speculation of sale. Some of this land would have gone out of production 

 had there been no Program. 



A close inspection of individual Program cooperators indicates that the 

 amount of land that would have reverted to brush by the summer of 1959 

 had there been no Program is about 850 acres. As shown in Table 4, it 

 was estimated that the Soil Bank Program accounted for about 4,350 

 acres of cropland which would have remained in production at least through 

 1959 had there been no Program. The plausibility of this conclusion is 

 supported by the trend comparison pictured in Figure 2. The sum of the 

 remaining cropland not in the Soil Bank plus the 4,350 acres taken out 

 of production by the Soil Bank almost falls on the 1939-59 trend in crop- 

 land as reported by the various Census of Agriculture. 



Figure 2. Long-run trend in cropland and projection, 

 1939-1975, Coos County* 



70,000 



60,000 - 



50,000 - 



40,000 - 



UJ 



o: 

 o 



50,000 - 



20,000 - 



10,000 - 



YEAR 



* Data 1939-54 from Agricultural Census, Bu. of Census, U. S. Dept. of Commerce, 

 and 1959 data estimated from Farm Survey. Trend fitted by method of least squares. 

 Log. Y=4.867 — .076X, where Y equals acres and X equals time. 



17 



