Precious Land Research Articles

Cowboy Culture: A Saga of Five Centuries by David Dary

Reviews 373 this “precious land, their Future, their shot at a Real Start, their commit­ ment to a Time, to a Place, and to a Way of Life.” However, with characteristic lack of scruple, foresight, or insight, Joe has chosen an immoral means to accomplish these moral ends. He expects to sell five pounds of uncut cocaine to make the $60,000 needed to buy the land. Yet, as the morality plays unfailingly point out, corrupt means not only produce destruction, but compound the evil. In a comic-ironic vein, most of the novel explores the ramifications of Joe’s corrupt decision, as he plunges ever more deeply into the degradations of sex and violence. Joe’s greed for ill-gotten gains hastens his metamorphosis from a cheer­ fully monogamous family man to an inept sexual stud. During the novel’s six-day span, he returns again and again to a parody of domestic sex with a monkey-w'orshipping divorcee, punctuated by two unsatisfactory interludes in a tent with a sexy classics scholar, and some kinky and brutal encounters with a visiting New York journalist. Every time Joe goes home to try to make amends, things get worse. Conversations, civilly begun, degenerate into strings of obscenities and often end in physical battles. The machinations of getting instant, illicit riches corrupt Joe’s human relationships absolutely, as he suspects his wife and partners of double-crossing him, and they engage in other forms of betrayal, including threats on his life. He in turn betrays them all. Yet this increasingly barren landscape is populated by a comical cast of candidates for Fellini’s Satyricon, including Nick Danger, a sinister shyster toting a secret suitcase of inflatable pornographic dolls; and Rimpoche, the omnipresent dog who collapses “in a sort of Uriah heap.” Nichols’s cautionary tale makes us yearn for heroes, saviors of the land, preservers of stability, natural beauty, integrity of human relationships. But only Eloy Irribarren responds, and his aged shoulders are too frail to bear this burden, as we head full-tilt toward the once golden land, now paved over and strewn with the “transient, unrealized tatters of our dreams.” LYNN Z. BLOOM Virginia Commonwealth University Cowboy Culture: A Saga of Five Centuries. By David Dary. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1981. 384 pages, $17.95.) Cowboy Culture has numerous virtues: broad scope, beginning in 1494 when Columbus landed the first horses and cattle in the Americas; steady dependence on primary sources, especially the heretofore underutilized news­ papers of 1850-1900; a ten-page “Bibliography for the General Reader,” with handy division into thirteen categories; extensive notes that supplement the bibliography as guides to further reading; a clear, uncluttered style; 374 Western American Literature nearly a hundred well-chosen, useful illustrations; lively illustrative anec­ dotes, often with the hide, hooves, and horns intact. Finally, Cowboy Cul­ ture is handsomely-designed, printed, and bound, as one always expects with books published by Knopf. Despite its many strengths, though, Cowboy Culture has several flaws worthy of comment. Although his book is notable for its basis on primary sources, Dary unaccountably ignores completely Joseph Nimmo’s Range and Cattle Traffic (1885), one of the so-called “Big Four” cattle industry classic sources (with McCoy, Cox, and Freeman). At the other extreme, he seems unaware of the work of three modern academic scholars, all relevant to his study: Sandra L. Myres’s on Hispanic influences on cattlehandling practices, Terry Jordan’s on the colonial Carolinas’ influence on Texas cattlehandling practices, and Don Walker’s on the factual flaws in such so-called “scrip­ tural” primary sources as Hunter’s The Trail Drivers of Texas (which Dary often cites). Readers of this journal will want to know that Dary pays scant atten­ tion to western literature other than to decry its contribution to false images of the cowboy. Further, he is inaccurate in asserting the full integration of cowboys into popular literature by the 1870s; here Daryl Jones’s The Dime Novel Western (1978) is an overlooked recent study. In fact, the fictional cowboy hero first appeared late in the decade, when Captain Dick led a cattle drive to Ellis, Kansas, in Thomas...

Means of Improving the Utilization of Land Resources

Our country has the largest land resources in the world: over 2.2 billion hectares, From the standpoint of satisfying the most important needs of society's members, the most precious land is farm land, which the USSR possesses in greater abundance than any other country in the world. As a result of the party's constructive agrarian policy, our country has scored successes that are unparalleled in land use practice in the world: since 1950 the most important component of farmland - cultivated land - increased by almost 50 million hectares.

A review and analysis of existing legal and policy issues related to land tenure and agriculture in Nepal

This review takes stock of current legislative provisions and policies pursued by the Government of Nepal with regard to agriculture and land tenure. Currently, land tenure issues are primarily governed under the legislations enacted by the Ministry of Land Reform and Management, while there are a number of policies formulated in order to facilitate agricultural production by the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, Ministry of Water Resources for irrigation regulation, Ministry of Forest and Soil Conservation through Leaseholds forestry programme.The Government of Nepal has already amended the Land Act, 2021 B.S. twice. Each amendment has targeted something other than ceilings. Amendments in regulation and devising other sectoral policies have not adequately discussed nor have encouraged sustainable land management. New and innovative policies are required to prevent degradation and achieve sustainable management of the precious land resource base of the country. DOI: 10.3126/kuset.v6i2.4022Kathmandu University Journal of Science, Engineering and Technology Vol.6. No II, November, 2010, pp.133-141

Land Use Changing Pattern And Challenges For Agricultural Land: A Study On Rajshahi District

Due to alterations in physiographic and social-economic conditions, climatic changes, adaptation and population growth, the land use pattern of Bangladesh is changing very rapidly. Bangladesh is a small country but it bears a huge population, resulting in a very high density of population and very high intensity of land and resource use. Per capita land is estimated to be only about 0.0526 ha. Two significantly prominent phenomena driving country’s overall scenario of economic development and environment imbalance include: (a) the high growth rate of population engulfing precious land for settlement and (b) scarcity of land for ever increasing demand of food. As a result, the land use pattern of the country is changing at a great momentum. Every year the country is losing 1% arable land due to the population growth and its infrastructure development. This study was conducted on Rajshahi District where the major focus was to see the land use pattern of the area, trend in the change of land uses, and in particular, challenges for the agricultural land. For analyses remotely sensed data (Landsat MSS-1977, TM-1990 and TM- 2010) and GIS techniques were used and secondary data were collected from SPARRSO, published and unpublished data regarding crop, population and other ambient information from mostly government sources. Results show that the land use pattern of Rajshahi District is changing, especially the agricultural land is decreasing in an alarming rate and now it is become more and more vulnerable. The agricultural land of the study area is losing 0.46% per year and the area under infrastructure use is increasing 5.86% per year. If this rate continues, the agricultural land will be totally eliminated within the next 217 years. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/jles.v6i0.9724 JLES 2011 6: 69-74

Complex Utilization and Protection of Water Resources

AbstractIn addition to large engineering projects, future water-resource planning should make greater use of man-induced changes in the interrelationships between water, soil cover and vegetation. Large reservoirs are considered a waste of precious land resources. Water spent in producing plant matter is regarded as the highest form of water utilization. Utilization of water for agricultural purposes should be given priority over power generation and navigation.