services and facilities provided by the Federal Government. In addition to some $5 million which was available to districts directly from State appropriations in 1957, additional contributions from local government, business, and private interests totaled $20 million in 1957. The Federal appropriation for Soil Conservation Service aid to districts in 1957 was slightly less than three times this total.

This development has doubled significance in view of the urgency of conservation and the need for resource programs being operated effectively and economically. It enables the Federal Soil Conservation Service to put an increasing percentage of its annual appropriation into supplying scientifically trained conservationists to aid farmers and ranchers in the districts. This, in turn, results in speeding up the necessary completion of the first-time basic treatment of our agricultural lands with the minimum expenditure of Federal funds.

It means also that there now exists need for nationwide programs of Federal assistance to be guided and kept responsive to local needs and interests.

Thus far, the Soil Conservation Service of the Department of Agriculture has been the principal Federal agency channeling its aid to farmers through soil conservation districts. In a growing number of States, however, districts are entering into working relationships with other Federal as well as State agencies where cooperative effort helps to move ahead various local aspects of conservation of soil, water, grasslands, forests, and wildlife. Wherever the protection and improvement of a valuable natural resource depends to any degree upon landowners and operators, soil conservation districts stand ready to provide the necessary enlightened, effective linkage between the interest of society as a whole and the individual custodian of the parcel of land from which the resource stems or where it is found.

The United States Department of Agriculture regards soil conservation districts as effective vehicles for such linkage between local people and the several soil and water conservation programs which it is responsible for administering.

FUNCTIONS OF SOIL CONSERVATION SERVICE

The Soil Conservation Service, as the technical service agency for soil and water conservation and flood prevention, now has whole or partial responsibility for administering or providing technical assistance on 15 phases of the Department of Agriculture's broad soil and water conservation program.

These activities include technical assistance in soil and water conservation work on individual farms and ranches in soil conservation districts; the national soil survey; works of improvement on 11 watersheds specially authorized for flood prevention work; demonstration of the value of watershed treatment measures on 55 pilot watershed projects; cooperation with local organizations in watershed protection and flood prevention projects as authorized under Public Law 566; completion of water conservation and utilization projects under the Case-Wheeler Act; leadership in the long-range Great Plains conservation program; cooperative snow surveys and runoff preductions for te 11 Western States; leadership in the Department's conservation needs inventory; technical assistance on interagency river basin investigations; providing statistical and technical data to State legislative and executive agencies on conservation problems; and

technical aid on soil and water conservation problems to the agricultural conservation program, the soil bank, and rural development programs, and to the soil and water conservation loan program of the Farmers' Home Administration.

In carrying out the enlarging scope of its responsibility for these soil and water programs of the Department of Agriculture, the Soil Conservation Service relies heavily upon soil conservation districts as the local effectuating body. By 1957, SCS aid to more than 1,727,000 farmers and ranchers on their individual soil and water conservation problems was being channeled through these districts. In addition, a high percentage of the 431,000 farmers who in 1957 obtained SCS technical help in establishing practices under the cost-sharing program of the agricultural conservation program were also district cooperators. Logically, soil conservation districts are taking major leadership in the rapidly expanding watershed protection and flood prevention program. Although it is not a requirement of the Watershed Protection and Flood Prevention Act, only a few of the more than 800 watershed protection projects submitted to the Department of Agriculture for approval and aid under this program to date have not had soil conservation districts as sponsors or cosponsors.

In other areas, soil conservation districts are coming to play an increasingly important part in formulating local programs whether or not they are channeled exclusively through districts. The needs and objectives of soil conservation districts are today being expressed and observed in a major degree in the planning of State and national research, educational, cost sharing and credit programs.

In the new Great Plains conservation program, for example, soil conservation districts have taken steps to provide the principal local leadership.

GREAT PLAINS CONSERVATION PROGRAM

Although the technical, cost sharing, and other assistance available under the Great Plains conservation program is not limited to soilconservation districts, it is provided to farmers and ranchers in conjunction with complete soil- and water-conservation plans of the type used by soil-conservation districts. For the first time, however, a farmer or rancher can develop a long-term conservation plan with the guaranty that both technical and cost-sharing help will be forthcoming, as planned and needed, from the Department of Agriculture for the duration of his contract.

