Chicago. 



Conversion of this rangeland to cropland was unquestionably good land 

 use on the gentle slopes in this tall grass coiintry. But between I9IO and 

 1929 about 50 million acres of the best rangeland in the drier shortgrass 

 plains country was plowed. Later there was wholesale abandonment of such 

 farms, while the terms dust-bowl and Okie were being born. In the period 

 1950 to 1970, crop acreage harvested in the U.S. again dropped 45 million 

 acres; while wheat yield per acre trended strongly upward. In 1974» 9h 

 million acres seeded to grass, in a governmental set-aside program, were 

 again plowed; mostly for wheat, even though the Soil Conservation Service 

 regarded about one-half of it as subject to severe erosion if cultivated. 



Evidently many legislators and agricultural economists still believe 

 that the way to increase food production is to put more land under cultiva- 

 tion. 



I first saw cultivated agriculture on nonarable land being subsidized 

 with federal money in the drought and dust of the 1950' s; while working with 

 ranchers in the vicinity of Clayton, New Mexico. Those ranchers were the 

 first to raise land use questions with me. We would pass a dryland farm and 

 they would ask in effect, "Do you think it's doing any good to give that man 

 a government check so he can keep on cultivating that kind of land?" Later 

 I discussed this situation with a respected agricultural economist. He said, 

 "We are still a rich nation and their congressmen can get the money appro- 

 priated. In the older, and poorer countries of Europe and in England you 

 will find that the land has been put to the use that will pay its own way, 

 because they can't afford such waste." Maybe we can't either anymore. 



In the relatively small plains state of Kansas alone, over a million 

 acres have actually been seeded back to local strains of the native range 

 grasses. This is not retirement of cultivated land to grass in the agron- 

 omic sense. It is a conversion in land use from cropland back to rangeland 

 use. It entails range science instead of agronomy — comparable to refor- 

 estation of old fields by foresters in timberland areas. 



We have no way of knowing how much improper land use ranchers have pre- 

 vented by acquiring nonarable land and resisting cultivation. This and 



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