WINDBREAKS AND SHELTERBELTS

JOSEPH H. STOECKELER, ROSS A. WILLIAMS.

In an effort to determine the value of adequate windbreaks on American farms, 508 farmers in South Dakota and Nebraska were asked for their opinions. They placed the annual savings in their fuel bill alone at $15.85.

In another measure of the value, the Lake States Forest Experiment Station conducted an experiment at Holdrege, Nebr. Exact fuel requirements were recorded in identical test houses. One was protected from winds; the other was exposed to the full sweep of the wind. From the experimental data it was possible to calculate the savings to be expected under various prevailing conditions, if a constant house temperature of 70 F. were maintained. The amount of fuel used was reduced by 22.9 percent.

Also the average of the savings for houses protected on the north in Holdrege and three other localities in the Great Plains--Huron, S. Dak., Dodge City, Kans., and Fargo, N. Dak. was 20.2 percent. Assuming a 10-ton annual consumption of coal, this represents a saving of 2 tons of coal a year. Under good protection, on three sides of a house, the fuel saving may run as high as 30 percent.

Dairymen, livestock feeders, and breeders have rather positive ideas of how the protection afforded by trees reduces their feed bills and increases their calf crops. Eighty-six livestock feeders in Nebraska and South Dakota placed this average annual saving at more than $800; 62 livestock breeders reported that their savings amounted to more than $500 annually; 53 dairymen placed their savings at $600.

Further study of the subject was made at the Montana Agricultural Experiment Station at Havre. Two herds of cattle were wintered on the same rations one in the protection of trees and shrubs, the other in an open lot with some protection from a shed.

The tree-protected animals gained 34.9 more pounds each during a mild winter, and lost 10.6 pounds less during a severe winter, than the unprotected herd.

Another experiment conducted by V. I. Clark, superintendent of the experiment station at Ardmore, S. Dak., involved the weighing of two herds of cattle in different pastures one protected by the natural tree and shrub growth along a stream, the other without protection. They were reweighed after a 3-day blizzard. The animals that had some protection each lost an average of 30 pounds less than those in the exposed pasture.

Farm families depend upon gardens for much of their subsistence, and most of them are aware of the influence of a windbreak in increasing the quality and quantity of vegetables and fruit from gardens and orchards. In the opinions of farmers interviewed, the increase was $67.15 on 323 farms in Nebraska and $84.43 on 260 farms in South Dakota. A few farmers believed the windbreaks did not increase the production of their gardens.

W. P. Baird, horticulturist in charge of fruit and vegetable investigations at the Northern Great Plains Field Station at Mandan, N. Dak., says that "a windbreak is on duty protecting the fruit gardens at all seasons of the year, and it is almost useless to consider growing fruit on the Plains without such protection."

So far we have discussed windbreaks, which are the shorter and more blocky plantings about farmsteads. Much like them, but more extensive, are the shelterbelts, a term used to denote comparatively narrow strip plantings sometimes single rows of trees that are designed to protect fields.

EXPERIENCE with systematic plantings of shelterbelts to protect fields goes back to 1789, when a group of German Mennonites, who emigrated to the Russian Steppes, began the shelterbelts that since have been extended to thousands of miles. The term "shelterbelt" was used as early as 1833, so it is apparent that some thought for controlling wind erosion by use of trees was in existence over a century ago. Since the days of the shelterbelt project, initiated in the Great Plains some 14 years ago, the term has become part of the everyday language of farmers on the Plains.

Few tree planters were among the earliest settlers of the United States. They came when the westward migration started to the prairies of Illinois and the Great Plains; those pioneers realized that it was going to take more than a sod house to give them the protection to which they had been accustomed in the wooded East. It was not surprising, therefore, that a plantation of trees often shared with the garden the first patch of sod that was broken. Wildings collected along nearby streams comprised their planting stock. We have records of some of these plantings in Nebraska Territory as early as 1854; many are still alive, monuments to the courage of the pioneers and evidence of the desirability of using hardy, native planting stock. Later immigrants from Europe often brought tree seeds with them from their old homes.

The passage of the Homestead Law in 1862 brought more settlers to the Great Plains and the need for more tree planting. Kansas was the first, in 1865, to provide a tree-bounty law in efforts to encourage more planting. This was followed in 1869 by Nebraska and the Dakota Territory which passed tax-exemption laws that favored tree planting. J. Sterling Morton, third Secretary of Agriculture, founded Arbor Day and saw its first official celebration in his home State of Nebraska in 1872. It was primarily through his encouragement that the Timber Culture Act was passed by Congress in 1873. Although it helped to stimulate tree planting, probably fewer than one-third of the trees established during the time the act was in force can be attributed directly to it.

It has been the history of tree planting throughout the world that the establishment of windbreaks and shelterbelts has not progressed fast enough to keep pace with the needs without some assistance by the Government. The thousands of miles of shelterbelts that now protect millions of acres of farm lands in Russia; the mile after mile of tree strips in Jutland, without which farming would be impossible; similar planting in Hungary; the 18,510 miles of tree belts planted in the Great Plains shelterbelt from North Dakota to Texas; and the 211 million trees planted to shelterbelts and windbreaks in the Prairie Provinces of Canada all owe their success to sound Government policies put into effect through well-administered and Government-assisted projects.

There was a period in the United States after the repeal of the Timber Culture Act in 1891 when little public encouragement was given to tree planters. A renewal of interest was shown in 1904 with the passage of the Kincaid Act and later, in 1916, by the inclusion of the demonstrational tree planting in the program of the Northern Great Plains Field Station near Mandan, N. Dak.

The available records through January 1, 1948, indicate that some 123,191 miles of windbreaks and shelterbelts have been planted since the middle of the past century. Of 96,596 miles planted through private initiative, 39,400 are accounted for by single row Osage-orange hedges planted between 1865 and 1939 by farmers of Kansas, encouraged by a State bounty.

The shelterbelt project, sometimes referred to as the Prairie States Forestry Project, was established in 1934, a time of serious drought, dust storms, and depression. Its purpose was to plant badly needed shelterbelts and at the same time provide work for people in the drought-stricken Great Plains.

In the Great Plains between 1935 and 1942, 18,510 miles of field shelter-belts, not counting those on farmsteads, were planted by the Forest Service. The Soil Conservation Service of the Department of Agriculture (to which the work was transferred in 1942) planted 8,363 miles between 1934 and 1949 in its program on soil conservation districts. The Wisconsin State Conservation Department furnished stock and, with the Extension Service, was responsible for establishing 5,942 miles of shelterbelts. In California, the fruit-tree growers planted 2,000 miles of belts to protect citrus orchards and vineyards. In Indiana, truck gardeners have planted 100 miles on muck land. Many more miles of shelterbelts for which no published records are available probably have been planted in other States.

THE FARM PLANTINGS before 1935 did not include the large numbers that could also be classified as shelterbelts, but landowners who were fortunate enough to have them in the droughty 1930's had proof of their benefits. Pioneer planters of shelterbelts and windbreaks in the Great Plains had little knowledge of how to make trees live and only a meager knowledge of the growth habits of the trees they had to use. It is surprising, in view of those handicaps, that even moderate success was attained.