For the past decade the United States has experienced a novel form of agricultural overproduction. Although the national income has been ample, we have not been able to adjust our increasing productive capacity to effective demand—not at prices that would support reasonably satisfactory levels of rural living. The prospect for the next decade or two is for continued over-production unless new policies and programs are devised and made to work. Agricultural surpluses may well characterize the period from the early 1950's forward for several decades; it is in no sense a short-run problem.
How has this situation come about?
The acreage from which crops are now being harvested is about the same as fifty years ago. The average yield per acre, however, has increased about 65 percent; in terms of total farm production this is like adding 215 million acres to the land supply. Another 80 or so million acres have been gained for human use by the shift to other farm uses of cropland that used to produce feed for horses and mules. The especially rapid increase in yields during the past 25 years shows no sign of abating; there is still much more to be done in mechanization, better pest and weed control, improved farm management, and fertilization.
In this continuing situation the very basis of the soil conservation program can be called into question. Why conserve and build up the productivity of the soil if the nation's agriculture already produces more than is required? How can soil conservation activities be reconciled with the present facts of the case and with the future outlook? How also, for that matter, can additional land reclamation projects be squared with this situation and outlook? Some estimates of the future agricultural land requirements provide a framework within which to consider future directions for soil conservation. These are based on RFF's continuing research on the prospects for all natural resources in the future US economy.
By 1980 we may expect a US population of about 245 million and by 2000 about 330 million, compared with 180 million in 1960. Associated with this could be a rough doubling of the 1960 gross national product ($500 billion) in twenty years, and a quadrupling in forty.
Translating estimated demands for farm products into the likely requirements for cropland is a tricky business involving, among other factors, estimates of future trends in yields, crop by crop, and amounts of exports and imports. Underlying the yield estimates are judgments about rate of fertilizer application, control of crop losses, development of new seeds and farm practices, and so on. Taking all these factors into account, RFF has developed several internally consistent models ranging from one with low demand and high yields, which places a minimum requirement on land, to one with a high demand and low yields involving a maximum land requirement. In 1960, 356 million acres of cropland—other than pasture—were required. Including an allowance for crop failure, idleness and summer fallow, the estimate considered most likely for 1980 is 372 million acres, and for 2000, it is 409 million acres. These figures include an allowance for a growing demand for meat products.
Excluding unforeseen changes in patterns of supply and demand—the inevitable hazard of all long-term projections—the following summary picture emerges. With low increases in yields throughout, the large agricultural land surplus of the present should diminish and become a deficit in the 1970's. With medium yields the present large surplus would be reduced in the latter part of the century to a relatively small one. With high yields the present large surplus would remain considerable throughout the remainder of the century. With this kind of long-range outlook, what rethinking of the soil conservation program is needed?
Soil conservation programs, we contend, do make sense in the context of the projections and can be reconciled with a prospect for surplus over the next decade or more. But the kind of soil conservation required calls for a discriminating set of policy adjustments. For example, conservation expenditures leading to larger production next year or a few years from now should be given much lower priority than conservation practices which will lock improvements into the soil for possible use some years in the future when the problem may be not one of surplus but of need. Conservation reserves based upon a three-, five-, or even ten-year period, unless arrangements are made for renewal, may lead to greatly increased production at a time when the surplus problem is still with us. A twenty-year reserve, renewable thereafter under certain conditions, would fit better with the trends and prospects. Large government expenditures to help farmers in liming and fertilizing, or in other practices which will be beneficial mainly for the next year or few years, likewise seem inappropriate in terms of the outlook for farm production, though not perhaps as a means toward maintaining or raising incomes of farm families. Selected retirement of whole farms, even whole areas, and transfer of these resources into timber or forage production would be more consistent with the long-term outlook. Obviously, any such shift could be made only if the owners received fair compensation and those in need of alternative employment were given substantial help in retraining and finding new jobs.
A basic reason for continuing and improving soil conservation programs in this country, despite the present period of surplus output, is as insurance against the possibility that there may be a shortage at some future time. The projections indicate that under certain plausible demand and yield assumptions this may occur in the later decades of the century. To the extent possible, soil conservation programs should be retailored with this in mind.
And there is another basic reason for continuing soil conservation programs: the instinctive desire to manage the soil and land, or anything else, as carefully and skillfully as we know how, avoiding waste and misuse, even though we are not at all sure that this course of action will repay us in the monetary sense. There are standards about handling the land, land ethics if you like, which are not entirely comprehended by or identical to what is considered efficient or economic, although the two are related. But adequate recognition of these intangible aspects does not mean that estimal economic efficiency should be discarded; on the contrary, in specific instances they do and should bear heavily on conservation decisions.
The central point of these observations is that soil conservation policies and programs, after twenty-five years of achievement, can now be reconsidered with view to adjusting and improving them in the light of trends, problems, and opportunities or the future.
For the past two years, Resource for the Future has been engaged in studies designed to contribute to such a reappraisal. A part of these studies deals with the work of the soil conservation districts; another reviews and evaluates the physical accomplishments; a third concerns the economic aspect.
Adapted from a paper presented by Joseph L. Fisher to the Annual Convention of the National Association of Soil Conservation Districts.
A version of this article appeared in print in the February 1962 issue of Resources magazine.
