Man Uses And Changes The Land (1967)

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] to live each of us needs food clothing and shelter we build our shelters  of many different materials wood metal brick and concrete just to name a few  clothing is also made from a number of materials since cloth can be woven from plant  fibers from animal fibers and also from various Plastics food too comes from a number of sources  beef from cattle and lamb and mutton from sheep plants provide us with many other Foods as lettuce  carrots and other vegetables wheat and other grains and apples and other fruits where do  all of the many things we need to live come from let's begin with food in one recent  year each American drank about 35 gallons of milk ate 170 lb of meat 99 lb of potatoes  and 120 lb of vegetables where do we get all this food it all comes from the land we  grow vegetables on land with good soil much of this land is located in intermediate  or warm climates and where there's plenty of water but not all of the land where  we grow food crops has always been so productive we have changed land  with poor soil by enriching it with fertilizer when this is done  properly we can grow fine vegetabl crops or fruit crops on land that  once supported very few cultivated plants dry land such as this creates a  different problem here the soil is rich in minerals but there's not enough  water for growing vegetables or fruits by building dams and reservoirs  to hold the Waters of far off Mountain rivers and streams we can Channel  water across cross long distances to fill irrigation ditches  which Farmers dig in the dry fields in this way we change the land  providing all the water needed to grow vegetables and fruit trees orange trees are grown  in southern lands where the winters are not too cold we find that other fruit trees as  these apple trees do better on land where the climate is much cooler sometimes we  grow our fruit trees on hilly land where it might be difficult to grow other crops  some hilly wet and cool land has thick Lush grass often we choose to use such land as  pasture for dairy cattle cows have little trouble moving over hilly land but  heavy Farm machines would have rough going the flat grasslands of the Western  Plains have a drier climate the kinds of crops which can be grown are limited mainly  to Grass crops wheat barley sorghum and so on these plants are related to the wild  grass plants that long ago grew on this land here large machines can be  used efficiently for harvesting grains land such as this can also  be used to produce food without planting any crops at all beef cattle feed  on the natural grasses which grow in these areas you can see that we have  considerable choice in how we use the land to produce different kinds of food we need we constantly need clothing too for example  in one recent year Americans used 540 million shirts and blouses 240 million trousers and skirts  two billion pairs of socks and 620 million pairs of shoes raw materials for such clothing also  come from the land we grow cotton as the raw material for some cloth cotton is a subtropical  plant that grows well on land with rich soil warm weather and plenty of moisture the same kind  of land on which we might plant vegetables but we choose to plant thousands of Acres of cotton  for clothing both on lands where there's plenty of natural moisture and on those lands which we  must irrigate often we must decide whether to use land to produce food or clothing sometimes we can  get both from the same land the cattle which grze on this land provide both meat and hides hides  are tanned for shoes and other items of clothing but with sheep some breeds are  better for wool which we weave into cloth while other breeds of sheep are  better for meat which kind do we wish to raise we are constantly making decisions about  how we're going to use the land for producing food and clothing now what about using the  land for things we need to build our shelters again in a recent year America built almost  $46 billion worth of new homes and apartment buildings more than5 billion worth of new  stores and Office Buildings and about $3.5 billion dollar worth of new factories and shops  much of this money goes for building materials all of which come from the land tall straight  trees grow in mountainous land with plenty of rainfall we cut down such trees for lumber  a building material another material used in construction is Clay mined from the land  in great quantities the clay is baked into bricks stone is another good  building material we Quarry tons of Stone from Land sometimes too  poor for either crops or animals this iron ore being taken out of the land is the raw material for one of our  strongest building materials steel we use steel to build  apartment houses Office Buildings and factories Iron and Steel are also used to  construct machines and Machine Products which provide us with many of the conveniences of life  beyond the essentials of food clothing and shelter many modern products are made of plastics and  other synthetic materials which are chemically processed from coal and other minerals as  petroleum and natural gas these substances also provide the fuels needed to run our machines  you can see that the land can sometimes be used for different purposes at the same time but  more often we must decide on one purpose or another to use it for raising beef or to use it  for petroleum to use it to grow cotton or to use it for growing [Music] wheat another choice  we have is to save to conserve some of our land much of it is beautiful and we do not  choose to use it for either factories or Farms so we've set aside some of our  land that we may enjoy its beauty and have an everlasting reminder of its  riches in this way too man uses the land we must choose among these uses for  recreation for farming for mining or for bu buing cities we have only so much  land and we must use it [Music] wisely