TVA Helps Heal Farms and Forests
POPE, JAMES P.
TVA Helps Heal Farms and Forests by JAMES P. POPE When Senator Ellison D. ("Cotton Ed") Smith of South Carolina introduced a bill during World War I providing for government ownership and...
...River freight amounted to only 33 million ton-miles in 1933...
...In the 25 years since 1933, the fertilizer research and demonstration activities centered at Muscle Shoals have extended their benefits to three-quarters of the states of the nation...
...Rather, the two aspects of use of the facilities are complementary...
...Administered by the state extension services and aided by county organizations of farmers, the program brought the facts of fertilizer use to farmers through actual use of TVA fertilizers by individual test-demonstration farmers...
...TVA Helps Heal Farms and Forests by JAMES P. POPE When Senator Ellison D. ("Cotton Ed") Smith of South Carolina introduced a bill during World War I providing for government ownership and operation of nitrate munitions plants, he almost certainly had no notion of the eventual impact his proposals would have on the nation's agriculture...
...Some 71,000 farms in 38 states, covering more than 10 million acres, have participated...
...It was in accordance with this knowledge that TVA undertook first to work on phosphate fertilizers and to develop the techniques of electric furnace processing of phosphate ores to produce higher concentrations of plant nutrient...
...Norris not only objected to disposing of the properties for a fraction of their cost—one proposal he described as "the greatest gift to mortal man since salvation was made free to the human race"—but he saw them as a great public asset, the start of a vast program to develop the water and land resources of an entire river Valley...
...Private distributors make some of it by mixing ordinary fertilizer with a new TVA research product, diamonium phosphate, which contains 74 per cent plant nutrient...
...In the Tennessee Valley, only about half the land problem, geographically at least, is accounted for by agriculture...
...Some 70 wholesale distributors—53 cooperatives and 18 industrial firms-are taking part in the program under contracts providing for major educational activities, in introducing new fertilizers and improving their use...
...As Chairman of a Joint Congressional Committee on phosphate resources and use in the United States in 1938, I heard soils scientists testify that four-fifths of the soils of America were deficient in phosphorus...
...T© bridge the gap between fertilizer technology and the farmer on the land, TVA has carried on two widespread educational programs which are guided by the agricultural colleges in the various states...
...The state forestry budgets were low and the seven states together employed only 36 foresters...
...After TVA-Enough All the Year TVA dams have opened a deep water channel throughout the 650-mile length of the Tennessee River, providing dependable, year-round navigation up river to Knoxville, and down stream, through the Ohio: and -Mississippi, to New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico...
...Only a few private landowners were practicing systematic timber management...
...But they are used in ways which stimulate the interest of farmers and fertilizer manufacturers and dealers to make and use fertilizer in new ways and with greater efficiency...
...Forest Service, the Soil Conservation Service, the forest products industries, and many other regional, state, and local groups...
...The plant is planned to produce calcium meta-phosphate, developed by the TVA, containing an unusually high proportion of phosphate plant food...
...One of TVA's first contributions to forest improvement was an extensive fire prevention campaign which would build up public awareness of fire damage and bring more forests under protection...
...Of the total seedlings, TVA nurseries supplied 314 million...
...College experiment stations had shown that phosphate and lime would make clover, alfalfa, and grasses grow on hillsides, making livestock farming and better balanced farming systems feasible...
...When TVA was set up a quarter of a century ago, the forest resource, outside of the national forests, had received inadequate attention...
...The TVA's chemical engineering research and its demonstration programs have played a pioneering role in this development over the past quarter century...
...Their retail outlets, numbering more than 2,000, operate in 31 states...
...In the happy hey-day after World War I, when other government "surplus" wartime properties were being auctioned off for a song, the mandate that the nitrate plants should be used for the benefit of agriculture saved the Muscle Shoals properties from the common fate...
...The farm problem was considerably different in 1933 from what it is now...
...Tennessee Valley forest products today are valued at $450 million a year...
...By 1956 freight carried on the Tennessee had skyrocketed to two billion ton-miles/noted in farm animals in several states...
...Valley forests, once cutover, depleted, and on the downgrade, today are growing at the rate of 1.5 billion board feet a year...
...The Committee concluded that the use of phosphates in agriculture should be drastically increased and that efforts should be made to tap the huge, but then virtually unused, phosphate resources of the western states of Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and Utah...
...Science at the time knew how to end this waste...
...In Idaho, a farmers' cooperative was planning a new fertilizer factory...
...More than half the Valley land area is in forests and woodlands...
...A few examples will illustrate...
...His Senate career enabled him to range over virtually the entire field of conservation, for he served on the Committees on Agriculture and Forestry, Mines and Mining, and Irrigation and Reclamation...
...Over the years, close to 45,000 Valley land owners have planted about 366 million seedlings on 326,000 acres...
...Moreover, although TVA is best known as a "regional" agency, in one respect—the operation of the fertilizer-munitions facilities—the region it serves extends to the national borders...
...Nor did he have any idea that he was planting a mustard seed that would grow into TVA, an integrated resource development with nation-wide benefits and world-wide fame...
...Forest management demonstrations set up through the cooperation of TVA, state forestry agencies, and forest landowners have led the way toward improving use of the forests...
...Private industry is turning to its production...
...His idea was that, after the paramount demands of national defense had been met, the government nitrate plants should be used in peacetime to produce fertilizers for American agriculture...
...Minnesota farmers are buying plant food of high analysis—20 pounds of nitrogen, 30 pounds of phosphate, and 10 pounds of potash in each 100-pound bag...
...TVA developed large nurseries, streamlined operating techniques, and began producing seedlings...
