Hi everyone
I very
informative historical review of Walter Lowdermilk an advocate
for permanent agriculture for the world.
wes
NRCS History Articles
Walter Lowdermilk's Journey: Forester to Land Conservationist
http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/ABOUT/history/articles/walterlowdermilk.html
by Douglas Helms
Reprinted from Environmental Review 8(1984): 132-145. This paper was
given at "History of Sustained-Yield Forestry: A Symposium," at
the Western Forestry Center in Portland, Oregon, on October 18-19, 1983,
coordinated by the Forest History Society for the International Union of
Forestry Research Organizations (IUFRO) Forest Group (S6.07). The
proceedings, edited by Harold K. Steen under the same title, were
published by the Forest History Society, 109 Coral Street, Santa Cruz, CA
95060 in 1984.
Walter Clay Lowdermilk often described his profession as reading
"the records which farmers, nations, and civilizations have written
in the land." Few others have belonged to this profession. Certainly
few had the inclination, ability, and opportunity to indulge in it as did
Lowdermilk. The profession required expertise in many fields of study,
but as practiced by Lowdermilk it was not a purely academic exercise.
Rather he sought an ambitious objective--a permanent agriculture for the
world. Through an understanding of human activities in the past and the
earth's response, he hoped to "find the basis for a lasting
adjustment of human populations to the Earth."1
Lowdermilk became a member of the early twentieth century conservation
movement in the United States, a movement with a strong scientific
bent.2 The scientists held that treatment of natural resources
should be in accordance with scientific principles, not propelled by
emotionalism or untested theories. Lowdermilk's inquisitiveness,
intellect, and foreign travel took him on an unusual professional
journey. Veering from forestry, he circled the field of land
conservation--a field encompassing several sciences and disciplines. In
foreign travels Lowdermilk found situations where people's relationship
with the land had reached a precarious balance, or an imbalance resulting
in famines. Coping with these situations required an integration of
knowledge from science, technology, and engineering. Other scientists in
the movement had not embraced a multidisciplinary approach. The abundance
of natural resources in the United States, and the low population
density, had allowed scientists of his era to view solutions to resource
problems as a set of discrete alternatives--a view which further
entrenched their fealty to their chosen disciplines.
Walter Lowdermilk was born on July 1, 1888, in North Carolina, but spent
his childhood at numerous points westward during the family's extended
migration to Arizona. As a college student at the University of
Arizona, he realized his dream of earning a Rhodes scholarship. The
curriculum at Oxford permitted him time to study forestry in Germany.
Herbert Hoover's Commission for Relief in Belgium called Lowdermilk and
other young Americans in Europe to interrupt their studies. After the
scholarship years, he served as a ranger in the Southwest for the Forest
Service. Returning from World War I, he became the Forest Service's
regional research officer in Montana.3
A man who enjoyed research work, he had found a position
that offered satisfaction. Given his ability, there was opportunity for
advancement. But he was not to remain on that career ladder. Soon he
would be in China, where, he later recalled, the "full and fateful
significance of soil erosion was burned into my
consciousness."4
Through the years in England and afterward, the young forester had
corresponded with Miss Inez Marks, a friend from Arizona. On leave from
her missionary work with the Methodist Church in China, she agreed to
meet him at the Rose Bowl, New Year's Day, 1922. Marriage plans quickly
followed. Her entreaties that China desperately needed talented
scientists led to his applying for a position with the University of
Nanking's school of agriculture and forestry. The couple married in
August and departed for China in September 1922. Lowdermilk's charge, for
a small salary, was to assist in solving the flooding problems and
resulting famines. Exactly how a forester was to help with food
production remained a mystery as he attended university classes to learn
Mandarin during the first year.5
An expedition to the Yellow River solved the mystery. There he stood atop
a section of the 400-mile-long dike that held the river 40 to 50 feet
above the flood plain. This marvel was a result of Chinese labor
necessitated by silting of the river's channel--aggradation in the terms
of earth scientists.
