Viewpoint

Excerpt

THIS “Viewpoint” is an exercise in prophesy. A solid starting point is thus necessary. My assumption is that organized soil conservation programs will be a part of America's future, and these programs will be more comprehensive than anything heretofore. This prediction will hold true irrespective of whatever else may transpire—social revolution, political turmoil, war.

However, certainty about a program's existence is matched by equal uncertainty about the form a program may take and the institutional structure to be employed. All that is declared here is that a half century from now the institutions of 1985 will have gone to their institutional Valhalla. They will have been replaced by successors that may show little filial resemblance.

All human institutions follow life cycles. They have youth, then maturity, and finally old age, when vigor and resilience are lost. Institutions to conserve soil are not exempt from this pattern.

Soil conservation institutions are now in a jeopardy that is partly deserved, partly undeserved. Spokesmen for the present jungle are caught in a contradiction of ...