AFTERNOON SESSION 



Section of Lands 



SUMMARY OF SECTION REPORT 



A LITTLE more than one-fifth of the land 

 area of the United States is under cul- 

 tivation. The soils of the country, as 

 measured by crop yield per acre, are not 

 losing fertility ; taking the country as a whole, 

 nine out of ten counties are either holding 

 their own in this particular, or are gaining in 

 fertility. Those parts of the country that are 

 losing in fertility are mainly in the newly- 

 settled regions, where the farmers are still 

 drawing upon the original fertility of the soil 

 and are not renewing it with fertilizers or 

 practicing crop rotation. The present low 

 average yield per acre is in part due to care- 

 less farming, but more generally to the fact 

 that farm land is cheap as compared with 

 farm labor. This is proven by the fact that the 

 highest yields per acre are in the older North- 

 eastern States, where land is relatively high 

 in value, and in the arid regions of the West, 

 where water, the essential, is scarce. The 

 acreage of cultivated lands is increasing 

 much more slowly than the population, and 

 can never be much more than twice what it is 

 now ; and the soils are not producing one- 

 half of what they should produce, or what 

 they will be required to produce in the near 

 future, if we would avoid buying our foods 

 elsewhere. An important factor in reducing 



crops is the loss due to injurious animals and 

 insects, especially the latter. It is estimated 

 that the annual loss to livestock, grains, etc., 

 due to injurious mammals is in excess of 

 $100,000,000. The damage by birds is com- 

 paratively slight, and is far outweighed by 

 the beneficent work of the birds in destroying 

 insects, eating weed seeds, etc. The public 

 range lands of the West contain approxi- 

 mately 300,000,000 acres. Upon this range it 

 is estimated that there are at present 50,000,- 

 000 head of cattle and 40,000,000 head of 

 sheep. The range is in very bad condition, 

 especially that part used by sheep, owing to 

 over-grazing and trampling. These bad con- 

 ditions can be remedied by an assumption of 

 control over the range by its owner, the 

 United States, and the apportionment of it to 

 stock-rangers individually. This asset of the 

 country has been misused and wasted almost 

 as criminally as the forests. There are in 

 this country from 75,000,000 to 80,000,000 

 acres of swamp and overflowed land, nearly 

 all of which can and should be drained and 

 protected, and thus added to our cultivable 

 area. It is estimated that the profit from 

 such operations will be from 100 to 200 per 

 cent over the present value of the lands plus 

 the cost of drainage and protective works. 



AT THE opening of the afternoon 

 session the chairman, after an- 

 nouncing the appointment of a 

 Committee on Resolutions, called for an 



address by Senator Knute Nelson, of 

 Minnesota, chairman of the Section of 

 Lands. The paper aroused deep inter- 

 est and was heard with marked attention. 



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