Americans have been the greatest destroyers of land of any race or people, barbaric or civilized

From every conceivable angle-economic social, cultural, public health, national defense-conservation of natural resources is an objective on which all should agree.

History is largely a record of human struggle to wrest the land from nature, because man relies for sustenance on the products of the soil. So direct, is the relationship between soil erosion, the productivity of the land, and the prosperity of people, that the history of mankind, to a considerable degree at least, may be interpreted in terms of the soil and what has happened to it as the result of human use.

Americans have been the greatest destroyers of land of any race or people, barbaric or civilized

Soil erosion is as old as agriculture. It began when the first heavy rain struck the first furrow turned by a crude implement of tillage in the hands or prehistoric man. It has been going on ever since, wherever man's culture of the earth has bared the soil to rain and wind.