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Show INTERPRETATION Soil is one of our most useful natural resources. From the soil we get food, clothes, and materials for the houses we live in. All you need is a pencil and paper for this activity. Make a list of all the items used about your home or your farm that are made from wood and wood products. INTERPRETATION Wood is a universal material and no one has ever been able to make a satisfactory count of its many uses. The Forest Products Laboratory, a research institution of the United States Forest Service, at Madison, Wis., once undertook to make an official count of wood uses. When last announced, the number was more than 5,000 and the argument had only started over how general or how specific a use had to be to get on the list. Just one well- known wood- cellulose plastic, including its conversion products, claims 25,000 uses- among them such different items as dolls' eyes and advertising signs. The use of wood fiber as the basis for such products is increasing every day. From gardens and truck farms we get vegetables. Fruit grown on trees and vines comes from orchards, groves, and vineyards. Wheat and corn for making flour and meal for our bread comes from planted field crops. Nuts and berries come from farms and forests. Our animal food comes from the soil too. Cows eat grass, hay, silage, and grain to produce milk. Hens eat grain and other feeds to produce eggs. Beef, pork, lamb, and poultry come from animals that eat plants or feeds that come from plants. The fuel that warms our houses comes indirectly from the soil. Coal is made from plants that grew ages ago. Oil and gas also originated from the organic materials possibly including the remains of animals. All of these things grew in the soil at one time or lived on things that grew in the soil. Fish from the sea, rivers, and lakes live on plants. And these plants live on dissolved minerals that washed into the sea, rivers, and lakes from the soil. Scientists have found that in the United States it now takes 1 to 2 acres of good land to grow the food and clothing for one person. ( An acre is about the size of a football field.) Some land will produce more than other land, of course, but this is an average. If you could live on potatoes or corn alone, you would need only two- thirds of an acre. But when you feed the corn to animals to produce meat, eggs, and milk, then about 2 acres are needed. We often hear the question: How much lumber is used in the United States during an average year? The answer is: About 48 billion board- feet. Visualize a boardwalk 40 feet wide and 1 inch thick; imagine the boardwalk extends from where you stand all of the way to the moon. That's 48 billion board- feet. Nearly two- thirds of that amount goes into building construction- not only for shelter, but for protection, comfort, and beauty as well. The rest is used for all sorts of manufactured articles- boxes, furniture, matches, millwork, toys. Another important use of wood is paper for printing our books, magazines, and newspapers. A high point in our culture came less than a century ago with the discovery that wood fiber could take the place of cotton or linen in paper manufacture. Today we use more than 73 million tons of paper and board each year. Of this amount each person's annual share of all kinds of paper and board is about 660 pounds. When paper was made chiefly of rags, each person's annual share was less than 10 pounds. XX. How Many Uses for Wood Do You Know? 25 |