Sylvan Economy Profitable And Counter To Erosion

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31412, 4 July 1967, Page 10

Sylvan Economy Profitable And Counter To Erosion

TREES & FOREST PRODUCTS—V

(Specially written for “The Press by H. ST. BARBE BAKER)

The future of New Zealand under a sylvan economy is bright and exciting. Last year nearly 250 million cubic feet of timber was yielded from 3 million acres of forest, and we exported £11,480,000 worth of timber and timber products. Annual sales turnover of New Zealand Forest Products, Ltd., Was cJose on £20,000,000.

The forests of the country will be hard put to it to meet the growing demand for all the trees can yield. Formidable as the growing export of forest products may be, probably the indirect benefit of trees to New Zealand will be of even greater value in terms of soil conservation, shelter and shade. We would do well to safeguard the future of our few remaining natural forests, for the preservation of natural resources should be the first law of life. Self-preservation, to sustain life, is the basic characteristic which furnishes the energy for all living beings, including man.

Lesson from United States In the United States it has been found that land in private possession brings destructive consequences. In the act of self-preservation, man thinks mostly of the im-

mediate present. Since he is more clever than wise he learns mainly by his errors. The speed at which the white settlers from Europe undermined the basis of life in North America is a warning to New Zealand and Australia. What Nature created in millions *of years, “free” American enterprise has nearly destroyed in 200 years. The forests have been robbed of more than threequarters of their timber and even now felling is exacting four and one half times the annual wood increment. Whole forests have been eliminated by burning (not even salvaging the wood of trees) to make room for the planting of cotton. Overgrazing of domestic animals is causing soil erosion and floods. The valleys and plains have been robbed of their original plant cover to make room for chemico-mechanical farming, leaving bare soil exposed to the winds for some part of each year. Often when land has become exhausted it is abandoned for fresh virgin soil: In a single year soil has been lifted from millions of acres of farm lands, creating a dust-bowl of 32,000 square miles.

“Corrupt Practices” In 1953 the United States Department of Agriculture made a careful study of the cultivated soil in the United States and reported that “no less than 253 million acres, or 61 per cent of the total acreage under crops had been partially or completely destroyed, or had lost most of its fertility. Our corrupt farming practices in the last fifty years

have destroyed more land faster than in the whole previous history of man.” “In the greed for unearned Income of interest and rent on land,” says Bruno H. Schubert in “The Answer,” “this “free’ American enterprise leaves behind reduced and destroyed forests, denuded soil, man-made deserts and polluted streams ... “In spite of the warning of experts, only very little—in fact, almost nothing—has been done to stop this destruction.”

The method of food production is reflected in the disease of the people. “A mass production of wrong food, as for instance, meat, grain, and dairy products continue not only to destroy the fertility of the soil, but contributes to what a great number of health experts refer to as “the American people, the most diseased people on Earth.” The American people can boast of the most heart disease, cancer, arthritis, mental ill-health of any nation on earth.

Europe has an average of one doctor for every 5000 people. In the United States they have one doctor for about every 500 people. Their 36 million laws are so tangled that according to Dr. Albert Burke, legal conditions have developed into a 45 billion dollar annual business racket without benefit to the nation. This has grown out of greedy exploitation of their natural resources, and like erosion, feeds upon itself.

Soil and Health The health of a nation is governed by the health of the

soil. If the soil erodes the wellbeing of the nation suffers and becomes sick and unstable.

Moses the lawgiver said: “The tree of the field is as man’s life.” He was no doubt thinking of the fruit trees, figs and olives, but all trees are as man’s life, for the physical and biological contributions are far-reaching. When the trees go, the sinister signs or erosion become evident. What is true of scalping of the soil—sheet erosion—as seen in the Canterbury Plains, is likewise true of the more familiar and spectacular type, gully erosion. Both grow by what they feed upon. As a gully cuts back, tributary gullies are formed and damage spreads like a ringworm, in a circle. The measure of damage is not the distance cut back by the main gully, but the increasing area involved in the whole system. The more it eats the more it wants. The injury then increases, not by addition, but by multiplication, and unless’ speedily arrested by treeplanting will spread at compound interest and carry destruction in its wake. We know that there is no one sovereign remedy, but a combination of policies may be developed, many of which will no doubt prove to be highly desirable for other reasons than the immediate control of erosion itself, and together may form part of an integrated policy of effective land utilisation. It was Theodore Roosevelt who said: “If a nation saves its trees, the trees will save

the nation.” And it may well be that this is the answer not only to our national problems but to the problems of the whole world. (to be concluded.)