Home for the Weekend: The Poet's Perspective - Man on the Land

The following edition of The Poet's Perspective is on the subject of land use by man. The program features Southwest Minnesota regional poets Joe and Nancy Paddock.

This the is second of nine programs funded in part by the Minnesota Humanities Commission, bringing the poet's perspective to regional issues from Minnesota Public Radio's Poet in Residence. The series was produced in the Worthington studios. It is presented as it was broadcast over KRSW's regional magazine, Home for the Weekend.

Transcripts

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VICKIE STURGEON: The following edition of The Poet's Perspective is presented as it was broadcast over KRSW's regional magazine, Home for the Weekend. The Poet's Perspective was funded in part by the Minnesota Humanities Commission.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

JOE PADDOCK: From the beginning, we had seen virtually no wilderness. Rice terraces had climbed thousands of feet up hillsides. Prayer flags flapped at the passes. Paths, occasionally edged with mani walls, crisscrossed the country, for all the size, for all the intransigent power of the ice-crusted wall to the north, wilderness, as Western man defines it, did not exist. Yet there was no impression of nature tamed.

It seemed to me that here, man lived in continuous harmony with the land as much and as briefly a part of it all as all its other occupants. He used the Earth with gratitude, knowing that care was required for continued sustenance. He rotated crops, controlled the cutting of wood, bulwarked his fields against erosion. In this peaceful coexistence, man was the invited guest.

VICKIE STURGEON: In a recent study released by the Southwest Regional Development Commission, it was reported that the Metropolitan area of the Twin Cities contains 10 times as much unexploited land as the nine-county area of southwestern Minnesota. Here, only 1.9% of the land has been left in some sort of a natural state, compared to 19.3% of the land in Minneapolis, Saint Paul.

Of course, our prairie region contained few natural forests or lakes considered worth saving. And we also live in a region where some of the most intensive agriculture in the country is practiced. It's easy to forget that before such extensive agricultural usage, the prairie, in its natural state, was teeming with wildlife.

HIRAM SOUTHWICK: Of course, the prairie marshes have always been, by far, the most productive of waterfowl anywhere in the United States, far more productive than the water areas and the big lakes are in the forested areas. The prairie potholes are, by far, the most productive.

And during the time when we had some agriculture, but not intensive agriculture, of course, we had the tremendous increases actually in prairie chicken populations that occurred after the introduction of agriculture, but before it became so intensive. And then when we had at least 25% of the land still in undisturbed grasslands, then we had a lot of prairie chickens. When the percentage of plowed land greatly increased, then, of course, the prairie chickens disappeared because their habitat was destroyed, the habitat they needed most.

And, of course, we had pheasants, which could stand more intensive agriculture than the prairie chicken. And they did very well for a number of years while there was still more agriculture, but not complete domination of the landscape by row crops. But now, of course, there are far too little habitat for pheasants in practically the entire southwestern Minnesota.

VICKIE STURGEON: Hiram Southwick of Slayton is the regional wildlife supervisor for Southwest Minnesota. A dedicated conservationist, he's been working in this region since 1945 to keep as many acres as possible from being drained, tiled, and plowed. And he's been heavily involved with the state's acquisition program, which began in 1951, to buy and preserve marshes and sloughs. Southwick says it's hard to even estimate how many acres of wetlands and unplowed prairie have been lost within the last 30 years.

HIRAM SOUTHWICK: Well, we've lost a large percentage of what we had. In fact, in most counties now, the only wetlands remaining essentially are those that have been purchased by the state and, in some counties, also by the federal government. We have few remaining compared to what we had in 1945, the balance having been drained for agricultural purposes.

If you refer to changes in land use, there have been, of course, some other additional changes. And considerable amounts of pasture land, for example, have been changed to row crop and production.

VICKIE STURGEON: You said the state will buy some of the wetlands. Do they also have a program of buying pasture land or something that's never been plowed up yet?

HIRAM SOUTHWICK: Well, essentially our acquisition program started in 1951, when it was primarily oriented to the purchase of marsh areas or wetland areas, with the major emphasis on waterfowl production and public hunting, of course. But over the years, we've found that the areas purchased have been of equal value to other species of wildlife, such as pheasants, deer, partridge, and so forth.

