Walter C. Lowdermilk

Walter Clay Lowdermilk (July 1, 1888 – May 6, 1974) was an American soil conservationist who worked in countries throughout the world to help protect and reclaim lands in order to better feed their population.

Lowdermilk worked with the Belgian Relief Effort (B.R.E., active 1914–1916 in Belgium and France) after World War I,[1][dubious – discuss] in China in the 1920s to help avert famine, with the Soil Conservation Service, in fascist Italy in the 1930s, in the United States, and in Mandatory Palestine planning land and water use.

In the latter he was impressed by the advanced techniques that the Zionist settlers, and later the State of Israel, took to develop water efficient agriculture and land use.

The Eleventh Commandment written and broadcast over the radio by Dr. Lowdermilk in Jerusalem during June 1939 was dedicated to the Palestinian Jewish villages whose good stewardship of the earth inspired this idea.

[5] He was quite positive about the Italian (fascist) land reclamation projects in the Pontine Marshes in Italy, which was, in the early stages of the New Deal and before Italy–United States relations degraded, rather common for especially democratic leaning Americans.

As early as 1946 the Church of Scotland presbytery in Jerusalem submitted a memorandum against the plan, as they feared it would spoil the sanctity of the Sea of Galilee.