Lowdermilk set out to find the source of the silt.6 In spring 1924,
O.J. Todd, engineer of the International Famine Relief Commission,
accompanied Lowdermilk on a two-thousand-mile trip on the watersheds of
the Yellow and Wei rivers. Todd's mission was to study the Wei-Peh
irrigation project. Few foreigners had visited the area of northwest
China where the pair completed a third of the journey afoot or on
mulecart or muleback. In Shensi province, they found a plateau consisting
of deep, undulated deposits of loessial soils. Depth, fertility, and
erodibility made these fine, wind-deposited soils prime locations for
man-induced erosion. In the deforesting activities of the people
Lowdermilk found the reason for the gigantic six-hundred-foot-deep
gullies, "So great is the demand for fuel and wood that the
mountainsides are annually shaved clean of all herbaceous shrub and tree
growth."7 Paradoxes abounded on the trip. Temple forests, reproduced
naturally and protected by Buddhist priests, provided evidence of the
denuded hills' capability for sustaining vegetation. Bench terraces
festooned some slopes. Yet some of the best agricultural land on the
level, alluvial plains was used for timber production under irrigation.
Surrounding hills were little used for timber.
The pair visited Sianfu, the capital city of China during its Golden Age,
where Todd wanted to inspect the irrigation works. The area retained
little of its former prosperity, which Lowdermilk conjectured had flowed
from a great irrigation project which was now "silted up and out of
use." The forester returned to his post at the University of Nanking
with an impression of "colossal erosion" contrasted with
"evidences of former grandeur." Already he had decided to
expand his study of the sciences involved with natural resources to
include the actions of people as well. The trip had provided
"abundant material for an entrancing study of man's relationship to
nature."8
Historical research revealed that the Yellow River had
changed course eight times since A.D. 11. Several times the river had
been restrained by dikes only to break free. Once it emerged four hundred
miles from its former outlet. Dikes, therefore, were essential to using
the plain for agriculture. But building higher dikes, Lowdermilk
concluded, was not a lasting solution unless the aggradation of the river
was reduced by checking the supply of silt.9 Lowdermilk's
supposition that erosion caused frequent and severe flooding had been
recognized in the United States, but only on the small water courses, not
on the lower reaches of major rivers. The China experience--siltation of
a major river channel as a cause of flooding and channel relocation--was
on a scale unknown in the United States.
Lowdermilk's recommendation for flood control gave some indication of the
breadth of his training in sciences, especially geology, and his ability
to assimilate the findings into a solution. The Yellow River and her
tributaries had excavated a deep channel into the plateau created by the
wind-deposited soils. Recognizing that removal of vegetation allowed
runoff to carve gullies in the loessial plain and that gully wash
accounted for most of the silt, he proposed attacking erosion by planting
trees on the talus slopes at the foot of the gullies. The forested
gullies would be guarded and managed by villages as community forests to
provide wood. Undissected portions of the loessial plateau could be used
for agriculture. Where and when possible, check dams should be used to
raise the base level of streams and prevent incision by the gullies
farther into the plateau.10 Treatment of the watershed was directly
tied to famine prevention. He concluded that soil and water conservation
were urgently necessary to increase the productivity of this region of
China.11
Lowdermilk was not content to base his recommendations exclusively on
empirical evidence. Certainly the scientific forestry school, whence he
came, demanded another explanation. Using the runoff and erosion plot
study method devised by F.L. Duley and M.F. Miller at the University of
Missouri, he and his Chinese associates set up plots on twenty temple
forests and on denuded areas for comparison. After three years of study,
he presented the findings. Runoff from denuded areas greatly exceeded
that of temple forests or areas reclaimed through reforestation. The main
reason for the excess runoff, he believed, was that particles of soil on
the denuded areas clogged the pores of the soil surface. Forest litter
arrested this action.12
Further study convinced Lowdermilk that forty to sixty percent of the
uplands in northern China had little cover to retain runoff. So great had
been the rapid runoff that it had reduced evaporation and brought on a
period of decreased precipitation in the area. With this argument,
Lowdermilk projected a hypothesis that he would later apply to other
lands. Scholars had long been presented with anomalies of twentieth
century poverty contrasted with evidences of former civilizations which
possessed a high degree of culture and prosperity. Some scholars, notably
Ellsworth Huntington and Baron Von Richthofen, found the answer in
climatic change. In the case of north China, Lowdermilk not only saw soil
erosion and flooding as the reason for decline, but also claimed their
effects as the reason for a climatic change.13
The communist uprising of March 24, 1927, in Nanking ended
the Lowdermilks' stay in China. Leaving behind all possessions, they
barely escaped. At the University of California, he combined study for a
Ph.D. from the School of Forestry (minors in soil science and geology)
with research at the California Forest Experiment Station. Here he
reentered the fray over the effects of vegetative cover on runoff,
erosion, and flooding. On one of his treks in China, Lowdermilk had heard
the proverb, "Mountains empty--rivers gorged." He judged the
application of timber management in that locale to be superior to any
system he had observed in Germany.14 The Chinese and other
civilizations had recognized the value of forest cover and acted upon
their observations. Scientists in the conservation movement demanded more
than proverbs for proof, and the influence of forest cover on soil
erosion and streamflow had been warmly debated by hydrologists,
engineers, and foresters.
