I
MADISON, Wis. - Soil and
water resources may surpass
energy as crisis issues before the
end of the century, announced
Anson R. Bertrand, U.S. Depart
ment of Agriculture director of
science and education.
Speaking at a national con-
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Soil, water, next on endangered list?
ference on soil and water
resources, Bertrand described
some of the research goals that
must be met to fill food and fiber
production needs while main
taining the quality of the land.
“We are losing our prime farm
land at an alarming rate,” he
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warned. “Every day in the United
States four square miles of farm
lands are shifted to uses other than
agriculture.” Intensifying efforts
to develop domestic energy
resources are already beginning to
have unintended repercussions on
the country’s agricultural land
base, he said.
There are two options for
meeting food and fiber demands.
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according to Bertrand.
The first option, he said, is to
bring more acres of land mto
production The price for this path
continues to increase as marginal
lands brought into production
further deplete dwindling water
supplies, increase erosion, con
taminate existing water supplies
and increase the energy required
to manage these lands.
The alternative is to develop
technology leading to 'icreased
productivity on the existing land
resource base. This calls for
managing the land to check severe
soil erosion and depletion of water
supplies.
“Much of our research in the
past has focused on developing
ways to maintain yields in spite of
erosion,” Bertrand said. “We have
largely ignored the long-term
effects of soil erosion on crop
productivity and the en
vironmental consequences of soil
loss. These are things we must now
consider.
“Failure to control soil erosion
on U.S. farms and ranches could
double the cost of producing food
and fiber over the next 50 years,
without reguard to inflation or
other factors,” he said.
In addition to the serious effects
of soil erosion, Bertrand warned of
water shortages that many parts of
the nation will face unless new
techniques for management and
use of water resources are
developed and put into practice.
Irrigated acreage in the United
States has almost tripled in the last
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three decades, now consuming
more than 80 percent of the water
used in the nation. About 40 per
cent of the irrigation water comes
from ground water, which in many
areas is being used faster than it is
being recharged.
Bertrand described some USDA
projects seeking long-range
solutions to these problems.
Scientists at a national soil erosion
laboratory, built on land provided
by Purdue University in Indiana,
will concentrate on all aspects of
soil erosion, its unpacts and
control.
USDA’s Science and Education
Administration is planning a
moisture conservation-plant stress
laboratory in the Southern Great
Plains, where scientists will deal
with water resources-land
management problems. Planning
for this laboratory, the only one of
its kind in the world, involved
scientists from Australia, Israel
and Mexico as well as the Umted
States.
Other USDA research areas
include work on water harvesting
to enable more effective and ef
ficient use of water supplies; non
point pollution; finding a workable
system for modified dryland
agriculture to make the best use of
available moisture; weed and
insect control for minimum
tillage: use of crop residues; ef
fective use of sewage sludge and
industrial waste; better un
derstanding of plant nutrients and
their basic relationships in soil and
water resources.
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