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A CURE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM
By Bill Fawcett
Erosion was a serious problem, and a drastic solution was found.
The United States was traumatized by the Dust Bowl. This had the beneficial effect of bringing conservation to the attention of every American. At the peak of the Dust Bowl storms, steps were taken to prevent erosion by using a decorative plant found originally in Japan. This plant was kudzu, a vine that is native to higher altitudes on mountainsides of Japan. With its deep roots and rapid growth, kudzu is able to survive in higher elevations and in rocky soil. It looked, at first, to be the ideal way to quickly cover areas of soil to prevent their being blown or washed away. But kudzu’s strengths were also a danger. Still, the federal government got fully behind this miracle plant and pushed for it to be planted widely. This was a mistake that we are still paying for today.
The first kudzu to arrive in the United States was featured in the Japanese Pavilion at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. This was a celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the country and every world power competed to create a unique national exhibit. Japan’s included one of its fabled gardens, filled with exotic plants—including kudzu. Kudzu has large leaves and sweet-smelling blossoms, and it grows almost overnight. It was particularly a hit in Florida, where it thrived in the wet, sandy soil. By the 1920s, with government encouragement, kudzu was being billed as a wonder plant. It was a fast-growing animal feed and could be made into medicines, a tea, even woven into baskets. Towns formed Kudzu Clubs to make more use of the plant and compete in growing it.
When the dust clouds came to the Dust Bowl, the federal government was concerned that erosion from wind and rain would continue until all the soil was lost. The Civilian Conservation Corps, one of Roosevelt’s many Depression agencies, hired hundreds of unemployed men to go out and plant kudzu across the country. Farmers who volunteered were paid up to eight dollars an acre. That was as much as they could make planting and harvesting most crops. Through the 1930s and 1940s, pundits were regularly on the radio extolling the virtues of this wonder plant.
By the 1950s, though, even the government finally figured out that something was wrong. Kudzu grew too quickly and was too hard to eradicate. Fire, poisons, goats, chemicals, cutting—nothing would permanently destroy the deep-rooted plant. What was hearty enough to subsist in the dry, cold mountains of Japan turned into a Superman of plants in the warm, moist soil of certain parts of the US.
Kudzu grows as much as eight inches per day. It can creep up almost any surface. It will climb over any tree, smothering it, and even shinny up a metal light pole. Where kudzu grows, nothing else can. The large, thick leaves block all light and the deep, aggressive roots displace or destroy any competitors for the soil. To this day there is no real way to beat back kudzu on any scale. More than seven million acres of the southeastern USA is covered with the plant—seven million acres of, basically, green desert. And it continues to spread. The only saving grace is that kudzu cannot survive a hard frost. So those areas with a real winter are safe from it. Planting kudzu was a mistake—one that happened because bureaucrats and farmers saw a cheap and easy solution to a serious problem. But by their actions, they created a greater problem.
If planting kudzu had not been encouraged, it would today be a rare garden plant. Seven million acres of arable land, including many forests, would still exist. The soil of the Southern USA, where one mostly finds it, was never in danger of blowing away and water erosion could have been handled in other ways. Tens of millions of dollars in eradication costs would have been saved. There would be more farmland, more forests, and tens of thousands of farmers and homeowners in the Southern states would be able to stop battling this constant menace.