|
Contact Information
Telephone
(845) 677-8011 ext 3
Fax
(845) 677-8354
Address
2715 Rt 44, Suite 3
Millbrook, NY 12545
E-mail
Info
| | The
Dutchess District ~ The Beginnings
The
proposal to establish a Soil Conservation District in Dutchess County was
initiated in 1944 by: state Senator Frederick H. Bontecou; Owen Boyd, Manager of
Wethersfield; Mrs. John W. Donaldson, Millbrook; Oakleigh Jauncey, Manager of
the Hedge; Kent Leavitt, Millbrook; and Mrs. Huntington McLane.
 After
a vigorous program of meetings and press releases the group established that
participation by farmers would be strictly on a voluntary basis, and that county
tax monies expended on the program would provide benefits for the county as a
whole. On November 4, 1944, the Pomona Grange Tax Committee presented a
resolution to establish a Soil and Water Conservation District in Dutchess
County. On December 9, the Pomona Grange approved the resolution by a vote of 53
to 10, and the County Board of Supervisors voted on January 3, 1945 to establish
the District.
An Historical Note About Soil
Conservation Districts
In 1928
the Department of Agriculture published a bulletin, “Soil Erosion - a National
Menace,” by Hugh H. Bennett and W.R. Chapline, alerting the nation to the
appalling losses of soil on the nation’s farmland. As a result, in December of
that year, Congress provided Federal funds to set up ten regional experiment
stations to measure the rare soil. Two hundred thousand quantitative
measurements were made, establishing “that every year enough soil is being
washed off our fields and pastures to load a train of freight cars that would
encircle the earth 18 times at the equator.”
Thus, our national soil
conservation program was launched. The Soil Erosion Service was set up on a
temporary basis in the Department of the Interior to allow work to start while
more permanent plans were made.
Then Congress passed the Soil
Conservation Act, without a dissenting vote, establishing the Soil Conservation
Service as a permanent agency of the Department of Agriculture. President
Franklin D. Roosevelt approved it in April 1935, a little less than a year after
the worst dust storm in history relocated millions of tons of rich soil from the
denuded lands of the Great Plains and carried it two-thirds of the way across
the continent to eastern cities and out over the Atlantic Ocean. Hugh H. Bennett
was appointed the first Chief of the Soil Conservation Service.
It was
soon determined that in as much as farmers own and control the land and,
therefore, have the final decision on any work carried out on their land, they
should direct the program to control the problem. The answer was Soil
Conservation Districts, local organizations managed by local people and assisted
by technicians assigned to the Districts by the Soil Conservation Service.
The first District was Brown Creek District, Anson County, North Carolina,
established August 4, 1937. Today there are 3,000 Districts covering 1.7 billion
acres of land and 98 percent of all farm land.
The District movement is
no longer confined to farmers. Today the District serves all landowners, rural
and urban.
[ Home ] [ Up ]
|