In the United States, the advocates of scientific forestry on public
lands, who emphasized a sustained supply of forest products as the major
benefit of public ownership, received support from irrigation farmers who
needed an assured supply of water--water that was free of ditch-clogging
silt. In their support of watershed protection they relied on
observation, and were undeterred by the absence of scientific proof.
Lines of inquiry into watershed treatment resulted not only from the
inquisitiveness of the scientist's mind but also from these public policy
questions. Legislation for forest reserves, upstream reservoirs for flood
control, and comprehensive water development programs touched off
research by the government agencies affected. The research results could
seriously alter their project plans and budgets.15
Lowdermilk believed that builders of large engineering works downstream
should provide for soil erosion control in the catchment areas, as a
portion of the project's benefits was attributable to watershed
management. The value of watershed management, however, had not been
satisfactorily measured and described. A review of the literature
convinced Lowdermilk that most watershed studies which tried to measure
the influence of one factor on runflow were flawed. In an open setting
there were too many variables which were observed, not measured. He must
create a laboratory type experiment which would isolate the factors,
measure them, and explain the processes.16
In his study of the influence of forest litter on runoff and erosion, he
used rainmaking machines, soil profiles transferred to tanks, and
measuring instruments of his design. In 1929, he presented the
confirmation for what he and others had observed. On bared soil the
raindrops splashed up muddy. As muddy water percolated into the soil
profiles, "fine suspended particles were filtered out at the soil
surface."17 The thin layer thus formed reduced percolation and
increased runoff. The water-absorbing capacity of forest litter had
little influence on runoff. However, by keeping the water clean, the
litter maintained the soil profile open to percolation. The experiments
confirmed a hypothesis that Lowdermilk had first presented at the Third
Pan-Pacific Science Congress in 1926 at Tokyo.
Lowdermilk did not elaborate on the implications of his
research. Perhaps this omission was in keeping with the accepted method
of presenting the results, but the value to soil conservation was
obvious. If forest litter served not as an absorber of water, but as a
buffer between the rain-drop and the ground, then any vegetative land
cover could be valuable for soil erosion control. Pastures, hay crops,
any close growing crop, or crop residues could serve as barriers to the
erosion process.
As Lowdermilk pioneered in the field of reading records written in the
land and applied scientific explanations, he needed new terminology. At
the Stockholm meeting he seized the occasion to introduce two terms for
the conservationist's lexicon. "Accelerated erosion" arose from
the "artificial disturbance of factors which controlled the
development of soil profiles." In the absence of such disturbances,
one could view any erosion as the "geologic norm of
erosion."18
Back in California, Lowdermilk set about measuring the other factors in
runoff and erosion that would provide a "basis for enlightened
management of watershed areas."19 Experiments focused on
elements of the hydrologic cycle: precipitation, temperature,
evaporation, runoff, infiltration, percolation, and transpiration. The
Agricultural Appropriations Act of 1929 provided funds to U.S. Department
of Agriculture agencies for erosion and runoff experiments. The research
program made it possible to establish experiments on a large, isolated
watershed. The San Dimas watershed of southern California provided an
excellent opportunity to test the effects of watershed management on
water yield. Expanding towns and citrus orchardists at the foot of the
watershed had to dig increasingly deeper wells to reach underground
aquifers. Whether the vegetative mantle should be burned to reduce
transpiration or protected from fire for maximum ground water supplies
was a matter of controversy. To demonstrate and measure the relationship
of percolation to aquifer levels Lowdermilk had Civilian Conservation
Corps enrollees build water spreading structures which led to a gravelly
basin where the silt settled out and water percolated to the
aquifers.20
Though Lowdermilk had devised the research plan for San Dimas and
supervised the early work, he was not destined to see it to completion.
