges
annually into the Gulf of Mexico 418,-
100000 tons of suspended matter and
132, 000, 600 tons of dissolved matter.
Even the amount of land destroyed by
Outlying, Mr.. Bennett continued, is
small compared to the vast area that
has been subjected to costly impair
ment by sheet erosion" that slower
process of erosion, as distinguished
from Outlying, which removes a film of
soil from fields whenever it rains enough
for water to run down hill.
Operates on Top Soil.
Erosion" he explained, operates
chiefly on the top soil, the most pro-