Thus, the Great Plains conservation program focuses upon the resources of a particular region a unique combination of local leadership and State and Federal aid, shaped particularly toward solving specific problems of the region and tied together in a single, coordinated conservation plan.

Paralleling work by conservation farmers and ranchers on the land, the Department of Agriculture is moving rapidly ahead in completing the assembly of information basic to the proper planning and execution of these programs. A noteworthy activity in this regard is intensive work now underway on a nationwide conservation needs inventory. This inventory, under leadership of the Soil Conservation Service, will encompass two main phases: (1) An inventory of land use, conservation problems, and acreage needing treatment; and (2) an inventory of watershed project needs. Goal for completion of this important factfinding activity is set for 1960.

SOIL SURVEYS

At the same time, the Soil Conservation Service has been accelerating its work in obtaining detailed soils information and publishing county-by-county soil surveys. Soil survey data are now available for more than 539,000,000 acres of agricultural land in the Nation, and are used to provide guidance to a rapidly increasing number of nonagricultural as well as agricultural activities.

PLANT MATERIALS CENTERS

Recognizing the high importance of vegetative as well as structural means of controlling erosion and managing water, the Soil Conservation Service during the past year established five new field centers where plants of special value in soil conservation are developed, tested, and propagated for testing and use in soil-conservation districts and watershed projects. There are now 17 such plant-materials centers operating in the Nation. Constant improvements are being made in relating new agronomic, range, biology, and woodland-management techniques to the total requirements of soil and water conservation.

We need also to give attention to the highly important role of the land-grant colleges in this soil and water conservation field. Not only must we depend primarily upon these colleges for the resident training of our future technicians but we must work closely with the research and extension branches as well. There is real need for the most effective possible conservation educational activity. Extension services are giving more attention to this matter and they need our encouragement and help.

It should be noted, too, that other phases of the conservation education movement are underway so that our citizens and leaders in the next generation will also be aware of the urgency of maintaining our soil and water resources. Data and assistance provided by the Soil Conservation Service and other agencies to national school leaders and to youth groups such as Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Cub Scouts, Campfire Girls, and others, is multiplied several million times over each year as conservation teaching, informative publications, exhibits, tours, and other conservation activities result from this type of

assistance.

Next to people themselves, I regard land as our most valuable resource. Land-productive land-is essential to the health and economic well-being of our people and our Nation. Without an adequate supply of fertile soil and a well-managed water supply, no nation can maintain the standard of living that enables it to hold a major position in world affairs. Without it, we cannot sustain the level of technical and social progress that is required for modern world leadership.

It is reassuring to be able to report that the United States, for the moment, is also in a favored position in terms of the land resources of the various nations. Of our 1,904 million acres of land in the continental United States, we have 409 million acres of cropland, 700 million acres of nonforested pasture and grazing land, 606 million acres of forest and woodland, and 189 million acres in deserts or de

voted to special purposes-towns and cities and other miscellaneous nonagricultural uses.

That sounds like and is a truly rich heritage. We have been blessed with a goodly inheritance of fertile lands. We also are fortunate that some of our early leaders had the foresight to warn us of the dangers of land waste, and to launch movements which have given us by now a quarter of a century of advanced experience in the science and practice of soil and water conservation.

But even in the United States, we have not much land to spare. The pro rata figure, related to 1950 population, was 3.2 acres of cropland per person. Projecting this to 1975 when we shall likely see a national population of 228 million people, the figure will be only 2.1 acres per person, even though we may be able to add to our farm plant some 20 million cropland acres by that date. But by the year 2000, still allowing for another 20-million-acre cropland increase, your share and mine of the Nation's cropland can only be a little more than 12 acres per person.