Events and foreign travel again intervened to set Lowdermilk back on the
path to land conservationist. When the Soil Erosion Service was
established in 1933, Assistant Secretary of Agriculture Rexford Tugwell,
who had toured the California experiments, insisted that Lowdermilk serve
as Assistant Chief to Hugh Hammond Bennett.21 Their personalities
differed greatly, but on the matter of conserving farmland there were
points of agreement. Bennett, like Lowdermilk, emphasized that
conservation was not exclusively a matter of maintaining fertility on
hillside soils. Lowdermilk had seen the effects on the Yellow River flood
plain. Bennett, as an inspector of soil surveys in the South, had seen
the same effects on a smaller scale in flood plains of the South where
sand, and eventually gravel, piled up on flood plains. Looking at the
situation in strictly agricultural terms, the use of erosion-inducing
farming practices on some of the least valuable lands was preempting the
most valuable from food production.22 Thus, they held the belief
that conservation should be applied not just to the individual farm, but
to an entire watershed.
Both men also viewed the coordinated use of vegetal and
engineering measures on the individual farm as necessary for soil
conservation. Lowdermilk, the forester, realized that erosion control in
a country such as China with famine problems could not be achieved
strictly by vegetal control. Bennett had obtained his conservation
experience in the South, where the broad-based channel terrace had been
invented to contend with erosion problems. He saw the limitations of
engineering measures as well as their values. In Central America, he had
seen coffee interplanted with bananas, plantains, and other fruit-bearing
trees on steep land, where they nonetheless provided excellent erosion
control.23 As an institutional goal, the young Service would
attempt to assimilate and coordinate many disciplines into its
conservation program. Individually, the Service's field men working on
farms should be what Lowdermilk called "land doctors," general
practitioners of the conservation sciences.24
In addition to working with farmers on watershed-based demonstration
projects in critical erosion areas, the Service had a considerable
research program which Lowdermilk directed. The experiment stations
established under the 1929 Agricultural Appropriations Act were already
engaged in research on terracing, crop rotations, stripcropping, tillage
methods, and their value to soil conservation. Lowdermilk added runoff
and erosion studies that included the collection of hydrologic, climatic,
physiographic, erosion history, and sedimentation data. While these
fifty-year long watershed studies were to be comprehensive, particular
aspects were related to debates among scientists and government agencies.
The bedload studies involved the degree of sediment sorting by stream
action and the amounts deposited in stream channels. In a practical way,
the studies countered the accepted method of measuring erosion from a
watershed by simply measuring the silt emerging at the watershed's lower
end.25
In 1938 chance again intervened in Lowdermilk's life. As usual, he seized
the opportunity. Representative Clarence Cannon suggested that a survey
of the Old World could be useful in the United States' efforts toward a
permanent agriculture. The trip, August 1938 to November 1939, involved
more than twenty-five thousand miles of automobile travel in Europe, the
Mediterranean area, and the Middle East. Here he perfected his art of
reading the land for evidence of past use and misuse. Before undertaking
surveys in each country, Lowdermilk consulted agriculturalists,
scientists, and officials. Geologists and archaeologists were especially
interested, and valuable to Lowdermilk in explaining the cultural and
physical factors involved in land use. In addition to searching for soil
conservation and flood prevention measures that might be imported to the
United States, Lowdermilk was engaged in what he called
"agricultural archaeology." Ruins of some pre-industrial
civilizations indicated a prosperous agriculture, although these areas
now had serious resource problems. What events brought about such
conditions? What were the lessons for contemporary civilizations?26
Lowdermilk's land-read records of past civilizations
appeared in numerous articles. Indeed, there were "Lessons From the
Old World to the Americas in Land Use," as Lowdermilk titled an
article in the annual report of the Smithsonian Institution. He gladly
noted the cases of wise land use through centuries, but was usually
obliged to find a story of deterioration.27 The Soil Conservation
Service published a summary, Conquest of the Land Through 7,000 Years, in
1953 and followed it with several reprintings until more than one million
copies were distributed. Readers who know Lowdermilk only through this
publication have perhaps a truncated view--that of the globe-trotting
chronicler of calamities awaiting civilizations that abuse their
resources. He realized that a civilization's decline could not be
interpreted solely on the basis of soil erosion. However, in writing the
pamphlet, he embarked on a didactic mission aimed at all Americans, not
just farmers. Soil fertility was a matter of concern for the farmer.
