306 MISC. PUBLICATION 218, U. 8. DEPT. OF AGRICULTURE 
results in the abandonment of the less fertile and less favorably located 
farms; that is, the farms which are not adapted to cash crops. Un- 
fortunately the abandonment is likely to be a slow and painful pro- 
cess, involving individual and community hardships that might be 
alleviated through State efforts. 
New YorxE 
The agricultural area in New York increased until about 1880. 
Since that time the area in farms has decreased 4,500,000 acres, 
although the total crop production has increased. About 1,000,000 
acres, which have disappeared from farms in the southeastern and 
northwestern parts of the State, have been taken for industrial and 
residential purposes and are by no means abandoned lands. Most 
of the true abandonment has taken place in the hilly regions, par- 
ticularly in the southern highlands and on the slopes bordering the 
Catskill and Adirondack Mountains and lying between the fertile 
valleys on which farming is relatively prosperous and the high alti- 
tudes which have never been cleared. 
The Department of Agricultural Economics at the New York State 
College of Agriculture (Cornell University) has made intensive sur- 
veys of several of the decadent areas. These surveys furnished the 
material for a critical study (117) of the problems of fiscal decline, 
from which the following significant conclusions are drawn (117, pp. 
48-50): 
Abandonment has been found to be due chiefly to the characteristics of the 
soil and the topography * * * ‘The expenditure of capital for improving a 
farm will pay better on good land than on poor land. Every step in progress 
makes it relatively more advantageous to obtain the food supply by the more 
intensive use of good land rather than by the use of land such as is being aban- 
doned. The high ratio of wages to prices of commodities accelerates this 
movement. 
The process of abandonment usually goes through several fairly well-defined 
stages. First the tenants move out. Then the young people go. There are 
left the older owners. These try to sell the farms to people unfamiliar with the 
territory, if possible. Many farms are sold, and this prolongs the process of 
abandonment, particularly if houses and barns are repaired or remodeled. Many 
of the farms are still in the hands of the descendants of the original settlers. 
The sons are gone. When the present owners die, the farms will be sold to an 
endless succession of inexperienced buyers, who purchase in optimism and after 
being disillusioned retain possession in the hope of a sale. If the land were taken 
for forestry purposes, some of the occupied farms as well as the vacant farms 
would be purchased. Most people come to the conclusion that it would be a 
blessing to everyone concerned if some authority, such as the State government, 
would step in and, by purchase, zoning, or some such plan, accelerate the 
movement. 
* * * it seems obvious, (1) that something should be done to hasten the 
abandonment of lands that do not yield living wages to their owners, (2) that 
_ some other method of utilizing this land should be adopted wherever this i 
feasible, and finally, that some steps must then be taken to provide an adequat 
method of financing theservices that will be required for the remaining inhabitants 
All of the evidence collected points to the conclusion that the most 
profitable use to which this abandoned agricultural land can be put 
is the growing of forests. As a matter of fact, New York has already 
done much in the way of reforestation. It has reforested large areas 
at public expense and has made provisions for the production of 
enough seedlings to meet the requirements of private landowners. 
The New York State forest preserves in the Adirondack and Catskill 
Mountain regions now contain 2,300,000 acres (in 1932, 2,373,804 
