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Show But the TVA also made direct frontal attack upon traditional land-use practices. It sought to accelerate a change in land use all over the valley which would bring the row crops down off the hills and tie down sloping land with grass, pas- ture, or forest. The leverage to work this transi- tion was the fertilizer authority. Judgment of soil scientists that phosphates were the primary need of the land to grow grass and legumes brought a shift from experiment with nitrates to the phosphate program. TVA invention of new and improved ways of concentrating through electrical furnace proc- esses the phosphorus locked in the phosphate rock deposits of Tennessee, which the TVA acquired, afforded higher concentrations of usable phos- phate fertilizers than were known before. By providing free (except for the freight) fertilizer to farmers or groups of farmers who accept con- servation farm planning, a significant change in land use practices has been well started.13 How- ever, much remains to be done. Some experts, furthermore, consider progress in this field slower than necessary. Watershed management policy is still a controversial aspect of the TVA program. The forestry program, in the effort to bring watershed protection, has gone beyond farm bene- ficiaries. TVA has purchased outright large acre- ages of steep land unsuited to farming chiefly to assure watershed" protection for the reservoirs. Where this land was denuded, TVA has replanted it. It has also used these properties for experi- mentation and demonstration of proper silvicul- ture practices. But with most of the watershed forests in private ownership, protection has re- quired an intensification of the assistance pro- grams elsewhere undertaken by the Forest Service. It has hundreds of forest demonstration projects on these private lands on which, in return for technical assistance in inventory, harvesting, and management, the owners bind themselves to im- provements activities and to continued approved management. TVA also furnishes tree planting stock to private owners of seriously eroding land. 13 By 1947 there were in excess of 32,000 farms in the valley participating in the demonstration program. Free phosphate was also being furnished about 8,000 demon- stration farms in other States. The great hydroelectric byproduct from the river structures has been of key economic im- portance both to valley agriculture and industry. Today, the Tennessee Valley Authority has for transmission to load centers the output of nearly 3 million kilowatts of installed generating capac- ity, most of which is from its river dams. It is selling this year an average of 1*4 billion kilo- watt hours a month, the greatest electrical output of any one system in the world. Its transmission lines send this energy to the cities and cooperatives of the Tennessee and Cumberland Valleys, and into southern and western Kentucky. The lowering of the price of wholesale and retail energy throughout its transmission area, supplemented by financial assistance to rural co- operatives and municipal systems and by utiliza- tion research and promotion, has been a major factor in the economic renascence of this region. This began before World War II, but the large volume of hydroelectricity brought to the region war industries and military facilities which ur- gently needed energy. Postwar continuance of some of these industries, the growth of new in- dustries, and the tremendous increase in general rural and urban consumer demand for electricity have absorbed the entire effective hydro capacity of TVA generators and made it necessary to launch the construction of a new steam plant. The contribution of this product of falling water to the increase in jobs and incomes is gen- erally indicated by electricity consumption and price data. It is also suggested by other data relating to manufacturing and employment. From 1935 to 1939 the number of manufacturing establishments in the 122 counties of the valley grew from 1,346 to 2,069, a favorable change of 53.7 percent. This was nearly 50 percent greater than comparable changes for the entire area of the seven valley States and nearly three times as great as for the country as a whole. During that same brief period factory employment in the valley recovered its predepression status, while in the Nation as a whole it had not yet done so. Increases in total factory payrolls in the valley were exceeded, percentagewise, only in the East North Central and Pacific Coast States. More recent information makes possible com.- 35 |