We have the possibility of a brand-new agriculture, depending not upon grains, but upon tree crops, provided someone will breed the crop-yielding trees which we can use. This will permit us to use entirely different kinds of land from that now considered best for agriculture. The natural necessities for plant growth, I believe, are heat, moisture, sunlight and fertility. Now they are not all the limiting factors with man, because man adds the fifth, the arbitrary fact of arability, and that right away bars out about half of the fertile earth, because when we insist on heat, light, moisture, fertility and arability, we leave out that rough half of the earth equally fertile, idle, subject only to the work of the forester, who will give us a forest about 1999. It might just as well be planted with a host of crop-yielding trees, the walnuts, hickory nuts, pecans, persimmons, mulberries—and the list is very long. There are at the present time in use in Mediterranean countries twenty-five crop-yielding trees other than the ordinary orchard fruits. I am told that they have oak trees there which yield an acorn that is better than the chestnut. A pig will fill himself with acorns on the one hillside and with figs on the next hillside and then lie down and get fat. We are too industrious, we wait on the pig; I want the pig to wait on himself.
But who is going to breed these things? These crop yielding trees? A gentleman told us this morning that he was not nervous, that he could watch a hickory tree grow, and stated that he had forty acres of land and was breeding trees for fun. Here is Dr. Morris, who is having a delicious time doing the same thing. We should not have to depend on enthusiasts who are working for fun; we must not depend on such sources for the greatest gifts in the line of food production that man can imagine. This work should be done by every state in the Union. I believe that it is capable of proof that we can get just as much yield from a hillside in untilled fruit and nut-yielding trees, as we can from putting that same hillside under the plough and getting wheat, corn, barley, rye and oats and a little grass once in a while. It will make just as much pig or just as many calories of man food from the tree crops as it will make under the plough. And under the plough that hillside is going down the stream to choke it and reduce the hillside to nothing.
We have three classes of land. The first class is the level land, which belongs to the plough now and for all time. The third class, which is the unploughable steep mountain and hill land, is probably as great in area as the level land, and between the two is the hilly land that we are now cultivating to its great detriment, visibly reducing the earth's resources by bringing about rapidly that condition which has led to the saying in the Old World: "After man, the desert." The Roman Empire, where men have had possession for two thousand years, proves, "After man, the desert." It is equally proven in much of China, but it can be prevented if these hill lands are put to trees. But we cannot afford to put those lands into trees unless the trees yield.
I move that this Association memorialize those persons who are in position to promote the breeding of fruit and nut-yielding trees, that we may bring nearer the day of tree-crop agriculture. I want a letter to go from this Association with the authority of the Association and its sanction, to the Secretary of Agriculture at Washington and to all the men in authority in the Bureau of Plant Industry at Washington, to the Presidents of the State Agricultural Colleges, the Directors of Experiment Stations and professors who are interested in plant breeding. That will make a list of three or four hundred persons and involve an expenditure of a few dollars but I believe it will be productive of good. I hope that the Association will see fit to lend its name and a little cash to that proposition, because if we can get the authority of the state and the money of the state, the results will come much more rapidly than if there are just a few of us doing it independently. (Applause.)
The Chairman: Will someone put Prof. Smith's suggestion in the form of a motion?
A Member: I move that it be referred to the Committee on Resolutions.
(Motion carried.)
Mr. Corsan: Undoubtedly we all agree with Prof. Smith. He spoke of the persimmon. When I speak of the persimmon in my country nobody knows what I am talking about. I found two trees in Battle Creek, Michigan, in a front yard. The person who owned them was an old lady. I said, "Will you give me these persimmons?" She said, "Yes, take them all; the neighbors come here and while they are getting the persimmons they bother me a lot. Everybody seems to like them." They were delicious persimmons that were quite edible before frost, they are probably the two furthest north persimmon trees in the world. I went a little way around Devil Lake, and found pawpaws. They are a very good fruit when cultivated. The idea of preserving the soil and not sending it all into the Lakes and down into the Gulf of Mexico—that is a good idea of Prof. Smith's.
Mr. Gardner: I submit that that Battle Creek woman should start a new breakfast food. (Laughter.)