A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 



157 



ABANDONMENT IN THE DIFFERENT REGIONS 

 NEW ENGLAND STATES 



The abandonment of agricultural land has been greatest, relatively, 

 in New England. This fact has been noted and commented on for 

 more than 50 years. These States were the first to feel the effects on 

 the use of land of the development of manufacturing and the opening 

 up of the lands west of the Alleghenies. The opportunities offered 

 by these developments drew large numbers of people from the 

 rougher and less fertile sections of these States. With the develop- 

 ment of this more productive western land, these poorer lands were 

 no longer needed for agricultural production. The area of land used 

 for agricultural production was at its highest in this region in 1880, 



FIGURE 2. All lands in farms, agricultural lands, and crops harvested, by regions, 1880-1930. 



and has decreased during each decade since that date. (See table 2 

 and fig. 2.) The amount of land going out of agricultural use in 

 the past two decades has averaged approximately 200,000 acres 

 annually since 1910. (See table 4.) The decline in the use of land 

 for crops has been neither as great nor as uniform as in the case of all 

 agricultural land. The acres of harvested crops declined from 1909 

 to 1919, an average of 40,000 acres annually, but there was a slight 

 increase for the region as a whole from 1919 to 1924, followed by a 

 decline from 1924 to 1929, averaging 160,000 acres annually. (See 

 table 5.) Allowing for the increase in the first part of the decade 

 (which may be owing in part to the inclusion of many suburban places 

 and other "part-time" farms), the average decline for the decade 

 1919 to 1929 was 74,000 acres annually. 



