HISTORY LESSONS
            Entering a new year usually means pausing to reflect on the previous year and how we might make next year a better one. If you were with family over the holidays, no doubt you learned a little about history from one or two past generations. Most of human action has traceable roots in history going back thousands of years.
            Agriculture and environment have a history also. Shortly after the United States created the Soil Conservation Service (now Natural Resources Conservation Service) in 1935, a Dr. Lowdermilk studied the record of agriculture in countries where the land had been under cultivation for hundreds, even thousands, of years. With on the ground visits and observations in 1938-1939, his immediate mission was to find out if the experience of these older civilizations could help in solving the serious soil erosion and land use problems in the United States.
            “Dr. Lowdermilk discovered that soil erosion, deforestation, overgrazing, neglect, and conflicts between cultivators and herdsman have helped topple empires and wipe out entire civilizations. At the same time, he learned that careful stewardship of the earth's resources, through terracing, crop rotation, and other soil conservation measures, has enabled other societies to flourish for centuries.” www.nrcs.usda.gov.
            Dr. Lowdermilk reported on the ancient lands of the Middle East and the coastal lands of the Mediterranean Sea, their history, and the condition of the land in the 1930s. What follows is an interesting excerpt from the report that he titles ‘Forests of Lebanon’.
            About 4,500 years ago, Phoenicians occupied the eastern shore of the Mediterranean. “Here was a land covered with forests and watered by the rains of heaven, a land that held entirely new problems for tillers of soil … As forests were cleared either for domestic use or for commerce, slopes were cultivated … Soils of the slopes eroded under heavy winter rains …  They encountered severe soil erosion and the problem of establishing a permanent agriculture on sloping lands.”
            “The mountains of ancient Phoenicia were once covered by the famous forests, the cedars of Lebanon … Today, only 4 small groves of this famous Lebanon cedar forest are left … under the present climate it would extend itself if it were safeguarded against the rapacious goats that graze down every accessible living thing on these mountains.”
Commerce, industry, development, and agriculture have not always been kind to our land. We have been neglectful of our environment. Since the 1930s, we have made remarkable changes in agriculture seeking to preserve our soil and water. Hopefully we will continue to be mindful of the lessons of history.
The Natural Resources Conservation Service reprinted Dr. Lowdermilk’s bulletin without change at www.nrcs.usda.gov. Click on ‘about us’; then on ‘NRCS History’; then on ‘publications and writings’; then ‘Conquest of the Land Through 7,000 Years’.

Della Moen, Earth Team Volunteer, NRCS/Stephenson Soil and Water Conservation District, an equal opportunity provider and employer, 12/30/09 for publication on 01/02/09 in the Journal Standard, Freeport, Illinois) Della can be reached at info@stephensonswcd.org