Soil Conservation Quotes

Good farmers, who take seriously their duties as stewards of Creation and of their land's inheritors, contribute to the welfare of society in more ways than society usually acknowledges, or even knows. These farmers produce valuable goods, of course; but they also conserve soil, they conserve water, they conserve wildlife, they conserve open space, they conserve scenery.

We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect

A man who seeks only the light, while shirking his responsibilities, will never find illumination. And one who keep his eyes fixed upon the sun ends up blind..." "It doesn't matter what others think -because that's what they will think, in any case. So, relax. Let the universe move about. Discover the joy of surprising yourself." "The master says: “Make use of every blessing that God gave you today. A blessing cannot be saved. There is no bank where we can deposit blessings received, to use them when we see fit. If you do not use them, they will be irretrievably lost. God knows that we are creative artists when it comes to our lives. On one day, he gives us clay for sculpting, on another, brushes and canvas, or a pen. But we can never use clay on our canvas, nor pens in sculpture. Each day has its own miracle. Accept the blessings, work, and create your minor works of art today. Tomorrow you will receive others.” “You are together because a forest is always stronger than a solitary tree,” the master answered. "The forest conserves humidity, resists the hurricane and helps the soil to be fertile. But what makes a tree strong is its roots. And the roots of a plant cannot help another plant to grow. To be joined together in the same purpose is to allow each person to grow in his own fashion, and that is the path of those who wish to commune with God.” “If you must cry, cry like a child. You were once a child, and one of the first things you learned in life was to cry, because crying is a part of life. Never forget that you are free, and that to show your emotions is not shameful. Scream, sob loudly, make as much noise as you like. Because that is how children cry, and they know the fastest way to put their hearts at ease. Have you ever noticed how children stop crying? They stop because something distracts them. Something calls them to the next adventure. Children stop crying very quickly. And that's how it will be for you. But only if you can cry as children do.” “If you are traveling the road of your dreams, be committed to it. Do not leave an open door to be used as an excuse such as, 'Well, this isn't exactly what I wanted. ' Therein are contained the seeds of defeat. “Walk your path. Even if your steps have to be uncertain, even if you know that you could be doing it better. If you accept your possibilities in the present, there is no doubt that you will improve in the future. But if you deny that you have limitations, you will never be rid of them. “Confront your path with courage, and don't be afraid of the criticism of others. And, above all, don't allow yourself to become paralyzed by self-criticism. “God will be with you on your sleepless nights, and will dry your tears with His love. God is for the valiant.” "Certain things in life simply have to be experienced -and never explained. Love is such a thing." "There is a moment in every day when it is difficult to see clearly: evening time. Light and darkness blend, and nothing is completely clear nor completely dark." "But it's not important what we think, or what we do or what we believe in: each of us will die one day. Better to do as the old Yaqui Indians did: regard death as an advisor. Always ask: 'Since I'm going to die, what should I be doing now?'” "When we follow our dreams, we may give the impression to others that we are miserable and unhappy. But what others think is not important. What is important is the joy in our heart.” “There is a work of art each of us was destined to create. That is the central point of our life, and -no matter how we try to deceive ourselves -we know how important it is to our happiness. Usually, that work of art is covered by years of fears, guilt and indecision. But, if we decide to remove those things that do not belong, if we have no doubt as to our capability, we are capable of going forward with the mission that is our destiny. That is the only way to live with honor.

A tree has roots in the soil yet reaches to the sky. It tells us that in order to aspire we need to be grounded and that no matter how high we go it is from our roots that we draw sustenance. It is a reminder to all of us who have had success that we cannot forget where we came from. It signifies that no matter how powerful we become in government or how many awards we receive, our power and strength and our ability to reach our goals depend on the people, those whose work remain unseen, who are the soil out of which we grow, the shoulders on which we stand

To husband is to use with care, to keep, to save, to make last, to conserve. Old usage tells us that there is a husbandry also of the land, of the soil, of the domestic plants and animals - obviously because of the importance of these things to the household. And there have been times, one of which is now, when some people have tried to practice a proper human husbandry of the nondomestic creatures in recognition of the dependence of our households and domestic life upon the wild world. Husbandry is the name of all practices that sustain life by connecting us conservingly to our places and our world; it is the art of keeping tied all the strands in the living network that sustains us. And so it appears that most and perhaps all of industrial agriculture's manifest failures are the result of an attempt to make the land produce without husbandry.

