Page:Tree Crops; A Permanent Agriculture (1929).pdf/332

 protected by mangum terraces (Fig. 120) and are intensively cultivated—rich in yields of alfalfa, corn, clover, legumes, wheat, and garden produce. This plow land is the valley bottoms, level hill tops, the gentle slopes, and flattened terraces on the hillsides. The unplowed lands are partly shaded by cropping trees—mulberries, persimmons, honey locust, grafted black walnut, grafted heart nut, grafted hickory, grafted oak, and other harvest-yielding trees. There is better grass beneath these trees than covers the hills today. The

From University of Ilinois Circular No. 29

Cross-section of two mangum terraces, 65 feet apart, on a 10 per cent. slope.

crops are worked out into scrics of crops to make good farm economy.

It will take time to bring this miracle to pass. It will take time to work it out. First of all a new point of view is needed, ie., that farming should fit the land. The presence on the land of the land owner is also needed. This is not a job for tenants. Let the tenant go down to the level land which carelessness cannot ruin so quickly. Not his the beautiful home in the beautiful hills.

This is the place for the man who has the insurance point of view. Fortunately, insurance is now becoming one of the characteristics of this age. One of the best kinds of farmer's insurance is for him to build his hill farm over gradually to the tree-crop basis.

How shall the hills be turned into tree farms, since otherwise they will be ruined sooner or later by plowing? The question really is, how can the unplowable lands be made to yield richly through trees? Before answering these questions emphasis should be made upon three new pieces of agricultural technique: