The Historical Context for the Alabama Soil and Water Conservation Committee/Alabama Agricultural and Conservation Development Commission/Soil and Water Conservation Districts has been posted from the Records Disposition Authority (RDA) approved by the State Records Commission on October 16, 2024. The RDA establishes disposition requirements by designating records as either temporary records which may be destroyed after a specified retention period, or permanent records, which must be preserved in perpetuity. The complete RDAs for close to 175 agencies can be found on the Alabama Department of Archives and History website.
Agriculture dominated Alabama’s economy and society from statehood in 1819 until well into the twentieth century. The suitability of the state’s Black Belt and Tennessee Valley regions to growing cotton spurred many planters and farmers from Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee, and Kentucky to migrate to this area. Plantation owners implemented a system of cotton monoculture that depended on Native American removal and slave labor. Ever-increasing demand—first international and later domestic—and the development of Alabama’s river-transportation infrastructure fueled production. As a result, Alabama produced more cotton than any other state by 1850.[1]
Cotton production continued apace after the Civil War, although the plant was mostly harvested by sharecroppers and tenant farmers. Yield per acre, however, decreased during the late nineteenth century, as planters and farmers drained the soil of nutrients by planting the same crop in the same fields year after year. As fields became less productive, farmers created new fields by clear-cutting old-growth forests.[2]
These decades of cotton monoculture and deforestation wreaked havoc on the natural environment. Nutrient-depleted soil, often left barren after harvests, was especially prone to erosion; deforestation exacerbated this issue by removing trees whose roots anchored soil in place against wind and rain. The arrival of the boll weevil in 1910 dealt a further blow to the state’s agriculture.[3] The 1934 Alabama Erosion Study, conducted by the Soil Conservation Service, revealed the bleak state of Alabama’s farmlands: soil erosion had damaged more than 82 percent of the state’s farmland, and gullies rendered 900,000 acres of once-productive farmland worthless.[4]
Soil erosion similarly affected the rest of the United States in the early twentieth century. By 1928, Hugh Hammond Bennett, a soil scientist with the USDA’s Bureau of Chemistry and Soils and later the first director of the Soil Conservation Service, had identified soil erosion as “the biggest problem confronting the farmers of the Nation over a tremendous part of its agricultural lands.”[5] The environmental and socioeconomic repercussions of loose soil and fallow fields reached a climax with the 1930s Dust Bowl, a series of dust storms that rendered agriculture extremely difficult, if not impossible, in much of the Great Plains. The economic throes of the Great Depression exacerbated the negative effects of the Dust Bowl, resulting in mass migration and widespread poverty among farmers.[6]
Amidst this economic, ecological, and demographic catastrophe, Bennett pressed the United States Congress to start taking soil conservation more seriously. In 1935, Congress created the Soil Conservation Service with Bennett at its head, but early leaders recognized that conservation projects would be more beneficial if implemented and administrated at the local level. In 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent draft legislation to governors encouraging the formation of soil conservation districts in all forty-eight states.[7]
The Alabama Legislature accordingly established the Alabama State Soil Conservation Committee, and its corresponding local conservation districts, in 1939 to work with private landowners to protect the state’s soil resources.[8]
Alabama landowners created districts via referendum that encompassed multiple counties.[9] For example, residents of eastern Alabama gathered to form the Piedmont Soil Conservation District in 1939, and Tuscaloosa and Pickens County landowners gathered in 1940 to add territory to their Tombigbee-Warrior Soil Conservation District.[10] Local conservation districts are now coterminous with each of Alabama’s counties, meaning each county has its own conservation district.[11]
The first iteration of the Alabama State Soil Conservation Committee consisted of three members: the director of the State Extension Service, the director of the State Agricultural Experiment Station, and the supervisor of Vocational Agricultural Education.[12] In 1949, the Committee expanded to include three farmers drawn from a list submitted by the state’s local conservation districts and selected by the governor. These farmers held office for three years.[13]
In the 1950s, as urbanization and higher standards of living strained the state’s water resources, the state began devoting more attention to water conservation. To help local communities take advantage of the Federal Watershed Protection and Flood Prevention Act, a 1957 legislative act allowed counties to create Watershed Conservancy Districts.[14] To reflect its newfound focus on water conservation, the Legislature changed the name of the Committee to the Alabama Soil and Water Conservation Committee (SWCC) in 1969.[15]