The great concerns of our time – climate change, natural resources, food production, water control and conservation, and human health – all boil down to the condition of the soil.

All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. His instincts prompt him to compete for his place in that community, but his ethics prompt him also to co-operate (perhaps in order that there may be a place to compete for). The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land.

While you were looking outward, scanning the horizon for threats," he continues, "you missed what was happening in your own backyard. What was taking root right here, on American soil. In your towns, your shops, in your heartland. Among your friends, in your families. The sensible conservatives moving to the right. The right moving far right. The far right becoming alt-right. Becoming, in their rage and frustration, radicalized thanks to an internet filled with crazy theories, false 'facts' and smug politicians allowed to spew lies.

Soil is not just a substance, soil is the soul.

When you live from the land, which ultimately all of us do, soil is everything. Forgetting this is at our peril.

He reached the foot of the embankment, and waved with one arm, shouting at the few cars moving along the westbound carriageway. None of the drivers could see him, let alone hear his dry-throated croak, and Maitland stopped, conserving his strength. lie tried to climb the embankment, but within a few steps collapsed in a heap on the muddy slope. Deliberately, he turned his back to the motorway and for the first time began to inspect the island. 'Maitland, poor man, you're marooned here like Crusoe - If you don't look out you'll be beached here for ever...' He had spoken no more than the truth. This patch of abandoned ground left over at the junction of three motorway routes was literally a deserted island. Angry with himself, Maitland lifted the crutch to strike this meaningless soil.

A few early farmers conserved the soil - George Washington was one - but they were stray oddities. A few pioneers had naturalistic interests, but any revelation of such interests branded the holder of them as being peculiar or even undemocratic. The mass rule then, as now, was: Conform and be dull.

The challenge is clear: we have to conserve and improve the soil we have, and we need to turn dirt into soil wherever people need to grow food. That's true in America's breadbasket, it's true in the tropics, and it's true in the dry, hardscrabble, weathered soils that cover much of sub- Saharan Africa.

Obvious variations aside, there's only one human body. 206 bones, five major organs, 60,000 miles of blood vessels. All it takes is time. Days. Months. Years, spent memorizing the finite ways there are to hurt and break a man. Preparing for all of them. I've escaped from every conceivable deathtrap. Ten times. A dozen times. I can slow my breathing and metabolism to control panic and conserve air. Straitjacket's kindergarten. Locks, too. Benchpressing a pine coffin lid through 600 pounds of loose soil that's filling your mouth, crushing your lungs flat, and shredding your dehydrated muscles? That's harder. But far from impossible.

While the living thing may easily be crushed by superior force, it none the less tries to turn the energies which act upon it into means of its own further existence. If it cannot do so, it does not just split into smaller pieces (at least in the higher forms of life), but loses its identity as a living thing. As long as it endures, it struggles to use surrounding energies in its own behalf. It uses light, air, moisture, and the material of soil. To say that it uses them is to say that it turns them into means of its own conservation. As long as it is growing, the energy it expends in thus turning the environment to account is more than compensated for by the return it gets: it grows.

While you were looking outward, scanning the horizon for threats,” he continued, “you missed what was happening in your own backyard. What was taking root right here, on American soil. In your towns, your shops, in your heartland. Among your friends, in your families. The sensible conservatives moving to the right. The right moving far right. The far right becoming alt-right. Becoming, in their rage and frustration, radicalized thanks to an internet filled with crazy theories, false ‘facts,’ and smug politicians allowed to spew lies.