...The new materials were brought to the attention of farmers through TVA's first educational program, the farm test-demonstration program, based on the belief that "seeing is believing...
...Today's farmer must be a manager in the most modern sense...
...Such agriculture was wasteful, leaving the ground bare much of the time to rains which washed away the topsoil...
...Today the situation is different...
...In the operation of the Muscle Shoals properties, it was recognized in the Act that research, development, and demonstration of new and improved fertilizers would be more important than simple production...
...The development of new and improved fertilizer in laboratories and plants is only the first step in the process...
...However, the problem was not confined to the South, but was national in scope...
...Senator from Idaho...
...Nearly a million acres of land in the Valley burned over each year...
...Southern farmers to a large extent depended on row crops such as corn, cotton, and tobacco for their living...
...The licenses are royalty-free and nonexclusive...
...Moreover, this has been a period when the use of fertilizers has expanded geographically...
...He must test his soils and apply the right fertilizers in the right amount, weighing carefully the efficiency of his operations...
...Not that private interests didn't eye them covetously...
...M The other program, affecting more farmers in more states, is the distributor demonstration program...
...The hitch was that, in the Senate, all bids and proposals came before the Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, headed by Senator George W. Norris of Nebraska...
...Not only are they important as an economic asset, for the production of lumber, pulp, and other wood products, but also for watershed protection, augmenting underground water supplies, and slowing the rush of rainwater into the streams...
...a wholesale fertilizer company and its retailers conducted dozens of farmer meetings, published pamphlets, and sponsored radio programs on the proper use of fertilizers as recommended by state agricultural experts...
...Moreover, the reforestation , activities have spread over the entire seven-state area...
...TVA's development and demonstration activities have been conducted over a period in which farming has steadily become more complicated...
...TVA's electric furnace developments enabled it in World War II to supply large quantities of elemental phosphorus to the armed services...
...His proposals became section 124 of the National Defense Act of 1916, and under this Act the War Department built Wilson Dam and the nitrate plants at Muscle Shoals, Alabama...
...Much of the technology they use was developed by TVA...
...Today there are 285 such demonstrations in the Valley covering 562,000 acres, and an additional 1.2 million acres are being put under management by industry and consulting foresters working with landowners...
...Thus, on the agricultural and the forest lands of the Valley, as well as in the multiple-use of the Tennessee River system, the resources of an important region are being developed into fuller productivity through the cooperation of a federal agency, the TVA, and the people of the Valley and their institutions...
...One of these programs has been- mentioned—the farm test-dem-bnstrafioh program, started in 1935...
...Its use produces fertilizer mixtures more cheaply and results in a better product...
...TVA's fertilizers, produced experimentally in plant-size units at Muscle Shoals, amount to less than two per cent of the fertilizers produced and used in the United States...
...In 1933, erosion had taken a half million acres out of production, and only about 1,000 acres had been reforested...
...The fertilizer is about double the concentration of the average material used in the United States...
...Fertilizer use today is no longer principally a Southern practice, but is nation-wide and growing fast...
...state forestry agencies are much more active and in the past couple of years the state nurseries have supplied more tree seedlings than TVA for planting in the Valley...
...New practices, recommended by the various state agricultural colleges and extension service experts but not generally accepted by farmers, are stressed...
...These evidences of the productive use of the forest resource and of its future potential are the result of a long period of concentrated effort in which forestry and agriculture agencies of the seven Valley states worked hand in hand with the TVA, the U.S...
...In Washington and South Carolina last year, practical farmers, using TVA fertilizers, were demonstrating how productive, soil-healing pastures could be established...
...Today more than 95 per cent of the land is protected from fire by the states and 111 of the 125 counties in the Tennessee watershed cooperate financially in fire control...
...In all this, the dual purpose of the Muscle Shoals facilities—agriculture and national defense—has not been lost...
...TVA's primary interest is in the farmer, but this leads automatically to an interest in aiding the fertilizer and chemical industries, on whom the farmer must depend for his fertilizer supplies, to improve their manufacturing machinery and techniques and their products...
...Before then he was U.S...
...TVA helped state foresters in selecting sites for fire lookout towers, installing and operating fire danger measuring equipment, and making surveys of fire causes...
...The most important feature of this program is the fact that private and cooperative commercial distributors and their dealers participate in getting fertilizer use information to the farmers and themselves undertake experiments to improve industry processes, products, and distributor methods...
...One of the important results has been the establishment of a decided trend in Southern agriculture away from row crops to pastures and forage crops and livestock production...
...Before completion of TVA's Fort Loudoun Dam the river at Knoxville, Tennessee, looked like this at times...
...Cotton Ed" was interested in agriculture, and primarily Southern agriculture, which consumed great quantities of nitrogen fertilizer, then practically all imported, in growing cotton...
...More than this, we had testimony that phosphorus deficiency had been Before TVA-Feast or Famine Alternating floods and periods of low water levels made navigation on the Tennessee a practical impossibility...
...The results of TVA's chemical engineering advances are made freely available to industry through licensing of TVA patents...
...In Minnesota, JAMES P. POPE served for more than a decade as a director of the Tennessee Valley Authority...
...The design was developed by TVA and made available for commercial use without charge...
...More than a hundred fertilizer plants in the country today are mixing plant foods with a machine called a continuous ammoniator granulater, a product of TVA chemical engineering research...
...The forest products industries employ about 50,000 persons earning $100 million a year...
...Nearby in the same state, private chemical companies are smelting rock phosphate in electric furnaces...
...It took nearly a decade and a half of debate, in and out of the Congress, before TVA was set up not only to control the river through dams and reservoirs but to concern itself with the problems of agriculture and forestry, with conservation of soil and water on the land...
Vol. 22 • May 1958 • No. 5
