Comments by Dr. Dwayne Buxton

Deputy Administrator, Agricultural Research Service

As Vince said, my name is Dwayne Buxton, and I am the Deputy Administrator with responsibility for the National Program Staff at ARS. It is a real pleasure to be here. My background is more in the plant science area, in particular, I’ve worked with a number of crops. But I have had a little experience with the Universal Soil Loss Equation, I have actually used it, the application, with some of the work that we were doing and found it to be a very valuable and worthwhile tool, a vehicle to understand some of the best management practices that you might want to implement, and what the potential effect might be on soil loss and erosion.

I appreciate this ceremony being arranged for (the USLE), I think this is so worthwhile. As Dean Lechtenberg indicated, the relationship between ARS and Purdue University and other universities, as well as other agencies in USDA, particularly NRCS has been outstanding, I think, that in building this particular equation and seeing that it is utilized as it has. It is kind of amazing to me that something as simple as you look at the Universal Soil Loss Equation, its 6 factors and parameters and yet can account for much of the factors that can cause soil erosion under rainfed conditions. And recognizing that this is a procedure that has been adapted throughout the United States, in fact, much of the world. It’s caught on now with the RUSLE, Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation, which is computer driven but still seems to be the standard by which people make these type of management decisions. So, it is hard to imagine many other things that have had the impact in agriculture as the USLE and its development throughout the community relevant to soil erosion and conservation.

We need to congratulate those who had a part in it. I wanted to go over a little bit of the history of how this came to be developed and I readily acknowledge to you that I was not a part of that and so I’ve had to rely on others to help me prepare that, so I hope they have done it accurately, if not, I apologize to you in advance. As I said, it is a basic theme that this early concept has had such impact as is has. It’s truly people that started to work with it and saw where it was headed. Having been involved in the last few years with agricultural administration, one of the difficulties is to stay on target. I really tip my hat off to people who can stay focused. Some of the historical highlights that have been pointed out to me – in 1929, the first investigated effort was established at 10 research stations which were funded for, in total, $160,000, where the total figure today would be about $1.6 million dollars for a head station that does very little investigation, but just to make it start.

Two of the key scientists, as you are aware of, were Dwight D. Smith, an Agricultural Engineer by training and Walter Wischmeier, whose family is here (today) - we really appreciate your being here and being able to see the great things your father and grandfather accomplished. Dwight Smith and Walt Wischmeier started with the research branch of the Soil Conservation Service and then transferred to ARS in 1953 when ARS was created. Dwight Smith was actually located not with Wischmeier, but actually at the Headquarters offices so he was sort of the champion and kept things going.

In 1954 the ARS established the National Runoff and Soil Loss Data Center here at Purdue University and Walt Wischmeier was transferred from Columbia, MO to West Lafayette to head up that center and to analyze soil erosion data that was acquired over some 10,000 plot years, pieces of data had been collected, and we needed someone to come in and make sense of all of it. This data represents some 47 research stations, from 24 of the 37 states east of the Rocky Mountains plus Pullman, Washington and Mayaguez, Puerto Rico – and this is the data set that was used at the start of this work to develop the concept of the Universal Soil Loss Equation. Between the mid-1950’s until the mid-1960’s Wischmeier published numerous articles on the Universal Soil Loss Equation and in 1965 the Universal Soil Loss Equation was first published in Agriculture Handbook 282. This indicated that this was truly a team effort with other universities, Purdue University, pretty prominent, I guess, and also a partnership with USDA and all the agencies within USDA were involved in this, to be able to pull this together and to begin to smooth things out so that a very simple concept would emerge.

Currently, ARS spends about $10 million dollars on soil erosion (research) that supports about 29 scientists that continue to work on this so we continue to view this as an important area. There are new things that need to be conquered even though soil erosion now has had many practices on how to use (control) it, it continues to be a very important problem as we were pointing out earlier in the day. It is probably one of the most impressive problems around the world we are faced with as agricultural land is created. And we need to understand in our professions to restrict that erosion that occurs – those things that we have responsibility for managing. I would just say that to sort of summarize that without the implementation of the soil control package and conservation tillage, the use of farmlands that are no longer erodible since the early 1900’s (soil erosion would be a much more serious problem). Still - if you are on the Mississippi River, Missouri or Ohio River, you are well aware that soil erosion is still a major problem.

We are very, very proud of the efforts that have gone into developing the Universal Soil Loss Equation. We are very proud of our ARS scientists located here in the Soil Erosion Laboratory and the work they are doing in cooperation with Purdue University and other scientists around. We are also very pleased with the relationship, the working relationship we have with the Natural Resources Conservation Service. They have been an integral part of taking this technology and seeing that it is applied as it should. So let me summarize by saying this - it is a great pleasure to be here on this day of tribute to just reflect for a minute the impact that this has had and give a tribute to those early pioneers that had the focus, had an idea, on how we might go about solving this immense problem before us. The impact it has now had as we look back to see what is happening today, the lesson that we learned and many things that we might do to model in the future looking back at the past.

Thank you very much.