Part 11 (2/2)

The fundamental problem for the human race is to feed itself. It has been a relatively easy matter to provide food and clothing thus far, because the earth yet has a small population, and because there have always been new lands to be brought into requisition. We shall eliminate the plagues and the devastations of war, and the population of the earth will tremendously increase in the centuries to come. When the new lands have all been opened to cultivation, and when thousands of millions of human beings occupy the earth, the demand for food will const.i.tute a problem which we scarcely apprehend to-day. We shall then be obliged to develop self-sustaining methods of maintaining the producing-power of land.

We think we have developed intensive and perfected systems of agriculture; but as a matter of fact, and speaking broadly, a permanent organized agriculture is yet unknown. In certain regions, as in Great Britain, the producing-power of the land has been increased over a long series of years, but this has been accomplished to a great extent by the transportation of fertilizing materials from the ends of the earth. The fertility of England has been drawn largely from the prairies and plains of America, from which it has secured its food supplies, from the guano deposits in islands of the seas, from the bones of men in Egypt and the battlefields of Europe.

We begin to understand how it is possible to maintain the producing-power of the surface of the earth, and there are certain regions in which our knowledge has been put effectively into operation, but we have developed no conscious plan or system in a large way for securing this result. It is the ultimate problem of the race to devise a permanent system of agriculture. It is the greatest question that can confront mankind; and the question is yet all unsolved.

_The best husbandry is not in the new regions._

The best agriculture, considered in reference to the permanency of its results, develops in old regions, where the skinning process has pa.s.sed, where the hide has been sold, and where people come back to utilize what is left. The skinning process is proceeding at this minute in the bountiful new lands of the United States; and in parts of the older states, and even also in parts of the newer ones, not only the skin but the tallow has been sold.

We are always seeking growing-room, and we have found it. But now the Western civilization has met the Eastern, and the world is circ.u.mferenced. We shall develop the tropics and push far toward the poles; but we have now fairly discovered the island that we call the earth, and we must begin to make the most of it.

_Another philosophy of agriculture._

Practically all our agriculture has been developed on a rainfall basis.

There is ancient irrigation experience, to be sure, but the great agriculture of the world has been growing away from these regions.

Agriculture is still moving on, seeking new regions; and it is rapidly invading regions of small rainfall.

About six-tenths of the land surface of the globe must be farmed, if farmed at all, under some system of water-saving. Of this, about one-tenth is redeemable by irrigation, and the remainder by some system of utilization of deficient rainfall, or by what is inappropriately known as dry-farming. The complementary practices of irrigation and dry-farming will develop a wholly new scheme of agriculture and a new philosophy of country life (page 44).

Even in heavy rainfall countries there is often such waste of water from run-off that the lands suffer severely from droughts. No doubt the hilly lands of our best farming regions are greatly reduced in their crop-producing power because people do not prepare against drought as consciously as they provide against frost (page 52). It is often said that we shall water Eastern lands by irrigation, and I think that we shall; but our first obligation is to save the rainfall water by some system of farm-management or dry-farming.

Agriculture rests on the saving of water.

_The obligation of the farmer._

The farmer is rapidly beginning to realize his obligation to society. It is usual to say that the farmer feeds the world, but the larger fact is that he saves the world.

The economic system depends on him. Wall Street watches the crops.

As cities increase proportionately in population, the farmer a.s.sumes greater relative importance, and he becomes more and more a marked man.

Careful and scientific husbandry is rising in this new country. We have come to a realization of the fact that our resources are not unlimited.

The mining of fertilizing materials for transportation to a few spots on the earth will some day cease. We must make the farming sustain itself, at the same time that it provides the supplies for mankind.

We all recognize the necessity of the other great occupations to a well-developed civilization; but in the nature of the case, the farmer is the final support. On him depends the existence of the race. No method of chemical synthesis can provide us with the materials of food and clothing and shelter, and with all the good luxuries that spring from the bosom of the earth.

I know of no better conservators than our best farmers. They feel their responsibility. Quite the ideal of conservation is ill.u.s.trated by a farmer of my acquaintance who saves every product of his land and has developed a system of self-enriching live-stock husbandry, who has harnessed his small stream to light his premises and do much of his work, who turns his drainage waters into productive uses, and who is now troubled that he cannot make some use of the winds that are going to waste on his farm.

_The obligation of the conservation movement._

What I have meant to impress is the fact that the farmer is the ultimate conservator of the resources of the earth. He is near the cradle of supplies, near the sources of streams, next the margin of the forests, on the hills and in the valleys and on the plains just where the resources lie. He is in contact with the original and raw materials. Any plan of conservation that overlooks this fact cannot meet the situation.

The conservation movement must help the farmer to keep and save the race.

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