Maintaining the medium for fertility--the physical body of soil
resources--concerned the nation. Without it, "liberty of choice and
action" was gone.28
World War II terminated the trip in Europe but it opened a new
opportunity, a return to China. At the behest of the Chinese government,
Lowdermilk undertook the dangerous journey to advise the Chinese about
increasing their food supply. During the intervening years in the United
States, he had continued to study the agricultural archaeology of China.
While in China he bought gazetteers, local histories, which Dean R.
Wickes, a Chinese language specialist, then researched for evidences of
erosion problems. This research showed that in northern China, an area
with a small percentage of level land, the population had increased
threefold since the mid-eighteenth century. This rapid population
increase sent people to the hills for firewood and arable land, without
any orderly installation of engineering measures for soil conservation.
Unlike areas of central and southern China, they had no elaborate bench
terraces to protect farmland. The gazetteers provided accounts of
clearing the slopes, removing farmland from the tax rolls as wasteland,
and abandoning homes along streams due to frequent flooding.
The forester turned historian found an impressive case for the effects of
erosion on agricultural productivity in the Wei-Peh irrigation system
along the Wei River. Begun at least as early as 246 B.C., the system had
irrigated 400,000 acres. According to Lowdermilk's research, the area
became prosperous and dominated the surrounding territories. A Chinese
chronicler believed the reason for prominence lay in the assured food
supply: "Thereupon Kuanchung became fertile territory without bad
years; whereupon Ch'in became rich and powerful and finally conquered the
feudal princes." The Chinese remade the irrigation system eleven
times during twenty centuries in their never-ceasing battle with silt.
Piles of excavated silt thirty-five feet high lay on the canal banks in
the fourteenth century. Usually they preferred digging new canals to
clearing out sediment. During the eighteenth century, while the Chinese
labored ceaselessly at keeping the canals open, the irrigated acreage was
only one-tenth its original size. American engineers, under the direction
of Lowdermilk's old traveling companion O.J. Todd, used modern equipment
and reinforced concrete to rebuild the project. Even with modern
equipment the problems remained, because water entering canals following
heavy rains in 1931-32 measured 46 percent silt by weight. The irrigation
farmer in China, like his counterpart in the Western United States, had
to look to watershed protection as a source of silt-free water.29
Controlling erosion on the upper reaches of watersheds
became a passion for Lowdermilk's generation of conservationists. They
favored land cover for increased absorption and engineering works for the
controlled disposal of water without erosion. The upstream reservoir on
the small watersheds was an integral part of the river development--an
assertion that was often contested. Proponents of the control and use of
headwaters had stated their case in the publications Little Waters and
Headwaters: Control and Use.30 In the later 1940s they had another
opportunity when Morris Cooke, a force behind Little Waters, became
chairman of the President's Water Resources Policy Commission. Lowdermilk
assumed chairmanship of the Committee on Standards for Basic Data. The
Cooke and Lowdermilk views held sway in the committee report that
emphasized a comprehensive, interdisciplinary approach. The
interdependence of land and water called for watershed management which
had been neglected due to "our natural endowment and relatively low
population density." Furthermore, the small watershed, the unit of
watershed management preferred by the authors, was a cultural unit. The
watershed unit had to be small enough so that residents understood its
influence on their lives. Then they would devote the time and money
needed to bring it to fruition as a community watershed. Lowdermilk's
experience in semi-arid climates came through in the committee's attitude
toward flood control. Where feasible, reservoirs should not be used
solely to control floods, but also to store storm waters for later
use.31
The attitude toward reservoirs and engineering works
illustrated, as did other beliefs, the length of Lowdermilk's
professional journey from forestry. He had come to believe that the earth
had to be prepared to accept the benefits of rain. In his system of
"physiographic engineering," reservoirs could be designed to
perform functions other than storing water and controlling floods. For
example, reservoirs could create intermediate base levels of stream
cutting which reduced head cutting of tributaries. Downstream, the clear
water flowing from a reservoir could excavate alluvial fill in a channel
and reduce the frequency of flooding.32
As a man of many sciences, Lowdermilk also became a man of many
reputations. Most Americans knew him from his call to heed the lessons of
the Old World in conserving soil resources. Archaeologists and historians
searched the physical and documentary remains of civilizations for
refutation or confirmation of his land reading expertise. In the
international scientific community his reputation rested on the
hydrologic studies. The Chinese and Israelis recalled his humanitarian
activities to increase food production.
