have been replanted. The State-produced seedlings available in 1948 were sufficient to plant only about 160,000 acres.

The objective of section 2 of the bill is to make available to farmers and forest owners sufficient seedlings to make possible the planting of about 1,000,000 acres a year. This will require approximately 1,000,000,000 seedling trees each year. The present cost of producing seedlings is about $38 per thousand. Forest Service officials estimate that if production is undertaken at the rate proposed, the increased volume of production will make possible a reduction in the cost to about $10 per thousand.

In order to encourage the planting of trees in eroded and denuded areas, seedlings are sold to farmers at about $5 per thousand. This entails a loss of about $5 per thousand trees. If this is shared equally by the States and the Federal Government at the proposed production rate of a billion trees a year, it means a cost to each of about $2.50 per thousand trees, or $2,500,000 a year, the amount authorized in section 2.

Sections 3 and 4

Sections 3 and 4 of the bill are two related but distinct steps toward the solution of the basic problem of future timber supplies in the United States-that of securing adequate timber growth on small, privately owned tracts of forest.

In the early days of this country our lumber and other timber products came exclusively from the huge tracts of virgin timber which were found throughout the United States. Gradually, through the years, that virgin timber has disappeared and our timber supplies have had to come, to a larger and larger extent, from second-growth forest. We have now reached the point where there are only about 44,618,000 acres of virgin timber left in the United States out of a total commercial timber area of 461,000,000 acres.

It is obvious that in the not-too-distant future the United States must depend for its timber supplies entirely upon second-growthforest areas.

Analysis of the commercial timber area of the United States, as set out in table II, demonstrates clearly the problem with which the country is faced in bringing small forest ownerships into effective. production so as to assure ourselves adequate supplies of timber and other forest products in the future.

Out of the 461,000,000 acres of commercial forest area in the United States, 344,973,000 acres are under private ownership. As shown in table II, only 50,672,000 acres of this privately owned land are in large forest tracts. Medium-sized tracts (5,000 to 50,000 acres) comprise an additional 32,916,000 acres, while 261,385,000 acres are in small tracts of less than 5,000 acres each. These small tracts of forest land are owned by 4,225,000 different private owners, and the average size of the individual holding is only 62 acres. The Forest Service estimates that approximately 85 percent of the privately owned forest land in the United States is in tracts of less than 100 acres each. Part of these tracts are in contiguous forest areas, but many others are in farm wood lots and small forest areas scattered throughout the farming regions of the United States.

As long as virgin timber was available in sufficient quantities to meet our needs, cutting practices and the pattern of timber utilization made these small tracts relatively unimportant to the Nation and relatively unprofitable to the owner. The time has come, however, when we must depend for much of our future timber supplies on these small forests and woodlands where trees are planted and harvested just as any other crop. To assure ourselves an adequate supply of timber products, the farmers who own these small areas of woodland must be convinced that trees can be produced as a profitable crop to them, and assist in establishing this type of forest.

Properly managed small woodlands can be a source of constant profit to their owners, and yet the majority of small forest owners do not understand the value of their timber crop nor how to manage it so as to realize the greatest return from it. The management of these small holdings, which comprise such a substantial part of our timber resources, must be tremendously improved. The surest way to bring this about is to show the small owner that proper management of his woodland can be worth money to him. This is the objective of sections 3 and 4 of the bill.

Section 3: As amended by the committee, section 3 substantially restates the provisions of section 5 of the Clarke-McNary Act (16 U. S. C. 568). The program authorized by this section is an educational program to be carried out in cooperation with the land-grant colleges and the extension services of the various States. As in the case of the other programs authorized by this bill, Federal expenditures under this section cannot exceed State expenditures for the same purpose.

The general lack of productive management of small forest properties is the core of this Nation's forest problem. Three-fourths of our commercial forest land is privately owned; 76 percent of this is in more than 4,000,000 small properties averaging only 62 acres each; about one-half of these small-area forest lands are on farms; and only an estimated 4 percent of this forest land in small holdings is now under good management. On an estimated 71 percent, the management is classified as poor or destructive.

The large number of small forest owners, their widely scattered location, the present deteriorated condition of many of these forest properties, and the fact that few of these small owners know much about forest management make the problem of bringing this large portion of our commercial forest area into effective production a most difficult

one.

To solve this problem requires two closely related but distinct programs. One is educational, designed to build up interest and stimulate action in forest management primarily through group instruction and demonstration. The other is primarily an action or service program to provide on-the-ground technical assistance to individual landowners. Section 3 will materially facilitate the educational program. Under the authority of this section, extension foresters working through the State agricultural colleges and in cooperation with the county agents, will carry on a forestry educational program. Working with farmers and farm groups, they will perform the important function of interesting farmers in forestry and sound forest management, showing them how timber can be a profitable crop for them and how it fits into their soil conservation and general farm program, and persuading farmers to handle their timber crop with the same businesslike methods they apply to other crops.

This type of educational program has been in effect under the combined authority of section 5 of the Clarke-McNary Act and the NorrisDoxey Act, but has not been as effective as it might have been because of this divided authority and the relatively meager appropriations which have been available for the work. Section 3 of the bill clarifies and consolidates the authority for this educational program and increases, from $100,000 to $500,000 annually, the authorization for Federal appropriations for the program.

Section 4: Section 4 of the bill will add a new section (sec. 10) to the Clarke-McNary Act. The program authorized by this section is that of direct, technical assistance to farmers and forest owners in the planting, management, and harvesting of timber crops. This program will be carried out through the State foresters of the various States, and the Federal expenditure in any State is limited to an amount not exceeding that of the State.

No single program is more important to the future timber supplies of this country than the technical assistance to the 4,220,000 small forest owners of the Nation which will be provided under the authority of this section. The educational program authorized in section 3 is merely the first step in attaining proper small-forest management. The second and vitally important step is to provide the expert technical assistance of trained foresters to guide the farmer in planting, managing, and harvesting his timber crop.

Section 4 clarifies and brings together the present scattered authority for technical assistance and service to individual forest owners and processors.

The value of this on-the-ground technical service to individual owners of small forest properties has been impressively demonstrated by the present small program in cooperation with State forestry agencies under the Norris-Doxey Act. Embracing some 750 counties in 39 States in the fiscal year 1949, 170 farm woodland management projects, each with a resident forester, were reaching only a small part of the farm-forest owners who desire such aid, even within the counties served. The Federal contribution to these projects was $439,341 and the States spent about $1,000,000 on this type of work. The Norris-Doxey Act, authorizing aid in growing, harvesting, and marketing of forest products, is restricted to farms. The million small nonfarm owners, who own almost as much forest land as farmers, are in equal need of such technical aid but are reached only in small measure under general authorization; and corresponding service is