A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 35 



EXTENSION NOT EVEN COMMENSURATE WITH RESEARCH 



Advice on the ground to the private owner of forest land on how to 

 grow timber is the most poorly organized and financed public activity 

 in American forestry. It is least effective in reaching the industrial 

 owner, who holds more than half of our commercial forest land. The 

 failure of public agencies is not being made up by any others. 



The best organized and best financed extension effort is that dealing 

 with farm wood lots. While expenditures reach about $160,000 and 

 work is under way in 33 States, it reached in 1931, to the point of 

 effecting some improvement, only about 1 owner in 100. 



Federal extension for industrial timberland owners is an incidental 

 effort by employees whose main responsibility is national-forest 

 administration or research. That in the better utilization of forest 

 products is confined largely to the Forest Products Laboratory, a 

 research institution. 



State extension to industrial owners is fairly well organized hi only 

 a few States, and expenditures are very small. 



Other efforts at extension include a number of associations, most 

 of which work through the press, and a relatively small group of 

 consulting foresters who are very active and effective in reaching 

 private forest landowners on the ground. 



WHY THE SOLUTION OF THE MAJOR FOREST PROBLEMS CON- 

 STITUTES ONE OF OUR MAJOR NATIONAL PROBLEMS 



The full national significance of the solution of these interrelated 

 major forest problems can be evaluated only by considering them in 

 the aggregate. 



SOLUTION THE ONLY MEANS FOR UTILIZING FOREST AND ABANDONED 



AGRICULTURAL LAND 



The only uses in sight for our forest and abandoned agricultural 

 land are for forestry or for farm crops and pasture. 



But the demand of agriculture for land is contracting and not ex- 

 panding. The abandonment of more than 50 million acres of crop 

 and pasture land during the last 2 decades, and the possibility of the 

 abandonment of 25 to 30 million acres more before 1950, is sufficiently 

 conclusive proof of trends. 



Beyond this, repeated attempts made to utilize forest land for 

 agriculture over millions of acres in the Lake States, South, and West 

 have ended in failure. Waves of settlers have been put on the lands 

 by timberland owners and by real-estate promoters. The agricultural 

 colleges and experiment stations have devoted years of research and 

 other effort to develop the possibility of agricultural use. All of these 

 efforts have ended in failure except on the best agricultural land. 



SOLUTION THE ONLY OR THE BEST MEANS FOR SUPPLYING WOOD AND 

 OTHER RENEWABLE RESOURCES 



Despite a falling off of per-capita requirements following the pioneer 

 period, wood promises to keep a permanently important position 

 among our materials. It has high intrinsic value, is easily worked, is 