The Legislature again increased the size of the Committee in 1971 to reflect its broader scope. The governor appointed three additional farmers to the Committee, bringing the number of gubernatorial appointees to six and the total membership to nine.[16] With its expanded composition, the Committee and local conservation districts promoted soil and water conservation in myriad ways. Perhaps most notably, they offered financial incentives to private landowners who carried out certain conservation practices.[17] They also spread awareness of environmental issues caused by improper agricultural or water management practices and how proper conservation practices might solve, or at least mitigate, those issues, often by creating land use plans.[18] Some conservation practices the Committee and its districts sponsored include creating watershed structures, digging disposal lagoons, constructing ponds and stocking them with fish, creating meadows in fallow fields to prevent soil erosion, and providing urban and rural planners with soil interpretation information.[19]
The SWCC picked up additional responsibilities when, in 1981, Alabama’s Professional Soil Classifiers Registration Act tasked the Committee with acting as the State Board for Registration for Professional Soil Classifiers.[20] The five-member Board, appointed by Committee members, consists of four professional soil classifiers who have practiced for at least five years and an administrative officer of the SWCC who serves as the ex officio fifth member. The Board of Registration for Professional Soil Classifiers holds at least two regular meetings each year and elects a chairman and vice-chairman annually; the SWCC ex officio member always serves as the Board’s secretary-treasurer.[21]
The SWCC’s responsibilities expanded further when, in 1985, the Legislature created the Alabama Agricultural and Conservation Development Commission (AACDC) and authorized the SWCC to oversee the AACDC’s cost-share grant program. The AACDC allows Alabama landowners greater access to funding to implement conservation practices. Each local Soil and Water Conservation District receives an allotment from the AACDC depending on landowner needs in the county, so funding varies between districts. Through local districts, the AACDC reimburses landowners for the costs of installing and implementing certain preapproved conservation practices. All funds allotted by the AACDC to local districts must be spent on reimbursing landowners for “installing soil and water conservation practices,” while funds from a revolving fund may be used “to support the operations of the SWCC.”[22] Members of the AACDC include the governor—who chairs the commission, the state Commissioner of Agriculture, the President of the Alabama Farmers Federation, the President of the Alabama Cattlemen’s Association, the Chair of the SWCC, a member of the Alabama Forestry Commission, and the President of the Alabama Association of Conservation Districts.[23]
The cost-share grant program allowed the SWCC to finance more conservation programs around the state, but soil and water conservation remained a serious problem for Alabamians. In 1991, soil scientists determined that, of the 4.2 million acres of cropland in Alabama, 1.6 million were highly erodible. Fortunately, of these 1.6 million acres of highly erodible cropland, landowners had implemented conservation practices on 1.5 million of them.[24]
As of October 2024, the conservation programs promoted by the SWCC reflect the ecological issues of the early twenty-first century. In particular, the SWCC has devoted resources to managing invasive species, especially feral hogs, in recent years. These hogs, introduced to the Americas by Spanish explorers in the sixteenth century, are present in all 67 Alabama counties and cause billions of dollars of damage to crops each year. And because feral hogs often frighten whitetail deer and nesting birds, like turkey, away from their home forests and food sources, they reduce the economic impact of recreational hunting, which on average brings $1.8 billion to Alabama annually. They also damage the habitats of threatened and endangered species.[25] In response, the SWCC partners with local, state, and federal agencies to sponsor cost-share anti-hog conservation practices and teach private landowners the best ways to trap and eliminate feral swine.[26] Together, the SWCC, AACDC, and county SWCDs continue to advance locally led natural resource conservation and to promote soil and water stewardship.[27]
[1] Kenneth E. Phillips and Janet Roberts, “Cotton,” Encyclopedia of Alabama, May 10, 2023, accessed May 10, 2024, https://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/cotton/.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Charles Mitchell, “Agriculture in Alabama,” Encyclopedia of Alabama, May 17, 2023, accessed May 10, 2024, https://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/agriculture-in-alabama-2/.
[4] The Soil Conservation Service is the predecessor of the United States Department of Agriculture’s National Resources Conservation Service (NRCS); Mary Yahn, “Soil Erosion and Conservation in Alabama,” Encyclopedia of Alabama, April 24, 2023, accessed May 10, 2024, https://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/soil-erosion-and-conservation-in-alabama/.
[5] United States Department of Agriculture, Soil Erosion – A National Menace, by H.H. Bennett and W.R. Chapline, Circular No. 33, Washington, D.C: Government Printing Office, 1928, accessed August 13, 2023, https://naldc.nal.usda.gov/download/CAT87212611/PDF.
[6] Donald Worster, Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 3-8.
[7] “About Us,” Alabama Soil and Water Conservation Committee, accessed August 17, 2023, https://alabamasoilandwater.gov/about/.
[8] Alabama Act 1939-147.
[9] Alabama Act 1957-516.
[10] “Public Hearing on Soil Conservation District Announced, Alexander City Outlook, April 27, 1939, accessed September 21, 2023, via Newspapers.com; “Notice of Referendum on Inclusion of Additional Territory Within the Tombigbee-Warrior Soil Conservation District, Embracing Lands Lying in the Counties of Pickens and Tuscaloosa, in the State of Alabama,” Pickens County Herald and West Alabamian (Carrollton, AL), March 7, 1940, accessed September 21, 2023, via Newspapers.com.