And so we do have programs for buying other types of lands than just marshland. And some of these are pasture lands that can be developed and improved for our grassland, I should call it. A rough grassland can be improved for waterfowl in some cases, or pheasants, and deer, and other wildlife in other cases.

VICKIE STURGEON: Most people in this region would agree that agricultural production is a very appropriate and justifiable use of our land. But some, like J. Peter Thompson, president of the concerned farmers, are saying that, for his own good, the farmer needs to curtail his excessive manipulation of the soil.

J. PETER THOMPSON: There's land now under the plow in this country that shouldn't be under the plow. It should be in pasture. We are farming fence line to fence line. We should be taking some of our tools and parking them in the grove and forgetting about it. I'm specifically speaking about the moldboard plow.

There's been ample evidence to indicate that we're losing topsoil at the rate of about $30 an acre per year in the wind blowing it away. Now, if we reduced our tillage, if we put to park the moldboard plow and put it in the grove, in all probability, we could cut down this erosion by 75% or 80%.

Grant you, we probably wouldn't get the crops that we're getting now with the heavy application of fertilizers and moldboard plowing, but the long-term consequences are not good. We're seeing a steady erosion of the soils, and this can't bode good for future generations.

VICKIE STURGEON: While some see the land as being threatened by excessive farming practices, still, others see the very production of agricultural products being threatened by the yearly loss of prime farmland. In recent months, the Agriculture Committee of the US House of Representatives has been studying the growing trend of non-farm usage of prime ag land. Congressman Richard Nolan of Minnesota's Sixth District sits on that committee, and he spoke about the problem with Kim Hodgson recently.

KIM HODGSON: I know your committee has been looking into this issue, particularly as it results-- with respect to taking farmland out of production for urban usage. Could you talk a little bit about what you found out about this and what you might be prepared to recommend?

RICHARD NOLAN: Well, at this point, we've found out that there's a very, very serious problem. It appears as though about three million acres of our prime agricultural land is annually going into non-agricultural uses, talking about shopping centers, housing, highways, a whole wide range of commercial enterprises unrelated to food production.

Also, each year, there's about two million new acres coming into production, but they tend to be very, very marginal that require a high-energy, intensive-type farming and, oftentime, bringing into production land that really shouldn't be brought into production, shelterbelts, and wetlands, and other areas that are needed really to be preserved in the status that they're in now in order to have a good ecological balance out here in the countryside.

But at this rate, we're losing well over 1% of our prime agricultural land annually, maybe about 2% or 3%. And they figure, at the current rate, we'll take another state the size of Ohio out of production in the next 10 years. Now, that's a very, very serious problem when considering the enormous food needs that do exist in this country and around the world.

And at this point, we have been working so hard on just passage of this farm bill, which, as you know, included food stamps, and price supports, and research, and Food for Peace, and everything that we haven't really had time to begin carefully examining what we might be able to do to stop this problem.

But now, this fall, we intend to conduct some additional hearings and try to solicit some counsel and advice from the best minds that we can find who are concerned about this problem and then try to come up with a program to reverse this trend, where so much of our prime agricultural land is going into non-agricultural uses.

KIM HODGSON: It seems like it would be difficult because you're going to be smack up against powerful interests when you start taking that on.

RICHARD NOLAN: Well, you are. The construction industry, whether they're building houses, shopping centers, or highways, is a very, very powerful industry. And when you start talking about any kind of policy, land-use policy, that would prohibit them from using prime agricultural land, why, they're going to be calling in all of their chips that they have out with all of their friends in government at every level. And the potential of-- the possibility of doing anything in the very, very near future, I think, is quite honestly rather remote.

And at this point, I'm inclined to think that the best hope that we might have would be for the establishment of some kind of a National Commission on the question that would help elevate the level of interest, the level of knowledge, and the level of concern about this particular problem, because it's not a problem that many people are even aware of at this point.

[JONI MITCHELL, "BIG YELLOW TAXI"] They paved paradise and put up a parking lot

With a pink hotel, a boutique, and a swinging hot spot

Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone?