THE FARM LANDSCAPE 295 



are growing up in weeds, brush, untended grass, and scrub trees. 

 More often than not, these lands become an eyesore. 



In addition to untended idle land there is eroded land land torn 

 with gullies by excessive or misguided use, stripped of its productive 

 topsoil, and laid bare by wind and water. Whether as forlorn rem- 

 nants of former mistakes, or the angry evidence of damage now 

 progressively underway, these marks of waste are, to say the very 

 least, unsatisfying. 



Neither beauty nor attention to it are automatic. Heretofore 

 there has been little realistic incentive to bring action in this direction. 

 As a government or community purpose, it has not often ranked high 

 as a claimant for time, money, informational help, or technical 

 assistance. 



If these are, indeed, some of the key reasons for cancer spots of 

 ugliness, drabness, and inattention to beauty in the rural landscape, 

 then some of the avenues to improvement become evident. 



We need to continue our exploration in the United States for 

 ways to improve the income of disadvantaged rural landowners and 

 operators. 



We need to continue our concern for farm family stability. 



We need a program purposefully focused on the use of land within 

 its basic capabilities and the treatment of land according to its needs 

 for protection and waste. Eligible use, in this program, should not 

 be confined to commodity production. 



We need a program of technical assistance, cost-sharing, and per- 

 haps loans to help convert abandoned, idle, or little-used farmland 

 from the ugliness of weed and brush infestation to some constructive 

 uses whether these be for wildlife, nature trails, water development, 

 or purely aesthetic enjoyment. 



We need to step up conservation and resource development work 

 on the operating farms and ranches of the country not only to heal 

 the scars of past carelessness and exploitation, such as gullies, muddy 

 streams, and eroded fields, but to create the fact as well as the appear- 

 ance of orderly cooperation by men with nature. 



We need to establish the restoration and enhancement of natural 

 beauty as an acceptable, important goal of the people of the country. 



Government agency personnel working in the countryside must 

 be authorized and directed to assist, through their regular program 

 functions, toward attainment of the goal. 



