CHAPTER 40 



The farm Woodlot 



By F. F. Moon 



Professor of Forest Engineering, College of Forestry, Syracuse 

 University, N. Y. 



Need of Forestry. — To properly solve the land problem of any nation 

 each acre should be put to its best permanent use. Field crops should be 

 grown upon the tillable areas and the land which is too steep or stony for 

 cultivation or too sterile for ordinary field crops should be made to produce 

 repeated crops of timber. That is why the practice of forestry, which is 

 "the raising of repeated crops of timber on soils unsuited to agriculture," 

 is necessary to secure the proper use of all the land. 



Forestry is not a part of agriculture. It is separate, but co-ordinate 

 and interdependent. Agriculture has first call upon the land and selects 

 the fertile and level areas for tillage. Forestry takes the remaining portion 

 and raises the timber indispensable to our civilization. Both are concerned 

 with crops, since the forester regards his timber-covered areas as fields to 

 be sown (either by nature or artificially), tended and finally reaped, for 

 forestry means using the products of the forest and does not mean locking 

 up the woodlands for park purposes, as some people think. 



The practice of forestry upon the non-agricultural soils is absolutely 

 essential for three reasons: 



(1) Timber is absolutely indispensable to our civilization. 



(2) There are large areas of land which can never be used for agri- 



culture. 



(3) The indirect influence of the forest in moderating climatic 



extremes, in controlling run-off, etc., is necessary to the success- 

 ful practice of agriculture and to the health and comfort of the 

 people. 



1. Next to food, shelter is most important. According to Fernow, over 

 half our population live in wooden houses, and two-thirds use wood for 

 fuel. The same authority estimates that 95 per cent of all the timber 

 consumed in the United States is for necessities. 



Our per capita consumption of wood is unusually high, and on the 

 increase. (It is twice what it was fifty years ago.) We consume six times 

 as much timber per capita as in Germany, and twenty times as much as in 

 Great Britain. 



2. Agriculture ?an never be practiced on a large part of this continent, 

 and this land must not be allowed to lie idle. Of the 1,900,000,000 acres 



(521) 



