230 THE FUTURE OF ARID LANDS 
such an area are never easy for people to make, although some 
progress has been made in recent years toward the adjustment. 
Some of the more important roadblocks in the way of making this 
kind of adjustment at a faster rate include the need for resettle- 
ment of people; the necessity for obtaining adequate credit for 
enlarging and changing the farm business; acquiring needed educa- 
tion in a new type of farming; and inevitable inertia and resistance 
to change. 
In any event, a change from cash crop farming, whenever it 
exists in such a hazardous zone, to livestock grazing should be 
speeded up by every practical and feasible means. Two principal 
objectives will be accomplished: first, it will help stop further 
irreparable damage to the land; and second, it will establish a 
sound basis for a permanent agriculture. Only such an approach 
will enable people to conduct a stable farm business. The alterna- 
tive is not a pleasant one—further soil resource destruction, 
blighted hopes and ambitions of people, economic and social stag- 
nation, and finally abandonment of land to the forces of nature, 
whose rehabilitation job is slower than we can afford. 
Role of a Conservation Program 
The use of appropriate conservation practices will slow down 
the process of land damage, even when land is being used for 
purposes for which it is not suited. However, the cost of applying 
measures that will safeguard lands under such misuse is too high 
and soon reaches the point of diminishing returns, especially when 
an entire farm is being used beyond the capability of its soils. So, 
in these cases, a conservation program is largely a delaying action 
that buys time in which to get the land used in harmony with its 
physical, climatic, and economic limitations. In these cases where 
suitable conservation measures are not employed, the rapid dete- 
rioration of the land makes ultimate solution much more difficult, 
or even virtually impossible. 
Wherever soils are suitable, and adequate water supplies are 
available, irrigation is an effective means of stabilizing farming in 
arid areas. Many examples in the Southwest prove the value of 
this type of land use. Some caution is required, of course, espe- 
