MISCELLANEOUS PUBLICATION NO. 10 65, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



Fortunately, there arises now and then from 

 the multitude a man of great stature and wisdom 

 who shows us the errors of our ways in exploiting 

 resources and creating great wastes. 



Professor E. W. Hilgard, the distinguished soil 

 scientist and former geologist for the State of 

 Mississippi, gave a hard-hitting lecture on poor 

 farming practices, erosion, and sedimentation be- 

 fore the Mississippi Agricultural and Mechanical 

 Fair Association at Jackson on November 14, 1872. 

 He was gravely concerned over the poor husbandry 

 practices of the farmers on the brown loam soils of 

 the State — practices that were ruining the land, 

 eroding and gullying the landscape, and- silting 

 the streams. He told his audience frankly : "If we 

 do not use the heritage more rationally, well might 

 the Chickasaws and the Choctaws question the 

 moral right of the act by which their beautiful 

 parklike hunting grounds were turned over to 

 another race, on the plea that they did not put them 

 to the uses for which the Creator intended them." 

 It was another 75 years before effective counter- 

 measures to land deterioration and stream silta- 

 tion began to be taken in Mississippi. 



One of the real giants in the history of the U.S. 

 Department of Agriculture was Dr. Harvey W. 

 Wiley. During the latter part of the 19th century, 

 Wiley was Chief Chemist in the Department and 

 undertook his classic studies on food adulteration. 

 He found endless cases in which food processors 

 were not careful to distinguish between that which 

 was pure food and that which included an adulter- 

 ant or even wastes. Fortunately, Wiley was also an 

 excellent publicist and skilled agitator. Under his 

 skillful touch, Congress passed the first Food and 

 Drug Act in 1906. 



One may not mention forest conservation — the 

 elimination of wastefulness in forestry — without 

 reference to the work of Gifford Pinchot in the 

 early 1900's. Pinchot launched a crusade for sound 

 forest management and harvesting practices, 

 watershed conservation, disease control, and fire 

 protection. It is regrettable that so much exploi- 

 tation and waste in lumbering had to take place 

 before the need for a Pinchot was recognized. 



When the drought years of the thirties depleted 

 the soils of cover and made vast expanses suscep- 

 tible to the ravages of wind and water, another 

 dynamic leader was at hand — Hugh Hammond 

 Bennett, Chief of the newly formed Soil Conser- 



vation Service. He ably dramatized the tremen- 

 dous duststorms of 1935 as not only depleting the 

 soil on the Great Plains, but also creating enor- 

 mous pollution of the atmosphere. He dramatized 

 the tremendous soil losses from high runoff and 

 the consequent contamination of streams with silt. 

 The people were with him. 



We have touched upon a few instances to em- 

 phasize the point that coping with problems in 

 the production, management, and control of wastes 

 related to agriculture and forestry is not a simple 

 matter. It goes beyond the development of new 

 and improved technology; beyond the sophisti- 

 cated analyses of benefits and costs in the economic 

 arena; beyond the police power of legislation. 



One must take into account the general attitude 

 of people towards various wastes : their apprecia- 

 tion for and interest in esthetic values, their con- 

 cern over health hazards implicit in wastes, their 

 willingness to accept restrictive regulations in lieu 

 of private privileges, and their willingness to pay 

 the added costs of maintaining a better quality of 

 their environment. 



If public agencies develop active programs to 

 alleviate environmental contamination, the tax- 

 payer usually pays the bill. If industry modifies 

 its processing procedures to eliminate or abate 

 production of wastes, any added cost will even- 

 tually be passed on to the consumer. If agriculture 

 and forestry increase costs of production to re- 

 duce wastes, or the adverse effects of wastes, then 

 in due course the consumer will find an adjustment 

 in the price tag. 



In addition to the question of how much control 

 of wastes we want, one must ask how much con- 

 trol do we want to pay for? Beyond doing that 

 which is economically justifiable, how far do we 

 go in meeting health standards and social desir- 

 ability ? We must differentiate between the things 

 we would like to do, those we should do, those we 

 must do, and those we can do. 



Compromises will need to be made among 

 various objectives. For example, people express 

 concern over pesticide residues. They want no part 

 of the possible ill effects from accidental or inad- 

 vertent ingestion of these chemicals. They are 

 just as adamant against biting into an apple and 

 finding half a worm. Both extremes are easily 

 avoidable. 



