Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 19, Number 30, DeMotte, Jasper County, 24 June 1949 — PMA CHAIRMAN WARNS ON EROSION [ARTICLE]

PMA CHAIRMAN WARNS ON EROSION

The good earth is slipping from under us faster than most of us think, says L. M. Vogler, Chairman of the Indiana Production and Marketing Administration Committee. “Unless we see a deep gully with a house balancing precariously on the edge, too often we fail to recognize the erosion that is going on—that it is taking the land from under our feet.” Muddy water is one of the best indications of erosion. The mud often is the best part of many farms, the top-soil. In high water seasons much of it goes into the ocean. f The problem is serious in many parts of the world, the chairman indicates. The Yellow * River in China is called “The Yellow River” because of the yellow soil that discolors the water. It is the muddiest river in the world, carrying from its watershed more sediment than all the rivers in the United States. Poverty both of soil and people is the result and famine is the expected and not the unsual condition. In recent years on the upper slopes of the Yellow River the soil has become too thin for

sugar cane and corn. As the soil gets thinner and* thinner the crops that furnish food for man give way to plants that will sur* vive on the thinnest soils. When at last there is no soil even for these plants there is a barren waste. That process has been going on a long time in China and for a shorter time in the United States but the chairman points out, “no nation has wasted soil and water resources faster than we have. That’s why it’s so Important that we of the United States take warning, that we

make every effort to check erosion and conserve our soil and water resources.