Page:Tree Crops; A Permanent Agriculture (1929).pdf/43



We have large areas of hilly land where the climate is good. We have such an area of great beauty with excellent climate and good soils, reaching from Maine to Alabama, from Alabama through Kentucky and Tennessee to central Ohio, from central Ohio through southern Indiana and Illinois into Missouri and Arkansas. Again such an area appears on the foothills of the Rockies and the mountains of the Pacific Coast. Then too there are hilly bits of land in nearly all sections of our country. When we develop an agriculture that fits this land, it will become an almost endless vista of green, crop-yielding trees. We will have small plowed fields on the level hilltops. The level valleys will also be plowed, but the slopes will be productive through crop trees and protected by them—a permanent form of agriculture.

Chestnuts and acorns can, like corn, furnish carbohydrates for men or animals. To many it may seem ridiculous to suggest that we moderns should eat acorns, and I hasten to state that the chief objective of this book is to urge new foods for animals rather than for men. Food for animals is the chief objective of the American farmer. Our millions of four-footed brethren who neigh and bray and squeal and bleat and butt