These haymeadow days were the Arcadian age for marsh dwellers. Man and beast, plant and soil lived on and with each other in mutual toleration, to the mutual benefit of all. The marsh might have kept on producing hay and prairie chickens, deer and muskrat, crane-music and cranberries forever. The new overlords did not understand this. They did not include soil, plants, or birds in their ideas of mutuality. The dividends of such a balanced economy were too modest. They envisaged farms not only around, but in the marsh. An epidemic of ditch-digging and land-booming set in. The marsh was gridironed with drainage canals, speckled with new fields and farmsteads.

I’m a lifelong environmentalist. My voice piped at age ten: “I give my pledge as an American to save and faithfully to defend from waste the natural resources of my country—its air, soil, and minerals, its forests, waters, and wildlife.” I got infected by that Conservation Pledge through the magazine Outdoor Life and proceeded to paste it on everything and everyone around me. Since the concept of pledge has long been rendered meaningless by the surreal Pledge of Allegiance that American schoolchildren have to recite, what I meant in 1948—and mean now—is: “I declare my intent to save and defend from waste the world’s natural resources—its air, soil, and minerals, its forests, waters, and wildlife.

Just as hunger, not greed, has a legitimate purpose, so the sexual instinct has been implanted by Nature solely for the propagation of the species, not for the kindling of insatiable longings,” he said. “Destroy wrong desires now; otherwise they will remain with you after the astral body has been separated from its physical casing. Even when the flesh is weak, the mind should be constantly resistant. If temptation assails you with cruel force, overcome it by impersonal analysis and indomitable will. Every natural passion can be mastered. “Conserve your powers. Be like the capacious ocean, absorbing quietly all the tributary rivers of the senses. Daily renewed sense yearnings sap your inner peace; they are like openings in a reservoir that permit vital waters to be wasted in the desert soil of materialism. The forceful, activating impulse of wrong desire is the greatest enemy to the happiness of man. Roam in the world as a lion of self-control; don’t let the frogs of sense weakness kick you around!” A

The militia of which the Second Amendment speaks is not the National Guard, but the assembly of patriots who are willing to gather to repel invasions. They were the patriots who stood at Lexington and Concord. They were the snipers and guerilla fighters who fought with Francis Marion—better known as the Swamp Fox—to repel the British throughout the South. The militia is not an organized, standing military force; our militia is the armed citizenry. Throughout history, enemies have avoided invading our soil for a very simple reason: not only would they have to contend with the strongest military force known to man, but they would have to contend with millions of gun owners. Grandmas with handguns, ranchers with rifles, college students with Glocks—the threat of an intense guerilla war has just been too much for the enemies of America. We haven’t been invaded since the War of 1812. After decades of fighting to prop up the ludicrous notion that the Second Amendment supports a collective right to gun ownership, the 2008 Heller decision from the Supreme Court dashed the fading dreams of antigunners when they declared gun ownership to be an expressly individual right.

The concept of the biotic pump, if correct, brings a new urgency to the need to conserve forests.

the Soil Carbon Challenge measures carbon levels over ten years. Someone at a university, completing a PhD or seeking publication, has incentives to do research projects of no more than a few years. In government agencies and nonprofits, soil carbon work is geared to the “so-called carbon market.” And all organizations—this is a pet peeve of his—tend toward fragmentation, so that soil conservation and climate mitigation are seen as separate, even competing, campaigns. All this means that stories that don’t fit into a short time frame, aren’t linked to profitable ventures, and/or can’t be neatly tucked into departmental divisions may not get told.

Finally, McClintock went on to really tear Calderón—and the moronic Democrats who supported him—a new one: It is an outrage that a foreign head of state would appear in this chamber and actively seek to do so [undermine our immigration laws]. And it is a disgrace that he would be cheered on from the left wing of the White House and by many Democrats in this Congress. And that was the line that really made us want to grab Representative McClintock and plant like twelve zillion kisses on his face. See, that’s the difference between liberals and conservatives. Liberals stand up and applaud a foreign leader who rips on their country on their own soil. Conservatives don’t take that crap lying down.

As for the insane doctrine that being born in a country gives some right to the possession of the soil of that country, it hardly requires notice.

In the 1940s and 1950s, the study of natural history--an intimate science predicated on the time-consuming collection and naming of life-forms--gave way to microbiology, theoretical and commercial. Much the same thing happened to the conservation movement, which shifted from local preservationists with soil on their shoes to environmental lawyers in Washington, D.C.

Education has been assigned a large and, it seems, ever expanding role in maintaining social equilibrium by buttressing self-control. And in fertilizing the soil of patriotism, which presupposes a purpose beyond, a purpose sometimes higher than, that of the individual. So, patriotism involves transcending, or circumscribing, the value of individual autonomy.

It wasn’t investigating my family history that put me on the lookout for cooperatives. I started looking because of stirrings I noticed as a reporter among veterans of the protests that began in 2011, such as Occupy Wall Street and Spain’s 15M movement. Once their uprisings simmered, the protesters had to figure out how to make a living in the economy they hadn’t yet transformed, and they started creating co-ops. Some were doing it with software—cooperative social media, cloud data, music streaming, digital currencies, gig markets, and more. But this generation was not all lost to the digital; others used cooperation to live by dirt and soil. The young radicals turned to the same kind of business that my buttoned-up, old-world, conservative grandfather did. Following them, I began following in my grandfather’s footsteps before I even knew it. Both

To move conservation forward—to move toward ethics and regeneration and holism—we must first learn to see so that we can learn how to speak so that we can learn how to know better.

The surface causes of environmental carelessness among conservative Christians are legion, including subcontracting the evangelical mind out to right-wing politicians and greedy business interests. Too often we put the gospel of Jesus through the strainer of consumerist-capitalism and retain only the thin broth that this modern-day Caesar lets pass through. We often display a reactionary tendency to be against whatever “liberals” are for. These non-green shoots are resourced by deeper theological roots of environmental disinterest. Fortunately, other root systems are spreading beneath the surface, and signs of an environmental spring are breaking through the formerly barren soil.

I recommend, especially at the beginning, that you plant only what you want to eat. Occasionally try something new, of course, but especially at first only grow those vegetables and herbs that you normally eat. Remember, plant each adjoining square foot with a different crop. Why? Here are several reasons: 1. It prevents you from overplanting any one particular item. 2. It allows you to stagger your harvest by planting one square foot this week and another of the same crop in two weeks or so. 3. It promotes conservation, companion planting, crop rotation, and allows better plant hygiene and reduced pest problems. 4. It automatically helps to improve your growing soil three times a year in very easy, small steps. Remember the saying, “Square by square, you’ll soon be there.” 5. Besides all of the above, it looks pretty.

It is my argument that American liberalism is a totalitarian political religion, but not necessarily an Orwellian one. It is nice, not brutal. Nannying, not bullying. But it is definitely totalitarian--or "holistic", if you prefer--in that liberalism today sees no realm of human life that is beyond political significance, from what you eat to what you smoke to what you say. Sex is political. Food is political. Sports, entertainment, your inner motives and outer appearance, all have political salience for liberal fascists. Liberals place their faith in priestly experts who know better, who plan, exhort, badger, and scold. They try to use science to discredit traditional notions of religion and faith, but they speak the language of pluralism and spirituality to defend "nontraditional" beliefs. Just as with classical fascism, liberal fascists speak of a "Third Way" between right and left where all good things go together and all hard choices are "false choices". The idea that there are no hard choices--that is, choices between competing goods--is religious and totalitarian because it assumes that all good things are fundamentally compatible. The conservatives or classical liberal vision understands that life is unfair, that man is flawed, and that the only perfect society, the only real utopia, waits for us in the next life. Liberal fascism differs from classical fascism in many ways. I don't deny this. Indeed, it is central to my point. Fascisms differ from each other because they grow out of different soil. What unites them are their emotional or instinctual impulses, such as the quest for community, the urge to "get beyond" politics, a faith in the perfectibility of man and the authority of experts, and an obsession with the aesthetics of youth, the cult of action, and the need for an all powerful state to coordinate society at the national or global level. Most of all, they share the belief--what I call the totalitarian temptation--that with the right amount of tinkering we can realize the utopian dream of "creating a better world".