This is not to suggest that by the year 2000 we shall be going hungry. We are making very great strides in the techniques of soil and water management. Research workers, soil scientists, soil conservation technicians, and conservation minded farmers and ranchers have proved that the right use and treatment of all the right land. can induce it to produce much more than we ever before thought possible.

But it is a certainty that our cropland potential is limited. It is also certain that before many years the ascending graph line of population will overtake and pass the slower expansion of agricultural production. Unless we have taken the necessary steps to protect the source, well in advance, we will feel the pinch of insufficient land when the two graph lines cross.

Furthermore, we have not yet completely checked the needless waste of good soil by erosion, despite the fact that we know how to prevent this type of loss. Ten years ago we still had to report that erosion was destroying nearly one-half million acres of our better cropland each year. Conservation farmers today are rapidly lowering that figure. An inventory we shall complete in 1960 will give us an appraisal of how much less it is now. But until every acre of land in the Nation is in the kind of use and under the kind of treatment that assures the absolute minimum amount of erosion, we shall still be losing more soil than we can afford.

Nor is the problem confined to loss of land through erosion and the other forms of physical soil damage and deterioration. The inexorable expansion of nonagricultural developments that require land space is taking increasing amounts of our best soils out of production each

year.

Growing cities, of course, must have more room. Expanding air travel calls for more and longer airport runways. Millions of automobile drivers make wider and better roads a necessity-roads that require 40-50 acres of land per mile. All this has been taking a million acres or more of cultivable land a year.

Sometimes there is no alternative but to sacrifice good farmland for such uses. But thus far, nonagricultural expansion has taken place with few questions raised as to what use is best for the Nation

in the long run. Accessibility, ease and economy of construction, availability of fuel or water-these have generally been the first considerations in the selection of sites for land-consuming industrial developments, roads, airports, and housing projects.

Since the quality of soil for agriculture varies widely, much land, fully adequate for building space, is ill-suited or unsuited for farming. But if more of the poor land must be farmed because the good land is swallowed up, our food will cost more and may be of lower quality. Furthermore, we shall have to work harder to prevent dust storms, floods, sedimentation, and the other ill effects of erosion which occur more readily when poorer soils are put into cultivation.

Thus, despite troublesome surpluses of a few commodities now, we dare not cease to look to our production plant with a view to improving it and maintaining it in readiness for the inevitable demands of the future.

We in the United States are better prepared today than any nation in the world in the technology, in the organization, and in the public understanding of the urgency of conservation needed to maintain necessary levels of production from the land without permanently exhausting the resource.

But we must continue to give unrelenting attention to this activity, improving the techniques, fostering public understanding and strengthening local leadership if we are to hold ourselves and our resources in readiness for any eventuality. No satisfactory substitute for soil and water as the principal source of human sustenance has yet been found. Now, I wish to make brief reference to the budget items for fiscal year 1959 and the justification therefor.

ASSISTANCE TO SOIL CONSERVATION DISTRICTS

The conservation operations item is the one under which the Soil Conservation Service provides technical assistance to farmers and ranchers in soil conservation districts in all the States and Territories. During the fiscal year 1957, a total of 62 new conservation districts was formed and 172 additions of land were made to 93 existing districts. On June 30, 1957, 18 States and 2 Territories were completely covered with districts. At that time there was a total of 2,770 conservation districts with an area of almost 1,597 million acres including about 93 percent of the total-based on the 1954 census-number of farmers and ranchers in the Nation.

New soil conservation districts continue to be organized and substantial additions of land continue to be made to existing districts, but at a slower rate than in the past since so little farm and ranch land remains outside. The increasing interest of farmers and ranchers in existing districts, the formation of new districts, and additions of lands to older districts are constantly increasing the demands upon the Service for technical assistance. However, we expect to give as much assistance as possible to the newly organized districts in 1959 within our existing staff by careful reappraisals of the relative workloads and assignment of personnel in proportion to the needs.

During the past fiscal year, more than 122,000 additional farmers and ranchers began cooperating with their soil conservation districts and more than 92,000 basic conservation plans providing for the proper use and treatment of all the land in a farm or ranch were