310 CONFERENCE ON NATURAL BEAUTY 



We boast of increased agricultural output per man and rightly 

 so, if our concern be strictly technological but we overlook de- 

 clining net farm income and the increasing costs of maintaining the 

 current overproduction. These higher costs are both direct, in dol- 

 lars invested in Federal agricultural programs, and indirect, in 

 disorderly human displacement from the land and in the death of too 

 much of our landscape. 



One of the modern farmer's most destructive economic tools 

 which has been responsible for the death of the landscape is the 

 array of persistent chemical insecticides with which he has been 

 encouraged, by land grant colleges and Washington bureaus, to 

 poison the landscape. 



Man's long history is full of examples of foolish devotion to nar- 

 row ends. Today's landscapes bear sad testimony to the over- 

 emphasis on short-term economics too often advocated by our Fed- 

 eral departments without clear policy formulation by the Congress. 

 Our Nation, if it is to endure another 200 years, and truly profit 

 from the scientific advances of the last 200 years, needs a national 

 policy built on a lasting harmony between man and the land. Ag- 

 riculture is still the major land use, so agriculture must be soundly 

 based. 



A healthy landscape is one that produces more than an extra mar- 

 gin of profit on the farmer's dollar. We have, in this fortunate coun- 

 try, solved our problems of food production, are in fact embarrassed 

 by food surpluses. Tomorrow's challenge is to maintain adequate 

 production while restoring all those natural byproducts of nature that 

 once made the farm landscape so satisfying. 



We can praise agricultural chemicals in the same breath that im- 

 pels us to call for a restriction in the use of persistent chemical insecti- 

 cides. This is no more than a President's Science Advisory Com- 

 mittee and a Senate subcommittee have recently urged upon us. It 

 is no illogic but a recognition of the complexities of the landscape. 



There are, fortunately, alternatives to our current overuse of these 

 mischievous poisons. We need only to encourage the use of these 

 alternatives with the same enthusiasm we have lent the chemical 

 approaches. If some alternatives prove inadequate, we must invest 

 more in the discovery of new and better methods to enable the farmer 

 to produce the foods and fibers we want without poisoning the land- 

 scape. We must, in short, devise a policy of land use that will nourish 

 man's spirit by restoring that diversity of living things in the landscape 

 that makes it both more stable and more rewarding to man. 



