332 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1951 



RESOURCES ARE ADEQUATE 



The soil, water, and fertilizer resources of the United States are 

 ample to meet all foreseeable requirements of world leadership. In 

 fact, they are more than ample — provided we use them intelligently. 



Farmers are now using 405 million acres of land for the production 

 of crops. Also, 70 million acres of pasture land are cropped oc- 

 casionally in long-time rotations. An additional 642 million acres 

 of open grassland and 350 million acres of woodland are used for 

 livestock grazing. Over most of this area we can realize both in- 

 creased production and soil conservation through the application of 

 available knowledge. 



In addition, there are big opportunities for expanding production 

 by bringing idle or unproductive land into use. Along the east coast 

 and Gulf States there is a huge area of swampland that could be 

 drained and put into production. With modern engineering devices, 

 the water table could be lowered and controlled on much of this area. 

 Some government and private projects are already under way. There 

 is every reason to believe that these soils would be highly productive. 



On hundreds of thousands of farms throughout the country there 

 are corners or patches of idle wet land, often several acres in size, that 

 could be drained and made productive. All they need may be a short 

 drainage ditch, a tile line, some weed or brush killer, fertilizer or 

 manure, or a few hours with a bulldozer. The production capacity 

 of many farms can be increased by putting such idle land to work. 



There are thousands of farms in the humid States where water 

 is available and where the necessary investment in irrigation might 

 pay. The medium and large rivers and streams in eastern United 

 States that flow continuously the year around number well over one 

 hundred. There are millions of acres of well-drained land adjacent 

 to these streams. Modern engineering would permit tapping these 

 streams to apply water from them for supplemental irrigation with- 

 out damming them up. The opportmiities for using river water to 

 supplement rainfall on the rich valley lands of eastern United States 

 are enormous. 



In the arid west, large areas could be freed or kept free from salts, 

 irrigated from available water supplies, and brought into production. 

 In the Columbia River Basin, for instance, irrigation farming with 

 water from Grand Coulee Dam will get under way in 1952. During 

 the next few years a million new acres are expected to be brought 

 into production in this project alone. The Bureau of Reclamation 

 estimates that there are 16,839,000 acres of irrigable new land in the 

 western States. 



Also, in the Southeast, little if anything is being produced on mil- 

 lions of acres of poor grazing land, unproductive woodland, and low- 



