Pickaway SWCD

The Pickaway Soil and Water Conservation District provides the following services: Meetings take place in the Service Center Conference Room unless noted otherwise. January 19 9:00 a.m. December 7 9:00 a.m. The following italicized insert was written December 7, 1950 by James A. Muster, first SCS Soil Conservationist in Pickaway County. It was reco... rded on Pickaway SWCDs first Annual Meeting program. There is an old saying that Its too late to lock the stable, after the horse has gone! Its more than sobering to think of how seriously that old saying applies to the destructive manner in which we have handled our agricultural lands; the only source of our food, fiber and water resources. There are on file writings of George Washington in which he lamented the damaging effects of soil erosion and fertility depletion. Those records date back some 175 years. It wasnt until 1915, over 140 years later, that anybody did anything significant about it. It was in 1915 that Dr. M. F. Miller at the Missouri Experiment Station, made the first measurements of water runoff and soil losses from a FIELD, under different cropping and cultural practices. This first report didnt appear until 1923. The results were startling to people who cared anything for the land. The annual loss per acre from uncropped, cultivated land was 41 tons of topsoil; from continuous corn, 19.7 tons; from continuous wheat, 10 tons; from 3-year rotation that too many of us still follow 3 tons per acre per year; from bluegrass, only 1/3 ton per acre. Mere conservation, stated Dr. Miller, is quite insufficient; the welfare of agriculture demands the use of widespread SOIL IMPROVEMENT practices. Following Dr. Millers report, all the experiment stations in the U.S. and its possessions, began work designed to stop soil losses and to institute methods of soil improvement. Hugh Hammond Bennett and W. Chapline authored the first comprehensive appraisal of soil erosion, Soil Erosion, A National Menace. U.S. Congress authorized the Secretary of Agriculture to ...Read More