District Manager's Corner
by Pat Frost
Happy birthday to the Natural Resources Conservation Service, which is celebrating its 70th year this April. NRCS, or more accurately its predecessor the Soil Conservation Service, grew out of the Dust Bowl with the help of Hugh Hammond Bennett, “the father of soil conservation”. In the early 1930s, along with the greatest depression this nation ever experienced, came an equally unparalleled ecological disaster known as the Dust Bowl. Following a severe and sustained drought in the Great Plains, the region’s soil began to erode and blow away, creating huge dust storms that blotted out the sun and swallowed the countryside. Thousands of “dust refugees” left the black fog to seek better lives. The storms stretched across the nation reaching south to Texas and east to New York. Dust even sifted into the White House and onto the desk of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
On Capitol Hill, while testifying about the erosion problem, soil scientist Hugh Hammond Bennett threw back the curtains to reveal a sky blackened by dust. Congress unanimously passed legislation declaring soil and water conservation a national policy and priority. Since about three-fourths of the continental United States is privately owned, Congress realized that only active, voluntary support from landowners would guarantee the success of conservation work on private land. The Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act of 1935 was created to repair the eroded soil and prevent further damage — the Soil Conservation Service was born.
During its initial year, the SCS was exceedingly effective; it compiled several existing techniques into a system that dealt with an array of problems. For instance, strip cropping and contour plowing could be combined on land vulnerable to erosion. These techniques both prevented erosion and maintained the organic matter, and thus the quality, of the soil. Crop rotations, rearrangement of fields, and conversion of steep cropland to pasture or woodland successfully preventing erosion — these are all of the farming methods that I remember my grandpa talking to his neighbors about when I would be lucky enough to be able to spend a day driving around with him. He was a member of his local soil and water conservation district that linked the experts of SCS to the local landowners. The importance of this link was recognized in 1937 when President Roosevelt wrote the governors of all the states recommending legislation that would allow local landowners to form these soil conservation districts. Today nearly 3000 conservation districts, like our own, are helping local people to conserve land, water, forests, wildlife and related natural resources, and every day we do this in close cooperation with our colleagues at the Natural Resources Conservation Service. The Trinity County Board of Supervisors passed a resolution acknowledging the great work of NRCS. So when you see Jim Spear, Tiffany Riess, John Tiedeman, Tim Viel, Judy Carter and Scott Eberly thank them for their dedication to the vision of Hugh Hammond Bennett.
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