A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 125 



land has already proved submarginal for agriculture. Furthermore, 

 even during that early period when there existed the greatest popular 

 demand for farm land in our history, scores of millions of acres of 

 forest land were cut over or burned over and not brought into 

 farms. 



During the last decade or more an important and striking reversion 

 has occurred in this trend nationally. The abandonment of agricul- 

 tural lands has been the largest factor in a gradual but evident increase 

 in forest areas. In certain regions, notably New England and the 

 Middle Atlantic, this reversion commenced many years earlier. How 

 extensive this change is, cannot be accurately estimated. The fact 

 that the Forest Service in 1922, in a report Timber: Mine or Crop? 

 (in United States Department of Agricultural Yearbook for 1922), 

 estimated but 470 million acres of forest land in contrast with the 

 present estimate of 495 million acres is not conclusive evidence on 

 this point owing to the manner in which that earlier report was 

 compiled; but there is reason to believe that the reversion of once 

 cultivated land accounts for a considerable part of the difference 

 between that estimate and the present one. This most recent in- 

 crease in forest acreage is continuing. The reversion of other mil- 

 Lions of acres of low-grade farm land is in progress or evidently pending. 

 In all this process many perplexing questions of economics and of 

 social standards or customs are involved. 



Even allowing for some back-to-the-land movement as the result 

 of the present economic depression, it is difficult to foresee any keen 

 competition on the part of agriculture for large areas of forest land. 

 On the contrary, it seems certain that our forest land, at least the 

 area available for forest purposes, will materially increase. The 

 section " The Agricultural Land Available for Forestry " estimates that 

 52 million acres are now available for forest use through agricultural 

 abandonment or for other reasons and that this may be augmented 

 by 25 to 30 million acres by 1950. Some of this land will in time 

 become forested through natural processes. Some may be planted 

 to forests. Most of it would faU within the commercial forest-land 

 zone. 



As will be evident in the later discussion, the term " commercial 

 forest land" is used in a broad sense to mean not only land bearing 

 present timber stands that could be economically utilized for ex- 

 ample, under the 1929 market and operating conditions but also 

 other forest land on which present or future timber stands can be 

 economically utilized under reasonably conceivable future conditions. 

 It will be shown in other sections of this report that appreciable 

 areas of this commercial forest land will need to be withdrawn from 

 timber use for recreational or other nontimber uses. In short, be- 

 cause of the prospective withdrawals for other major forest uses and 

 because of the actual economic unavailabili ty of the timber on much 

 of the so-called "commercial forest land" under present and recent 

 conditions, our effective forest-land capital for supplying our timber 

 needs is now and may always continue to be considerably less than 

 a half billion acres. 



Neither our commercial forest-land acreage in the broad sense 

 used in this report, nor in the narrower sense of land from which 

 timber stands could now be economically utilized, can be considered 

 stable. It will vary with the play of economic forces and changing 



