The erosion crisis migrated from farmland to suburban construction by 1965

Evidence

Belatedly, the Soil Conservation Service also began to sound alarms. “The erosion crisis, which in the 1930s spurred a vigorous soil conservation effort, today is moving from the Nation’s farmlands to its rapidly growing urban and suburban areas,” an SCS official warned in 1965. “The builder’s bulldozer bids fair to become the modern successor to the farmer’s plow as the instrument of soil destruction.” — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 825

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels ch61’s claim that the agriculture secretary equated suburban land exploitation with the Dust Bowl—agency reframing of its own mission. — connects to: Housing construction sites erode at hundreds of times farmland rates — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 820; Apparent farm solvency conceals ongoing topsoil loss to erosion — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other…, 425; Postwar open-space loss converted conservation into a suburban problem and generated new causes — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 546 (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• Piecemeal fixes for sprawl converged into a single land-use mega problem by 1970 #expands (0.85) — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 919
• Scalped suburban watersheds erode at roughly fifty times undisturbed rates #expands (0.82) — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 898
• Land-use legislation hearings centered on suburban homebuilding’s environmental damage #corroborates (0.82) — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 957
• Suburban development relocated environmental threats from distant wilderness to the suburban home itself #corroborates (0.80) — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 570
• Postwar suburban sprawl provoked organized protest against its environmental costs #expands (0.78) — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 0
• Suburban sprawl pulled established conservation groups toward urban environmental concerns #corroborates (0.75) — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 553
• Wildlife management ignored suburban habitat until the late 1960s #corroborates (0.75) — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 838
• The 1970s economic crisis fundamentally changed urban development patterns #qualifies (0.72) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 579