| OCR Text |
Show Manufacturing plays a strikingly less important part in the basin than in the country as a whole. Manufacturing in the Columbia area is closely geared to raw materials. It lacks diversification. Moreover, during the period from 1940 to 1947, manufacturing employment was not keeping pace with population growth in the region, when com- pared with the national trends. Present Forms of Resource Use Agriculture The greater part of the gainful employment in the basin can be traced, directly and indirectly, to agriculture. About 8 million acres of crops are harvested, but more than half of this total acreage is used for the production of small grain. Hay occupies about a third of the acreage. Some irri- gated areas produce high-value, intensively farmed cash crops such as sugar beets, potatoes, vegetables, and fruit. Almost all farms fall into one of three groups. Most of the enormous grain crop is produced by extensive dry farming. Irrigated farms are com- monly small and employ a wide variety of farm management plans. The third type is the large livestock ranch, owning or leasing large acreages of grazing land and supplying winter feed for the livestock from irrigated acreage. The irrigated farm land is the only type capable of expansion in acreage.2 Dry-farming might be extended over an additional 2 million acres but this potential expansion is largely counterbalanced by an approximately equal acreage of cultivated land that should be shifted to permanent grass or wood- land to insure enduring production. Grazing on the range lands has already been over- expanded, and the need is to reduce livestock num- bers on large acreages of the land. However, regulated grazing, along with other range improve- ment practices, can in time increase livestock production. it yields 5.4 billion board feet of lumber-15 per- cent of the national total. The major areas of pro- duction and reserves are the lower Columbia sec- tion-the Cascade Range, followed by the northern Rockies area in the northeastern section of the basin. Except in the upper Willamette watershed and some other localized areas most of the more accessible timber stands have been severely depleted, and on large acreages it will be many years before a high yield may again be expected. The region as a whole is now at a stage where widespread in- troduction of sustained yield forestry will be essen- tial to the health of the lumber industry. Mineral Industries Although the Columbia Basin commercially pro- duces a long list of minerals the total value of its mineral production is not large. The two prin- cipal producing districts are the famous copper area centering on Butte, Mont., and the silver-lead-zinc district in northern Idaho. One great potentiality for the future is the very large phosphate reserve of approximately 5 billion tons in the extreme southeastern corner of the basin. Manufacturing Manufacturing is largely devoted to processing raw materials and agricultural products. Conse- quently, much manufacturing is widely dispersed: Food processing plants near the farms of the scat- tered irrigation districts, saw mills and paper and pulp mills near the lumbering operations, mineral processing plants near the mines, and the new elec- trochemical and electrometallurgical plants gen- erally near water transportation and low-cost elec- tric power. Hydroelectric developments also are widely scattered through the region, although the most important are on the middle and lower Colum- bia. Most of the limited amount of diversified manufacturing is located in the lower Columbia area. Forestry One of the great resources of the Columbia Basin is its 59 million acres of forested land. Each year 8 Production, however, also may be expanded by better farming practices on existing farms, and by providing sup- plemental water to irrigated areas now without an ade- quate water supply. Fisheries The Columbia River is one of America's greatest fish streams. Every year migratory runs of salmon enter the river from the Pacific to spawn in the cold fresh water tributary streams far from the ocean. Tremendous runs of five species of salmon were the basis for an important fish industry as well as sport |
