The Dawn of a New Constructive Era 29 



Agriculture from a National 

 Standpoint 



By Hon. Carl Vrooman 



Assistant Secretary, United States Department 

 of Agriculture 



I shall talk to you in a sketchy, general sort of way about the 

 fundamental policies involved in the consideration of the prob- 

 lems up for discussion at this Conference. We have, in the 

 region under consideration — according to data I have brought 

 from Washington — about 76,000,000 acres of cut-over land on 

 which there is more or less second growth, and about 15,000,000 

 acres on which there is no second growth — on which nothing is 

 being produced. 



The problem is, what are we going to do with these lands? 

 It is a large subject, and you have wisely cut it up into sub- 

 divisions and assigned experts to speak on each topic involved. 

 I shall merely make a brief, general survey of the question as a 

 whole. The Department of Agriculture would like to encourage 

 the development for agricultural purposes of all this area which 

 is adapted to agricultural purposes. We do not know how 

 much of it is adapted to agricultural purposes, and you do not 

 know ; and, therefore, the first and most important step that I 

 can suggest is to have a survey made — such as we make in First ^\ork 

 the national forests — to ascertain which of these lands are suit- ■; , „ 

 able for agricultural development and which for other kinds 'of 

 development. Those suitable for agricultural development 

 should then be surveyed with regard to marketing conditions, 

 with regard to labor supply, with regard to the financing of 

 such agricultural development and with regard tot .every other 

 conceivable problem involved in developing these lands for agri- 

 cultural purposes. If you proceed to act before you do this, 

 you are riding to a fall, you are running into diflficulty and you 

 are going in for a proposition which is only half digested. There- 

 fore, the first step is to make a definite survey of the situation 

 to determine what proportion of these lands are good for agri- 

 cultural purposes, and what other parts are adapted to stock- 



Land Survey 



