Page:Tree Crops; A Permanent Agriculture (1929).pdf/60

 Should I begin with the nut crops, the well-known pecans, walnuts, and hickories with which every American is somewhat acquainted?

''This book is primarily an attack upon the gully. To succeed in this we must have millions of acres of tree crops replacing the destructive plow crops. Now the nuts that people eat are fine and worthy of much improvement, but a few hundred thousand acres of them would glut the market. Not so with stock food. Once we get a cow-feed tree crop established we have a guaranteed outlet, and twenty or thirty million acres will not glut the market. We would simply convert thirty or forty million acres of our hundred million acres of corn to a more profitable and soil-saving crop.''

Therefore, I start this part of the book with stock foods.

''There is another reason also. Some of the stock-food crops seem to be in the class of sure things with which the farmer can safely begin without waiting for a lot of scientific work to be done.''

''Then, too, stock foods start on an honest-to-goodness basis. They don't begin five prices high like a human food novelty and then come down bumpety-bump as soon as a few carloads are produced.''