Lowdermilk's experience in Israel illustrated that facility in physical
sciences which allowed him to interpret past land use patterns also made
him a master at proposing measures for increased food production. During
the trip to the Middle East in 1938-1939, Lowdermilk became inspired by
the efforts of urban-born European Jews to reclaim land. Upon returning
to the United States, he wrote Palestine: Land of Promise, which
proclaimed that the land could once again support a large population.
After retirement from the Soil Conservation Service he worked with the
Israelis to implement some of the measures outlined in the book. Many
Israelis favored technical assistance for agricultural development over
direct food assistance. That sentiment was concisely conveyed when
Minister of Development Mordecai Bentov coined the saying, "We don't
need powdered milk; we need Lowdermilk."33 While there,
Lowdermilk helped establish at Haifa a school to train conservationists,
a school which later bore his name. The Lowdermilk School of Agricultural
Engineering emphasized the basic sciences as preparatory to agricultural
studies. Students took two years of mathematics, chemistry, physics,
geology, and biology before moving on to the agricultural sciences. A
job-related project in the fifth year was necessary to earn the
degree.34
The fifth year requirement of field experience reflected the
Lowdermilk experience. He believed that field work was a necessary
component of research. In the Soil Conservation Service, field personnel
were to be encouraged to suggest alternative ways of accomplishing
conservation objectives. Field work, especially in an area such as China,
where farming had been practiced for centuries, could uncover useful
information. There was always the possibility that "some unheralded
genius may have already found the solution to our problem, a solution in
whole or in part if we know what we are looking for."35 After all,
it was in the field, on the Yellow River, that Lowdermilk's career as a
land conservationist began.
Endnotes
1 Lowdermilk, Walter C., "Down to Earth," in Transactions:
American Geophysical Union (Washington, D.C.: National Research Council,
1944), p. 195.
2 For a discussion of conservation as a scientific movement see Hays,
Samuel P., Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency (1959; reprint New
York: Atheneum, 1979), p. 2.
3 Brink, Wellington, "Walter C, Lowdermilk," Holland's 61
(December 1942): 8.
4 Lowdermilk, Walter C., Conquest of the Land Through 7,000 Years,
Agriculture Information Bulletin No. 99 (1953; reprint Washington, D.C.:
Government Printing Office, 1975), p. 13.
5 Walter Clay Lowdermilk Interview, p. 61, Bancroft Library, University
of California, Berkeley.
6 Lowdermilk, Walter C., "A Forester's Search for Forests in
China," American Forests and Forest Life 31 (July 1925): 427.
7 Lowdermilk, Conquest of the Land, p. 14.
8 Lowdermilk, "A Forester's Search," p. 4-46.
9 Lowdermilk, Walter C., "Erosion and Floods in the Yellow River
Watershed," Journal of Forestry 22 (October 1924): 15.
10 Ibid., pp. 11-18.
11 Lowdermilk, Walter C., "Factors Influencing the Surface Run-off
of Rain Water," in Proceedings: Third Pan Pacific Science Congress
(Tokyo, 1926), p. 2147.
