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Show BANANAS ON PIKE'S PEAK 215 The continuing campaigns against the Reclamation Bureau wastefulness and the crsp in particular were keeping proponents of more-and-bigger-reclamation- projects-at-any-cost awake nights. Rep. Engle, taking a shot at his fellow Californians, warned that reclamation in the West was in danger of being completely de- stroyed.258 That, thought Raymond Moley, would be a good thing unless the wild spending for unneeded and infeasible projects was halted. He published a book on the subject.259 Numerous authorities, federal departments, and gov- ernment commissions hammered on the theme that the nation needed no more new crop land, and if any were needed, reclamation projects in arid areas were the most costly way to get it. From Rep. Saylor came a thorough study demolish- ing the claim of the Reclamation Bureau that new projects were necessary to supply food and fiber for a burgeoning population.260 The ambitious Bureau had on its drawing boards at the time plans for more than 260 projects.261 There was general agreement among experts in 1955 that an agricultural production increase of forty per cent would be needed by the nation in the year 1975. The President's Materials Policy Commission re- ported: 262 "Most of the desired 40-per cent increase in agricul- tural production can come from wider application of technology to increase crop and livestock yields per acre. The rest of the gain in production can come from shifting the use of land already in farms so as further to increase the productivity of present agricultural acre- age. As an additional safety factor, there are well over |