5. That we express the thanks of the Association to those members and others who have enriched this meeting by their interesting exhibits.
6. That the following letter be sent from this Association to the,—
Secretary of Agriculture,
Persons in authority in the United States Bureau of Plant Industry,
The Presidents of Agricultural Colleges,
The Directors of Agricultural Experiment Stations,
And leading Teachers in Agriculture Colleges.
The Northern Nut Growers' Association, by resolution passed at its third annual meeting, held at Lancaster, Pa., in December 1912, calls your attention to the importance of, and need for, the breeding of new types of crop yielding trees. We now have the possibility of a new, but as yet little developed, agriculture which may (A) nearly double our food supply and also (B) serve as the greatest factor in the conservation of our resources.
(A) Our agriculture at the present time depends chiefly upon the grains which were improved by selection in pre-historic times, because they were annuals and quick yielders. The heavy yielding plants, the engines of nature, are the trees, which have in most cases remained unimproved and largely unused until the present time because of the slowness of their generations and the absence of knowledge concerning plant breeding.
We now know something about plant breeding, and its possibilities as applied to the crop yielding trees seem to be enormous. They certainly warrant immediate and widespread effort at plant breeding. A member of this Association has shown that the chinquapin can be crossed with the oak; that all the walnuts freely hybridize with each other and with the open bud hickories, a class which includes the toothsome and profitable pecan. There is in California a tree which is considered to be a cross between the native walnut and the live oak. The Mendelian Law in connection with past achievements in plant breeding, and the experiments of Loeb in crossing the sea urchin and the star fish are profoundly suggestive.
The possibilities of plant breeding as applied to crop yielding trees seem to be enormous. They certainly warrant immediate and widespread effort toward the creation of useful strains which may become the basis of a new agriculture yielding food for both man and the domestic animals.
(B) The time for constructive conservation has come. Our most vital resource is the soil. It is possibly the only resource for which there is no substitute. Its destruction is the most irreparable waste. So long as the earth remains in place the burnt forest may return and the exhausted field may be restored by scientific agriculture. But once the gully removes this soil, it is the end so far as our civilization is concerned—forest, field and food are impossible and even water power is greatly impaired. Our present system of agriculture, depending upon the grains, demands the plowing of hillsides and the hillsides wash away. This present dependence upon the plow means that one-third of our soil resources is used only for forest, one-third is being injured by hillside erosion, and only one-third, the levelest, is being properly used for plow crops.
The present alternative of Forestry for hillsides is often impossible because the yields are too meagre. Almost any land that can produce a forest, and much that has been considered too dry for forest, can produce an annual harvest of value to man or his animals when we have devoted sufficient attention to the breeding of walnuts, chestnuts, pecans, shellbarks, acorn yielding oaks, beech nuts, pine nuts, hazel nuts, almonds, honey locust, mesquite, screw bean, carob, mulberry, persimmon, pawpaw, and many other fruit and nut trees of this and other lands.
The slowness and expense of the process of plant introduction and tree breeding limits this work to a few individuals with patience and scientific tastes and to governmental and other institutions of a permanent nature. The United States Government and each state experiment station should push this work vigorously and we appeal to you to use your influence in that direction. You may find material of interest in our published proceedings and in the Fruit and Nut Journal, the organ of the industry, published at Petersburg, Virginia.