24 MISC. PUBLICATION 290, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



forestry departments or comparable agencies for the planting of 

 windbreaks, shelterbelts, and farm woodlands. 



Another form of assistance offered by the Government under the 

 Clarke-McNary law is aid to farm woodland owners in the manage- 

 ment and care of their timber. Approximately 185,500.000 acres of 

 commercial forest land, or about one-third of the privately owned 

 commercial forest area of the country, is in farm woodlands. As a 

 source of cash income to the farmers of the United States, forest 

 products sold from the farm rank ninth among the 50 leading farm 

 crops. In this project, the Department of Agriculture, through its 

 Extension Service and the Forest Service, cooperates with farmers 

 in 37 States and Puerto Rico. The work is focused on the more 

 efficient management of farm woodlands, the reforestation of those 

 farm lands not now suitable for agricultural crops, and the market- 

 ing and utilization of farm timber. 



In connection with this program, a number of small timbered tracts 

 throughout the country are being improved as demonstration areas 

 to stimulate the interest of timberland owners in practical forestry 

 methods. Civilian Conservation Corps enrollees are being used in 

 carrying out this work on both farm woodlands and other privately 

 owned timberlands. Each demonstration is a cooperative venture 

 in which the owner of the land, the C. C. C, the Extension Service, 

 the State forest service, and the United States Forest Service par- 

 ticipate. These demonstrations show practical measures of control- 

 ling soil erosion, reducing flood dangers, and increasing forest and 

 woodland values through proper woods practices. They also aid 

 in promoting more intensive protection from fire. 



PRAIRIE STATES FORESTRY PROJECT 



The Forest Service is vitally concerned with the use of trees in 

 the prairie-plains States as an important means in the control of wind 

 and water erosion and as a means to make that area a better place 

 in which to live and work. Planting programs are designed to 

 extend windbreak, shelterbelt, and farm-woodland benefits into the 

 territory between the forested States along the Mississippi and the 

 treeless plains to the west. 



Preliminary activities have proved the value of such work. Out- 

 standing success was attained in the planting programs under the 

 Prairie States forestry project of 1934—36. Work was done in an 

 area extending from the northern boundary of North Dakota south 

 into the Panhandle of Texas, and approximately a hundred miles 

 wide. 



Trees selected for planting were for the most part the native 

 species of the western region which have become adjusted to the 

 climate and soils through many generations. In the case of every 

 species except exotics, special stress was laid on the collection of 

 seed and propagation of seedlings within the region and the lati- 

 tudinal zone in which the trees were planted. 



Nurseries were established to provide the necessary seedlings. 

 During 1935 and 1936, nearly 24,000,000 trees Avere planted on the 

 project, representing approximately 1,278 miles of shelterbelt strips, 

 in addition to approximately 6,500 acres of tree groves planted 

 around farmsteads. 



