Tomorrow Is Now by Eleanor Roosevelt

Author:Eleanor Roosevelt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2012-10-10T00:00:00+00:00

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There is one more area where long-range planning is basic to the future well-being of the American people. That is in the preservation of our natural resources. Here, year after year, and most vociferously during election years, we suffer from the selfish claims of a few people to exploit the natural resources of the country for their private profit, and without regard to the ultimate impoverishment of all the people. Our forests are cut down, our rivers and lakes are polluted. We have created dust bowls through short-sightedness, stupidity, and greed.

Those of us who have flown over vast areas of desert, such as you look down upon in Iran or Israel, have learned something about how men destroy the fertility of the world in which they live. It is essential that people learn the elementary facts about how to preserve the trees, the topsoil, and life-giving water.

Not so many years ago, some short-sighted farmers nearly succeeded in turning a large area of the United States into a desert. At that time the price of wheat was very high. In their eagerness to plant a few more acres, the farmers plowed up land in the dry, windy sections of the Great Plains which should have been kept as pasture.

In the early thirties this area was stricken by drought. The destruction of the land was so apparent and so disastrous that vigorous efforts were taken to stop it. Thousands of acres were converted back from wheat farming to grasslands. Contour plowing and the building of hundreds of small dams conserved the rainfall and helped restore enough vegetation to anchor down the topsoil. Long rows of trees—known as shelter belts—were planted on the northern and western sides of many farms, to break the force of the prevailing winds. Gradually the barren lands were restored; and when the next cycle of droughts came, some twenty years later, far less topsoil blew away. Little by little, the farmers of the Great Plains have learned to work with nature, instead of against it.

This reminds me of a trip made through the southwest desert, a bleak, empty, and frightening land. To my delight, our car finally reached a welcoming shade. There were flowers growing and fruits. There was the fresh sound of running water.

“But how did this happen in a desert?” I asked the man at that improbable little fruit stand in the cool shade.

“We planted trees,” he said dryly.

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