18 NUT GROWING 



some of the western prairies one may look clear to 

 the horizon and see only French weed, thistles, and 

 wild mustard where once was corn and waving grain 

 the land now practically abandoned because farm- 

 ers would not change their crops or do subsoil plow- 

 ing. While this state of things remains it is all 

 wrong to open up more unimproved land. We are 

 simply increasing competition between men engaged 

 in the lower planes of agriculture. 



Is there a deserted hillside sheep pasture in the 

 east or a mustard prairie in the middle west that 

 cannot be made to grow one hundred dollars worth 

 of nuts per acre annually? Probably not. 



The attempt to raise corn and other grain crops 

 on the Appalachian hillsides has been extremely de- 

 structive because of soil erosion following in local- 

 ities in which nut tree crops would have given much 

 larger incomes from the same land with the avoid- 

 ance of erosion and exhaustion of the soil. The 

 deserted farmlands of the eastern states would not 

 be deserted but would be yielding large permanent 

 incomes if tree crops of grafted acorns, hickories, 

 beeches, hazels, and black walnuts had been planted 

 where now the ground is occupied by chipmunks and 

 sumac. 



When bird shooting in North Carolina and obliged 

 to jump over deep erosion gullies in the fields all day 

 long, I said to a farmer that his land was running 

 away from him. He replied that he was well aware 

 of the fact but did not know what to do about it. 

 His fields yielded less than ten bushels of wheat to 