Any control we exert is illusory and brief. Eventually, the pine forest builds up enough fuel and fire is far bigger than it would've been if we had allowed natural fire; the levee gives out in a hurricane, the plutonium builds up in someone's bones, the bacteria outsmart the antibiotics, and the soil becomes exhausted. Even the science of conservation, in its efforts to "manage" land, operates under an assumption that people control nature.

Though rarely acknowledged as such, LBJ is arguably the patriarch of our contemporary environmental movement, as Theodore Roosevelt was of an earlier environmental crusade. LBJ put plenty of laws on the books: Clean Air, Water Quality, and Clean Water Restoration Acts and Amendments, Solid Waste Disposal Act, Motor Vehicle Pollution Control Act, Aircraft Noise Abatement Act, and Highway Beautification Act. The 1968 Wild and Scenic Rivers Act protects more than two hundred rivers in thirty-eight states;19 the 1968 Trail System Act established more than twelve hundred recreation, scenic, and historic trails covering fifty-four thousand miles.20 These laws are critical to the quality of the water we drink and swim in, the air we breathe, and the trails we hike. Even more sweeping than those laws is LBJ’s articulation of the underlying principle for a “new conservation” that inspires both today’s environmentalists and the opponents who resist their efforts: The air we breathe, our water, our soil and wildlife, are being blighted by the poisons and chemicals which are the by-products of technology and industry. . . . The same society which receives the rewards of technology, must, as a cooperating whole, take responsibility for control. To deal with these new problems will require a new conservation. We must not only protect the countryside and save it from destruction, we must restore what has been destroyed and salvage the beauty and charm of our cities.21

While you were looking outward, scanning the horizon for threats,” he continued, “you missed what was happening in your own backyard. What was taking root right here, on American soil. In your towns, your shops, in your heartland. Among your friends, in your families. The sensible conservatives moving to the right. The right moving far right. The far right becoming

Gratefulness for being an American will give calm and peace to anyone. Our good fortune to be born on this soil, or to have emigrated here, is something we should regularly dwell on, and openly thank God for.

Pinchot was the first professional forester in the United States. He admired and respected Muir but on the whole regarded the other man’s mystic effusions as hooey. Instead of individual spiritual enlightenment, Pinchot sought the common material good—“the greatest good, for the greatest number, for the longest run.” Born in 1865 to a wealthy family, he was a shrewd self-promoter, clever with other people’s ideas, who cast himself as an avatar of Science (in fact, he had attended a year of forestry school in France, leaving before his professors thought he was ready). An inauthentic scientist but a visionary as authentic as Muir, he proclaimed that the world’s prosperity depended on sustaining its resources, especially renewable resources like timber, soil, and freshwater. He wanted to protect them not by leaving great swathes of terrain free from human influence but by managing forests and fields with an elite cadre of scientific mandarins. “The first principle of conservation is development,” he said. Development had to be conceived in the long term: “the welfare of this generation and afterwards the welfare of the generations to follow.” He said, “The human race controls the earth it lives upon.

When Congress passed the Soil Conservation Act, it marked the first time any nation had created such a unit.

Mixing culture war and capitalism is not just a personal quirk shared by these three individuals; it is writ in the very manifesto of the Kansas conservative movement, the platform of the state Republican Party for 1998. Moaning that “the signs of a degenerating society are all around us,” railing against abortion and homosexuality and gun control and evolution (“a theory, not a fact”), the document went on to propound a list of demands as friendly to plutocracy as anything ever dreamed up by Monsanto or Microsoft. The platform called for: • A flat tax or national sales tax to replace the graduated income tax (in which the rich pay more than the poor). • The abolition of taxes on capital gains (that is, on money you make when you sell stock). • The abolition of the estate tax. • No “governmental intervention in health care.” • The eventual privatization of Social Security. • Privatization in general. • Deregulation in general and “the operation of the free market system without government interference.” • The turning over of all federal lands to the states. • A prohibition on “the use of taxpayer dollars to fund any election campaign.” Along the way the document specifically endorsed the disastrous Freedom to Farm Act, condemned agricultural price supports, and came out in favor of making soil conservation programs “voluntary,” perhaps out of nostalgia for the Dust Bowl days, when Kansans learned a healthy fear of the Almighty.17

What saved the land, this study found, was what Hugh Bennett had started: getting farmers to enter contracts with a soil conservation district and manage the land as a single ecological unit.

