What Was The Problem Of The Tennessee Valley In The 1930s

Since the dawn of civilization, certain areas have been more densely populated than others. This key difference of population density vastly changes how an area develops. Areas of high population density may develop technology quicker and solve problems in their communities more efficiently, while low density communities tend to be more secluded and underdeveloped. Such is the case of the Tennessee Valley in the 1930s. The Tennessee Valley is an 80,000 square mile rural region in the southwest of the United States of America, containing all of the state of Tennessee, and parts of Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Mississippi, and Kentucky. During the Great Depression in the 1930s, the Tennessee Valley was hit especially hard in comparison

As a result of widespread unemployment during the 1930s, living conditions were notably poor in rural areas. This was especially true in the Tennessee Valley, where conditions were so bad that many diseases that are not common in developed areas, like malaria, ran rampant. The TVA carried out a vigorous mosquito eradication program on its reservoirs, thus eliminating the endemic malaria that had previously been traceable to the river. This shows how the TVA directly helped the lives of people in rural communities, as they created programs to put an end to the epidemic of a dangerously fatal disease. Another problem the TVA tackled in the Tennessee Valley was the farming practices that were used at the time. Due to the aforementioned loss of topsoil, farming practices that had been done for generations of farmers beforehand proved ineffective and caused massive dust storms in the area. In response to this, The TVA educated farmers in new techniques of farming, and donated new fertilizer to farmers to get them started. The education created a spread of the information, as the farmers that learned these new techniques began to see success and told their neighbors about them. This was compounded by the fact that farmers were also given new fertilizer, which allowed them to become much more effective in their farming. This shows how the TVA made an impact on the community of the Tennessee Valley, because they made improvements in the way people farmed in order to allow the agricultural industry of the region