[11] Alabama Act 1957-516.
[12] Alabama Act 1939-147.
[13] Alabama Act 1949-382.
[14] Alabama Act 1957-517; “State agricultural leaders guests of conservationists,” The Progressive Age (Scottsboro, AL), November 6, 1958, accessed September 21, 2023, via Newspapers.com.
[15] Alabama Act 1969-220.
[16] Alabama Act 1971-1932.
[17] Elliott Robbins, “With The Colored Farm Veterans,” Greenville Advocate, March 13, 1947, accessed September 22, 2023, via Newspapers.com.
[18] Douglas L. Hunt, “Saving Our Soil,” Birmingham News, July 16, 1946, accessed September 22, 2023, via Newspapers.com.
[19] “Public Service Memo: Calhoun County Soil Conservation District,” Anniston Star, July 21, 1972, accessed September 21, 2023, via Newspapers.com.
[20] Code of Alabama 1975 § 34-32-2 defines soil classification as “the soil science evaluation of the nature, physio-chemical properties, formation, taxonomic classification, and general land use suitability on the basis of these parameters within a soil management criteria; it shall specifically include the mapping and identification of surficial and subsurface soil particles, and the soil management interpretation of these data.”
[21] Code of Alabama 1975 § 34-32-7.
[22] Code of Alabama 1975 § 9-8A-4.1; Code of Alabama 1975 § 9-8A-4.1.
[23] Code of Alabama § 9-8A-3.
[24] Joe Gregg, “1990 farm bill: Conservation plan implementation, sodbuster and swampbuster,” Union Springs Herald, May 8, 1991, accessed September 21, 2023, via Newspapers.com.
[25] Marty Roney, “Feral hogs hard to contain or eradicate,” Montgomery Advertiser, March 17, 2018, accessed September 21, 2023, via Newspapers.com.
[26] Michelle Mann, “Learn about feral swine control at free ‘lunch, learn’ workshop,” Enterprise Ledger, February 19, 2023, accessed September 21, 2023, via Newspapers.com.
[27] “About Us,” Alabama Soil and Water Conservation Committee website, accessed September 25, 2023, https://alabamasoilandwater.gov/#my-id-about-us.
- Representatives of the Alabama Soil and Water Conservation Committee
- Representatives of the Alabama Agricultural and Conservation Development Commission
- Representatives of Alabama County Soil and Water Conservation Districts
- Alabama Acts 1939-147, 1949-382, 1957-516, 1957-517, 1969-220, and 1971-1932
- Code of Alabama 1975 § 9-8-1 through § 9-8-67, § 9-8A-1 through § 9-8A-16, § 9-9-1 through § 9-9-59, § 34-32-1 through § 34-32-19
- Alabama Soil and Water Conservation Committee website (https://alabamasoilandwater.gov/)
- Gregg, Joe. “1990 Farm Bill: Conservation Plan Implementation, Sodbuster and Swampbuster.” Union Springs Herald. May 8, 1991.
- Hunt, Douglas L. “With The Colored Farm Veterans.” Greenville Advocate. March 13, 1947.
- Mann, Michelle. “Learn about Feral Swine Control at Free ‘Lunch, Learn’ Workshop.” Enterprise Ledger. February 19, 2023.
- Mitchell, Charles. “Agriculture in Alabama.” Encyclopedia of Alabama. May 17, 2023. https://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/agriculture-in-alabama-2/.
- “Notice of Referendum on Inclusion of Additional Territory Within the Tombigbee-Warrior Soil Conservation District, Embracing Lands Lying in the Counties of Pickens and Tuscaloosa, in the State of Alabama.” Pickens County Herald and West Alabamian (Carrollton, AL). March 7, 1940.
- Phillips, Kenneth E. and Janet Roberts. “Cotton.” Encyclopedia of Alabama. May 10, 2023. https://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/cotton/.
- “Public Hearing on Soil Conservation District Announced.” Alexander City Outlook. April 27, 1939.
- “Public Service Memo: Calhoun County Soil Conservation District.” Anniston Star. July 21, 1972.
- Robbins, Elliott. “With The Colored Farm Veterans.” Greenville Advocate. March 13, 1947.
- Roney, Marty. “Feral Hogs Hard to Contain or Eradicate.” Montgomery Advertiser. March 17, 2018.
- “State Agricultural Leaders Guests of Conservationists.” The Progressive Age (Scottsboro, AL). November 6, 1958.
- United States Department of Agriculture. Soil Erosion – A National Menace. By H.H. Bennett and W.R. Chapline. Circular No. 33. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1928. https://naldc.nal.usda.gov/download/CAT87212611/PDF.
- Worster, Donald. Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979.
- Yahn, Mary. “Soil Erosion and Conservation in Alabama.” Encyclopedia of Alabama. April 24, 2023. https://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/soil-erosion-and-conservation-in-alabama/.
For the Record 