Conservation pioneer Melville H. Cohee

Excerpt

Melville H. Cohee was born April 17, 1909, and grew up on a crop and livestock farm in Indiana. He earned his bachelor and master's degrees from Purdue University before studying as a PhD student in agricultural economics and land use at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Mel Cohee was one of Hugh Hammond Bennett's important partners in the early days of the Soil Erosion Service and Soil Conservation Service (now the Natural Resources Conservation Service) and in establishing the Soil Conservation Society of America (now the Soil and Water Conservation Society).

In 1933, an angry Bennett had stormed the office of the Assistant Secretary of Agriculture Rexford G. Tugwell and argued, “Why on earth shouldn't we go about this problem [soil erosion] the right way by building terraces properly on the right kind of land and by supporting them with other needed practices, such as strip cropping, contour plowing, crop rotations, and grassed waterways?” Tugwell said he would look into it, but he told Bennett to be prepared, for Bennett would have to take a leading part in whatever program was agreed upon.

Shortly thereafter, Secretary of Agriculture Harold Ickes informed Bennett that he had been selected to set up …