The agriculture secretary equated postwar suburban land exploitation with the Dust Bowl

Evidence

Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman succinctly explained the mission in the opening session. In the 1930s, after generations of reckless pillaging of the land, the nation’s farmers faced disastrous dust storms and floods, and the federal government responded by establishing the Soil Conservation Service. “The urban and suburban exploitation of land in the past two decades has been equally devastating,” the secretary argued. “Damage is occurring at blinding speed.” Accordingly, the two departments had to act with “crusading spirit and drive” to encourage conservation in metropolitan areas. “The new conservation must have a town-and-country look.” — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 792

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s polyad thread on environmental justice and the political origins of environmental regulation — sprawl officially equated with Dust Bowl devastation. — connects to: Early claims that suburbs worsened floods were plausible but scientifically untested — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 798
• ADDENDUM: Supports the ‘political origins of environmental regulation’ through land-use history traced in the reader’s stated purpose, though none of the three exact articles.