Relation of Soil Conservation to Land Utilization in the Red Plains Area of Oklahoma

The best utilization of our land is a problem that not only affects each individual land owner but it is a social and economic problem that cannot be evaded by our National and State Governments. It Is very painful Indeed to contemplate the waste in connection with our natural resources. Forests have been ruthlessly destroyed by the axe and by forest fires and the combination of fire and overgrazing has destroyed the natural grass cover over millions of acres of what was once rich productive prairie soils. Plowing, preparation and the cultivation of intertilled crops up and down our slopes have helped the runoff water to go off faster and carry many tons of soil per acre annually from our best upland cultivated fields. When the natural cover of forest or grass is destroyed and the top soil is left exposed to the uncontrolled runoff water, the natural result is the loss of soil from the uplands and destructive floods down the streams. In addition, springs and streams have dried up that formerly had water during the most severe drouths. With the absorptive top soil now washed away from 125,000,000 acres of formerly productive fields in the United States, it is time for this nation to take active measures for the conservation of the good soils that are still left under cultivation and to cooperate with nature in restoring to either grass or trees the fields from which all the top soil is gone or that have been ruined by gully erosion. Some have argued that this problem must be left with each individual land owner, but I maintain that the conservation of our greatest resource, the soil, cannot be left with Individual land owners. We have been expending millions of dollars of the tax payers money in the construction of great levees to hold back flood waters and yet we have permitted individuals, through private exploitations to destroy the natural grass and forest cover of the head waters above and enrich themselves at the expense of the masses of our people. No individual has a right to make an individual fortune through the wanton destruction of grass and trees and by careless methods destroy the good top soil on millions of acres, resulting in flood waters and the deposition of silt and sediment which costs us millions of dollars down the stream. As a basis for an intelligent method of procedure in conserving our good soils and economically reclaiming our badly eroded and gullied fields and pastures we must map and classify the soils in a way that will give us the necessary knowledge regarding the several factors which must be considered for the beat utilization of each field, whether privately owned or as a part of the public domain. The more important factors to be considered are the soil type, the slope of the land, the type and extent of erosion, rainfall and climate, and the present use that is being made of the soil. With these general statements, I want especially to discuss what is known as the Red Plains Region, an area of about 36,000,000 acres, roughly 400 miles long from north to south and 150 miles wide from east to west, In southern Kansas, through Oklahoma and north Texas. The mature soils of this region, usually with a slope between zero and 3% have a tenacious clay pan development in Horizon B, and Horizon A varies from 8 to 15 inches in depth, where erosion has not removed the surface soil. Due to this clay pan development, these soils have a very low infiltration capacity and the rolling phases suffer seriously from sheet erosion where poor methods of crop and soil management are practiced. The disintegrated material of the more rolling and steeper slopes is shallow and sandstone rock often comes near the surface. The subsoil usually varies from a friable sandy clay to a stiff red clay with rock in the shallow phases. The region is characterized by severe drouth and a torrential type of rainfall. The soils naturally erode very badly and especially when farmed in intertilled row crops with the rows up and down the slopes. The region was originally surveyed off in square sections with the section lines extending from east to west and from north to south and the custom has been to plow, plant and cultivate with the fence lines without considering the slope of the fields. The pride of the pioneers and of their sons has been to plant a straight row a half mile long. Each plowed furrow or cultivator shovel up and down the hill has helped to get the water off faster and to carry more soil with it.