2; CIRCULAR 661, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
source of raw material to meet farm needs, as a source of merchant- 
able crops, as a preventive of excessive soil erosion and water runoff, as 
a cover for game birds, as a protection to crops and farmsteads in 
the prairie-plains States against the hot, dry winds of summer and 
the blasts of winter, and, finally, as an aesthetic and recreational 
asset. Yet, in spite of this recognized value, until recently no co- 
ordinated attack was made on the problem of farm-woods economics. 
Even now, farm woods continue to be a neglected natural resource, 
undergoing gradual deterioration through excessive cutting and graz- 
ing. In wartime especially the woods are combed over for their 
supplies of strategic materials. 
This study of farm-forest economy in the Lake States and the 
place of woodlands in the farm economy focuses the result of several 
years’ research on a most urgent problem precipitated by present 
war conditions. War demands are falling with heavy impact on farm 
woodlands, and for an unknown period will continue to do so. Farm 
forest products are not only being drained away for war purposes 
but are being employed increasingly on the farm as substitutes for 
other materials that the farmer must do without—coal or oil, metal 
equipment, fencing, building materials, and so on. If this harvest- 
ing is done destructively, it may well wreck the farm woodlands ir- 
reparably. In the midst of our plans for post-war recovery, can we 
afford to overlook the threatened ruin of so important a farm 
resource ¢ 
Efforts to avoid the impoverishment of some 140 million acres of 
farm woodlands—as a part of a national plan for post-war restoration 
of a stable farm economy—must be based upon such data and observa- 
tions as are here presented. In the light of an awakened interest in 
the farm woodland, it is timely to attempt an appraisal of the farm- 
forest situation in the very important rural sections of the Lake 
States, and to analyze the economic factors responsible for present 
conditions. These tasks the authors have here performed in concise 
and convincing fashion. Following this, they outline a program of 
remedial measures by which the farm woods can be brought to greater 
productiveness and be made to contribute in larger measure to a 
more ample and more secure rural life. It remains to translate this 
program into action. 
Earte H. Curapp, 
Acting Chief, Forest Service. 
ELEMENTS OF THE FARM-FORESTRY PROBLEM 
Farm woodlands are an important source of raw materials for 
farm use in the Lake States and are gaining in potential importance 
to the forest industries of the region. Lake States farmers obtain 
from their own timber the major share of their requirements for 
fuel wood and posts and a substantial part of their barn timbers 
and repair lumber—a harvest worth in all some $34,000,000 annually. 
At the same time, the depletion of commercial lumber supplies, the 
inaccessibility of remaining commercial timber, financial and tech- 
nical deterrents to industrial ownership and operation of timber 
tracts, all favor the farm woods as a source of industrial raw materials. 
Nor is there any fundamental reason why the productivity of the 
