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Show crops, the total land in occupied farms in drain- age enterprises and the acreage actually planted. The total acreage of occupied farms in drain- age enterprises remained fairly stable, at about 70 million acres, from 1929 to 1939. The acre- age planted in such farms declined from 54,427,- 577 to 49,613,573 in the same 10-year period. Declines in planted acreage are shown for all but five of the listed States. This brief review of drainage agriculture sug- gests that, while a certain amount of drainage is carried on in connection with western irriga- tion enterprises, it may be anticipated that drain- age will predominate in eastern reclamation programs, as irrigation does today in the arid and semiarid States of the West. Outlook for the Future The preceding pages have suggested the im- portance of reclamation through both irrigation and drainage in the country's agriculture. They have suggested further the part which the irriga- tion program under the Reclamation Act has played in building the West. This provides an approach to dealing with the broad question whether expansion of reclamation is warranted in the face of a situation in which the country seems to be paying the price of surplus agricul- tural production. In an a-ttempt to find an answer, it will be necessary to consider (a) the present use of land, (b) the changes in the productivity of land, (c) population trends as an indication of future requirements, (d) changes in food consumption in the direction of improved diets, (e) cropland requirements of the future in terms of various assumptions as to the productivity of the land and dietary trends, and (/) the import-export relationship. On the basis of this analysis it will be possible to obtain a broad view of the parts which must be played by land management and reclamation respectively in meeting the Nation's future needs for agricultural products. Present Land Use Currently, just over nine-tenths of the 1.9 billion acres of land in the United States is de- voted to the three principal uses of crops, pasture and grazing, and forest. Land in cities, parks, roads, and railroads, other related service uses, and wasteland account for the remainder. Cropland.-Nearly a fifth, or approximately 400 million acres, of the total United States land area is used for the production of crops, includ- ing harvested and idle land, failure, and fallow. Table 4 shows the increase of cropland, exclud- ing idle land, from 337 million acres in 1910-14 to 381 million acres 20 years later, and the subsequent decline to 375 million acres after World War 11. The small increase over the entire period was accompanied by a much more rapid population increase, with a steady decline in per capita crop acreage. TABLE 4.-Total cropland in relation to population. 1910-50 Period Total cropland, including harvested land, failure and fallow Total population Cropland acreage per capita 1910-14 Million acres 337 Millions 95 Acres 3.55 1915-19 359 103 3.49 1920-24 1925-29- 365 374 110 119 3.32 3.14 1930-34 381 125 3.05 1935-39 373 129 2.89 1940-44 371 135 2.75 1945-49* 375 144 2.60 1 Preliminary. Source: Computed from census data and acreage figures in S. E. Johnson, Changes in Farming, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Misc. Pub. No. 707, December 1949. Pasture Land.-Nonforest pasture and range lands total 712 million acres, including about 50 million acres of cropland used as rotation pas- ture. In addition to nonforest pasture, around 350 million acres of woodland and forest are used for grazing for some part of the year. Thus, over a billion acres of land are used wholly or partially for pasture and range. At present, pas- 154 |