depletion of the groundwater supply, and of the drying up 

 of creeks, small rivers, and lakes. 



The reader may be inclined to think that this is too expen- 

 sive a form of agriculture. From the point of view of an era 

 when there was plenty of free or moderately-priced fertile 

 land, when an owner could exploit one particular farm and 

 then move to new and fertile land previously untouched 

 what the Europeans long ago named "robber agriculture" 

 from that point of view it may usually be a more expensive 

 form of agriculture to the individual, although not to society. 

 However, that era of exploitation is passed. Today the 

 landowner who desires to leave to his children a farm that is 

 more productive worth more instead of much less or a 

 nation that desires to maintain self-sufficiency in feeding, 

 clothing and housing itself, must observe those agricultural 

 practices which will conserve the waters and the soils. It is 

 no longer possible to abandon "robbed " land and turn to new, 

 rich lands to be had at the cost of a trek in a covered wagon. 

 As a matter of fact, numerous farms can be operated much 

 more profitably on a basis of correct land use, such as that 

 called for under the system of soil and water conservation 

 outlined above, than where all the land is farmed without 

 regard to principles of soil adaptability and soil conservation. 



On many farms conservation of water and soil would be a 

 relatively simple matter would involve chiefly contour 

 plowing and crop rotation, and perhaps a moderate amount 

 of strip-cropping. So urgent is the problem that McGee 

 said years ago that the individual landowner should be made 

 responsible : 



both for the public welfare and for the benefit of the owner, each farm 

 should be made to take care of all the water falling on it during the entire 

 year; and all that part of the water not needed for immediate crop growth 

 or cistern or other supply should be so caught and absorbed by mulch or 

 well-tilled soil or contour furrows and ridges as to pass into the ground, 

 there to be stored against need for the steady supply of streams through 

 seepage and for the gradual restoration of the sadly depleted reservoirs of 

 subsoil water. 8 



8 W. J. McGee, Wells and Subsoil Water. U. S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of 

 Soils, Bulletin No. 92, Mar. 26, 1913, p. 184. 



56 



