TVA fertilizer technology used worldwide – but few new products since 1970s

About 75% of fertilizers and fertilizer technology used around the world today were developed or improved during the 1950s to 1970s by scientists and engineers at the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in the United States, says John Shields, a former TVA official. Shields is now Interim Director of IFDC, An International Center for Soil Fertility and Agricultural Development, based in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.

“An investment of $41 million in fertilizer research through 1981 returned an incredible $57 billion to U.S. agriculture,” Shields says. “That doesn’t include benefits of the technology to the rest of the world.”

But inadequate public funding caused closure of the TVA fertilizer research program in the early 1990s. Today, publicly funded fertilizer research and development has essentially ceased