I am aware that for decades there has been exploration of options and concrete plans and investments being made to look at life on another planet. We must not stop exploring. At the same time let’s preserve and enhance the life we already have on earth. Join the green revolution, plant trees, stop soil erosion, reduce carbon emissions into the atmosphere and promote recycling of waste. Become aware, create awareness, act responsibly and lead by example.

Vogt spent ten months in Mexico, much of it with Juana, at the behest of the Mexican agricultural ministry, writing a guide to conservation for Mexican schoolchildren, and struggling with his cane and braces through twenty-six national parks. Although statistics showed that the country was Latin America’s wealthiest, its landscapes were enshrouded by suffering: impoverished subsistence farmers, scratching at depleted soils, taking down the last stands of timber for their cookstoves. “Unless land-use patterns are radically altered,” Vogt said, “most of Mexico will be virtually desert within a hundred years.

Conserve your powers. Be like the capacious ocean, absorbing within all the tributary rivers of the senses. Small yearnings are openings in the reservoir of your inner peace, permitting healing waters to be wasted in the desert soil of materialism. The forceful activating impulse of wrong desire is the greatest enemy to the happiness of man. Roam in the world as a lion of self-control; see that the frogs of weakness don’t kick you around.

In the face of this vision, Powell put forth another. What was needed above all else, Powell believed, was to know the land, to understand the land, and to react accordingly. This had practical consequences: while a cow might properly graze on a half-acre in the lush East, it would require fifty times that amount of land in most of the West. It followed that the standard acreage of settlement should be different, and it followed that settlement should take into account sources of water. Powell’s goal with his survey was to clearly map out the western lands, to determine what land could be realistically used for agriculture, which meant also determining where irrigation dams should be placed for best effect. In other words, his goal, to use Wendell Berry’s phrase, was to think about “land use” and to do so on a massive scale. Specifically, Powell wanted to think out the uses of land that would be the most beneficial and fruitful for the human beings living there, and for the entire ecosystem (though that word did not yet exist). From the Mormons, Powell learned how “salutary co-operation could be as a way of life, how much less wasteful than competition.” In the late 1880s, Powell wrote a General Plan for land use in the West that “reached to embrace the related problems of land, water, erosion, floods, soil conservation, even the new one of hydroelectric power” that was based on “the settled belief in the worth of the small farmer and the necessity of protecting him both from speculators and from natural conditions he did not understand and could not combat.” It was a methodical, sensible, scientific approach, essentially a declaration of interdependence between the people and their land, and the miracle is that it came very close to passing into law. But of course it met with fierce opposition from those who stood to profit from exploitation, from the boosters and boomers and politicians who thought it “unpatriotic” to describe the West as dry. After all, how dare he call their garden a desert? What right did he have to come in and determine what only free individuals should? Powell was attacked in the papers, slandered in Congress. According to Stegner, Congressman Thomas M. Patterson of Colorado referred to Powell as “this revolutionist,” and the overall attack on Powell “distinguished itself for bombast and ignorance and bad faith.

A huge black wolf burst from the clearing to join him, loping easily beside him, pale silver eyes gleaming with menace. Together they raced through the narrow passages until they found a large, steaming chamber. The black wolf contorted, fur rippling along muscular arms as Gregori shape-shifted to his true form. Mikhail laid Jacques’s body gently on the rich soil and lifted away the covering. He swore softly, unshed tears burning in his throat and eyes. “Can you save him?” Gregori’s hands moved over the body, the vicious wounds. “He stopped his heart and lungs so that he could conserve his blood. Raven is weak because she fed him. She is a smart woman. If he lives, she is the one who saved him. She mixed her saliva and the soil and packed it in tight. It is already beginning to heal the wounds. I will need your herbs, Mikhail.” “In the cabin.” “The sun will fry you.” “Save him, Gregori.