Reprint of an editorial from the St. Louis 0lote-Demorat, appearing
in the Courier-ounal, Louisville, Ky. 12/2/48/
"There is No Sbatitute for the Sil
Of all the phrase* with which modern man seek  to quiet his
fears, the most foblish --if not the most tragic-- is lit can't
happen here." We have been indulging in this sort of wistful thinking
in this country regarding our natural resources. America is the land
of plenty. We can feed the world. There is always new land to be
broken to the plow.
Time magazine fell into this wistful thinking trap when it
devoted five pages of its Nov. 8 issuo to sooffing at theeo-
Malthusians who are seeking to arouse this country to realization
of the vital importance of proper soil conservation.. Ina piece
satirically entitled "Eat Hearty , Time's writers deride the warning
that we are rapidly approaching the marginal line of safety and that
unless something is done promply, the United States may cease to be
a lqnd of plenty. To Time, even the dust bowl of the '30s was greatly
t exaggerated as a portent of danger.
It is th a type of thinking, accurately dexaribed as the
"business as usual philosophy, that represents our greatest danger..
This country has been playing in good luck in favorable growing condi-
tions for the last eight years, and has been lulled, as Fairfield
Osborn, author of "Our Pltndered Planet  reminded the National Conf.
of Editorial Writers recently #A Louisville, into a sense of false
secuity..
Ironically, Time's writers apparently failed to regd an
editorial in a recent issue of Life magazine, a companion ublication,
which put the issue succinctly. The problem is, said Life, whether we
shall have a permanent or just a temporary country." Time chose to
ignore also the statistics of the Census Bureat & of the U. S. Soil
Conservation Service, which reveal that this country has left only
390,000,000 acres of farm land suitable for agriculture, and that
we are losing from erosion at least 500,000 acres of land annually.
There is another factor/ which is largely overlooked$
The declining fertility of our soil. Dr. Wm, Albrecht of the College
of Agr. of the Univ. of Missouri has pointed out the seriousness of
this factor. What we have been doing, he warns, is to grow crops for
bulk and not for nutution; for so many tons to sells, but not for C
food value. ife have increased the yield per acre of corn through the
use of  -it    44 varieties & have boosted our yield of wheat to an
all-time J44 high.
But while the yield per acre has been rising,.the concentration
of protein in these grains has been steadily declining. The War Food
Administration was forced to recognise this persiaten decline and lowered
the percentage figure which was long accepted as the atqndard for wheat.
The protein concentration of corn 10 years ago was 9.5 ;. Today
the average Is but 8.5 %.
The relationship of the fertility of the soil to good health
is important but even more vital to our seculity is the blunt fact
that the United States does not possess enough good farm land at present
to support a rising population. The per capita average for this country
today is 2.6 acres, which is close to the minimum required to maintain
the present standard of living. If we continue to lose our top soil thro
erosion & maintain the existing rate of population growth, the U.S. will
--over--