12 Ibid., pp. 2122-2147.
13 Lowdermilk, Walter C., "The Changing Evaporation-Precipitation
Cycle of North China," Engineering Society of China 25 (1925-1926):
97-147.
14 Lowdermilk, "Forestry in Denuded China," Annals of the
American Academy of Political and Social Science 152 (November 1930):
130.
15 For a discussion of some of the debates see Hays, Conservation and the
Gospel of Efficiency.
16 Lowdermilk, Walter C., "Studies of the Role of Forest Vegetation
in Surficial Run-Off and Soil Erosion," Agricultural Engineering 12
(April 1931): 108.
17 Lowdermilk, "Further Studies of Factors Affecting Surficial
Run-Off and Erosion," in Proceedings of the International Congress
of Forestry Experiment Stations, 1929 (Stockholm, 1929), p. 625.
18 Ibid.
19 Lowdermilk, Walter C., "The Role of Vegetation in Erosion Control
and Water Conservation," Journal of Forestry 32 (May 1934):
531.
20 Lowdermilk Interview, pp. 121-129.
21 Ibid., pp. 133-134.
22 Bennett, Hugh Hammond, The Soils and Agriculture of the Southern
States (New York: Macmillan Company, 1921), p. 283.
23 Bennett, Hugh H., "Agriculture in Central America," Journal
of the American Society of Agronomy 17 (June 1923): 318-326.
24 Lowdermilk Interview, p. 160.
25 Ibid., p. 202.
26 Lowdermilk, Walter C., "Terracing Land Use Across Ancient
Boundaries," mimeographed (Washington, D.C.: Soil Conservation
Service, 1940), pp. 1-133.
27 Lowdermilk, "Lessons From the Old World to the Americas in Land
Use," Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian
Institution, 1943 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1944),
pp. 413-427.
28 Lowdermilk, Conquest of the Land, p. 30.
29 Lowdermilk, "Forestry in Denuded China," pp. 127-141;
Lowdermilk, Walter C. and Wickes, Dean R., "Ancient Irrigation
Brought Up to Date," Scientific Monthly, 55 (September 1942):
209-225; "China and America Against Soil Erosion," Scientific
Monthly, 56 Part I (May 1943): 393-413; Part II (June 1943): 505-520;
History of Soil Use in the Wu T'ai Shan Area (North China Branch of the
Royal Asiatic Society, 1938), pp. 1-31.
30 Person, H.S., Little Waters: A Study of Headwater Streams & Other
Waters, Their Use and Relations to the Land (Washington, D.C.: Soil
Conservation Service, Resettlement Administration, Rural Electrification
Administration, 1936), pp. 1-82; Headwaters: Control and Use, Papers
Presented at the Upstream Engineering Conference Held in Washington, D.C.
September 22 and 23, 1936 (Washington, D.C.: Soil Conservation Service,
Forest Service, Rural Electrification Administration, 1937), pp.
1-261.
31 A Water Policy for the American People: The Report of the President's
Water Resources Commission (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office,
1950), pp. 123-125.
32 Lowdermilk, Walter C., "Physiographic Engineering: Land-Erosion
Controls," in Transactions: American Geophysical Union (Washington,
D.C.: National Research Council, 1941), pp. 316-320.
33 Conversation with Abraham Avidor, Foreign Agricultural Service, U.S.
Department of Agriculture, December 2, 1983. Richard D. Siegel, Deputy
Assistant Secretary, U.S. Department of Agriculture, brought this saying
to my attention and Mr. Avidor, who grew up on a kibbutz and who knew Mr.
Bentov supplied the details. Bentov was seeking to promote the
development of agriculture and viewed the direct food assistance as an
inhibiting factor. Avidor reports that the saying was quite prevalent in
Israel in the 1950s.
34 Lowdermilk Interview, pp. 610-611.
35 Lowdermilk, Walter C., "Preliminary Report to the Executive Yuan,
Government of China, on Findings of a Survey of a Portion of the
Northwest for a Program of Soil, Water and Forest Conservation,
1943," typescript, p. 37, Soil Conservation Service History Office,
Washington, D.C.
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