Banner Graphic, Volume 15, Number 14, Greencastle, Putnam County, 19 September 1984 — Page 7

20% of U.S. cropland erosion in Texas

Second Great Plains Dust Bowl looming?

c. National Geographic WASHINGTON-Harold Hogue has lived through one Dust Bowl. He isn’t anxious to see another. But he’s not confident that he won’t. In 1935, the blinding storms that uprooted the Great Plains destroyed his wheat crop at Dalhart, Texas HOGUE STUCK IT OUT. With hard work, he survived the Depression, and today he farms 20 verdant square miles of Texas grain. He drives a Coupe de Ville, winters in Palm Springs. His land is irrigated with water pumped from wells; natural gas powers the pumps. Still, he is apprehensive. “A lot of people say we’ll never have another Dust Bowl,” he says. ‘‘The hell we can’t. With the price of natural gas, we could be back to dryland farming soon. A lot of farmers already are.” Eroding cropland may cost the United States $1 billion a year in polluted and sedimented rivers and lakes. But soils are complicated, and the extent and causes of erosion vary. IN 1977, THE U.S. Soil Conservation Service (SCS) estimates, some 3 billion tons of soil were “lost” from cultivated fields, two-thirds from water and one-third from wind. One-fifth of the eroded cropland came from Texas. The entry of American farmers into the export business, spurred by grain sales to the Soviet Union in 1972, sent prices soaring and led to a fivefold increase in the value of U.S. farm exports by the end of the decade. It also aggravated the erosion problem, as farmers plowed up an addition 60 million acres, much of it previously protected by grass. Views on soil erosion depend on where one lives, Boyd Gibbons writes in the September National Geographic. There are, he explains, upwards of 30,000 different soils in this country. “WITHOUT SOILS there would be no grass, no cows, no bread, no us,” he writes. “When we think that man runs the show on earth, we might recall that earth is mostly rock and life only a veneer on it, sustained largely by a sheet of soils derived from and covering the rock. ” “Nature beats up the landscape,” says Dick Arnold, director of the SCS soil survey division. “But man accelerates it. Soils are important to survival. Let’s not beat them up if we don’t have to.” Some soils are born from rotted bedrock,

NFO, NFU working together on 'BS farm bill

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) Two national farm organizations seeking what they called “grassroots” direction from farmers say they are working together to help develop a 1985 farm bill for Congress. The National Farmers Organization and the National Farmers Union also went on record against the Reagan administration’s farm policies, although the two groups do not endorse candidates. “The recovery the president speaks of has not reached into rural America,” said DeVon Woodland, president of the NFO, who was in Louisville Tuesday for a regional meeting. Agriculture is “under attack” because of federal budget cuts and financial problems facing more farmers, Woodland said. The meeting, one of six the two groups are holding across the country, was described as the first time two major farm organizations had joined together to discuss common problems. The two groups represent mostly Midwestern farmers. Among the 50 people attending the Louisville meeting were farmers and others from Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri and Tennessee. Some 300,000 farm families are represented by the NFU, which is primarily involved in farm legislation while the NFO negotiates contracts for farmers involving S7OO million in commodities annually.

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Desert-like appearance of a farm in the Texas Panhandle, a productive cotton-growing region, shows the ravages of a windstorm that lifted the silt and left the sand. Texas accounts for 17 per cent of the nation's cropland erosion, and many Texans fear a return of the 1930 s Dust

as in the Piedmont area of the eastern United States. Others evolve from rock moved in from elsewhere by wind, water, or glaciers. “IN MANY WAYS, soils are still a mystery,” says Arnold “We know some basic physics and chemistry, but we still have a lot to learn about how soils form.” Landscapes alternate between cycles of erosion and stability. Clay and organic particles can travel hundreds of miles in a big storm “Most people have no idea how fast lan dscapes can change,” says Ray Daniels, former SCS director of soil survey investigations. “In some cases man-made erosion may be faster, in others slower, than geologic erosion.” Crop yields have been increasing for years, despite erosion, and scientists think technology, particularly the tenfold increase in the use of commercial fertilizer since World War 11. has masked erosion damage. Gibbons notes that “soil conservation is still dictated more by economics than by good intentions.” Farmers are deep-

Neither organization has many members in Kentucky, but Woodland and NFU President Cy Carpenter said the state’s leading cash crop, burley tobacco, needs to be protected from unfair competition. Other farm groups have called upon the government to impose imports on cheaper, foreign tobacco. While other groups claim to represent farmers, they are more representative of agribusiness and other farm-related interests than the NFU and the NFO, the two leaders said at a news conference. “In many cases, what’s good for agribusiness is not good for agriculture,” said Woodland. “We are meeting with more farm-oriented people.” The two groups are also seeking help from church groups and mayors of large cities to stress the importance of agriculture as hunger becomes a growing concern, Carpenter said.

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Bowl. Some believe it has already started. In 1977, the U S. Soil Conservation Service estimated, 3 billion tons of plowed soil were lost to wind and water. (National Geographic photo)

plowing less to save money - on fuel, for example - and increased mulch on their fields has reduced runoff and erosion. IN 1983, THE federal government spent $1 billion on erosion control and S2B billion on subsidies to farmers, the subsidies up dramatically from $7 billion two years earlier. The Reagan Administration and Congress are targeting erosion-control efforts on areas deemed to need them most. “The trick is to crack the big-equipment syndrome and get the farmer off that big breaking plow," says Peter Myers, head of theSCS. “We’ve always gone at erosion as a moral issue, but now we also want to appeal to the farmer in dollars and cents. We have to be careful not to paint a distorted picture. Soil erosion is not a today problem ; it’s a tomorrow problem, but you have to work on it today.” Bill Fryrear, head of the U.S. Agriculture Department’s Agricultural Research Service station at Big Spring, Texas, thinks the potential for erosion is

“We do not have a food policy that deals with hunger,” Carpenter said. After four other scheduled meetings, the two organizations plan to report to the House Agriculture Committee by the end of the year, an NFO spokesman said. The two groups met in Cleveland Monday. Other meetings are scheduled.

