ABSTRACT
The United States (US) Forest Service, with an annual budget of around $2 billion and roughly 39,000 full-time employees, is the largest natural resource agency in the federal government. The forests are valued for their recreational opportunities and their commodity production, including timber, but environmentalists insists that the Forest Service’s timber program is highly destructive. In the case of the Forest Service, timber revenues are generated when trees are harvested with a percentage of the receipts retained by the bureaucracy. In addition, timber harvests mean larger road building staffs and more budget for timber management. The federal farm policy has set the tone for land management on a major portion of the 300 to 340 million acres of private farmland in the US To reduce the surpluses, federal programs require farmers to cut back on the acreage planted, but farmers attempt to circumvent efforts by using more pesticides and fertilizers to increase output per acre.