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greater now than it was 50 years ago “IF IT GETS AS DRY as it was in the 19305," he told Gibbons, “we’re in for some real trouble. You’re in country now that man in his inifinite wisdom did not improve upon.” Another big plow-up of the Middle West’s erodible soils is inevitable if exports and prices soar again. Gibbons concludes. He writes: "Those men on the plows churning up High Plains range are hoping for rain and a few bumper wheat crops to pay off a gamble in country where grass returns slowly and drought holds the cards.”

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You are cordially invited to the ( /f( lll(l (I of the Bainbridge Plant Food Facility Thursday, September 20th -10 a.m. Sign up for the Grand Prize Drawing: 100 acres free application. We invite you to tour our office, warehouse and shop complex. You can view the NH3 30,000-gal. storage and load-out facilities. Walk on the deck-work of the diked 600-ton liquid storage and load-out facility and inspect the 2,000-ton dry fertilizer storage building and the new stainless steel 8-ton mixing equipment in operation. Watch “Big Al’s” spread pattern applying fertilizer with seed. Check out the FFR corn, soybean and small seed varieties to fill your needs. Put your hands on new International and John Deere tractors and tillage equipment operating under field conditions. Talk with the Chemical Reps from the following companies: BASF; CIBAGEIGY; DOW; DuPONT; ELANCO; MONSANTO; ROHM-HASS; and STAUFFER Visit with our friendly cooperative employees. LUNCH WILL BE CATERED FOR YOU BY BARBARA SOUTH BAINBRIDGE PLANT FOOD Hendricks County Form Bureau Cooperative R. 1 Box 14 Bainbridge, Indiana 46105 317-522-2800 or toll free 1-800-621-3697

September 19,1984, The Putnam County Banner-Graphic

Panel urges more burning to halt citrus canker

LAKELAND, Fla. (AP) - Millions of trees would be burned under a plan to halt the spread of citrus canker, a highly contagious, incurable plant disease that threatens Florida’s $1.2 billion citrus industry. The recommendation to burn all trees in more than 50 nurseries tnat bought stock from three infested nurseries was made late Tuesday by the Citrus Canker Technical Advisory Committee. The state already had ordered the burning of 1.6 million trees at the three infested nurseries in central Florida. State Agriculture Commissioner Doyle Conner must make the final decision on extending the burning. One

Grain market

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - Grain prices Tuesday at Indianapolis area elevators: Corn No. 2 yellow shelled 2.79-3.03, fall 2.61-2.75, Jan 85 2.72-

Larr Equipment Inc.

31 W. Main, Coatesville 1-386-7211 USED TRACTORS Waiver of finance charges to March 1,1985 IH 130 w/42 ’ ’ Woods mower IH 560 gas wide front IH 6740 w/2250 loader and cab IH 8860 IH 1066 D with red cab 1H1466 D with cab IH 1466 D without cab IH 1486 IH 1568 w/Duals IH 1586 D with duals Steiger ST32O IH 3788 D6OO hours FordßN with loader Oliver Super 88 USED COMBINES Waiver of finance charges to June 1,1985 1H715G IH 715 D (2) IH 915 D, high profile IH 1440 1980, 500 hrs. IH 14601979 1000 hours 1H1460.1980, 700 hours IH 1460.1980, grain loss monitor, 700 hours IH 1480. 1980, 750 hours JD 4400 G JD 4400 D Gleaner M We have a variety of cornheads and platforms PLANTERS AND DRILLS IH 400 4-row (2) IH 400 8-row liquid fertilizer

of his aides, Richard Kelly, said a decision was expected Thursday or Friday. Meanwhile, fruit has begun leaving Florida under rules of a federal embargo imposed last week after the disease was discovered. To be shipped out of state, the fruit must be certified canker-free, then dipped in a chlorine solution as a precautionary measure. The bacterial disease is harmless to humans, but deadly to young trees. How the disease broke out in Florida is not known. Fifty-one nurseries are known to have bought stock from Ward’s Nursery in Avon Park, where the disease was first found.

2.83. Oats No. 2 white 2.00. Soybeans No. 1 yellow 5.65-5.87, fall 5.67-5.85, Jan 85 5.89-5.96. Wheat, No. 2 soft red 3.04-3.32.

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1969 Chevy Tandem w/18 ft. bed IH 27 Baler Cub Cadet 1000,10 H.P. Cub Cadet 682 17 H.P. Hydro IH 200 Sickle Mower 7 ft. IH 130 Spreader Continental Post Hole Digger Artsway 425 A. Grinder Mixer JD Rake JD Model N Spreader JD No. 6 Chopper USED TILLAGE IH 720 6-18 plow JD 7-btm. hyd. reset plow IH 560 6-16 on land plow Kewanee 16-ft. manual fold disc IH 490 28 ft. Hyd. fold disc IH 560 5-16 IH 540 4-14 IH 315 12 ft., 4” Pulvimulcher IH 370 11 ft. 6” disc. JD 22W ft. mtd. field cult. IH 45 12 ft. mtd. field cult. IH 300 14 ft. mtd. rotary hoe White 14 ft. disc IH 490 24 ft. disc JD 18 ft. disc Oliver 10 ft. disc JD 4-row rotary hoe IH 4-row cultivator IH 3-bottom pull-type plow

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