Voa Agriculture Report - Goats Employed in Fight Against Kudzu in US South

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is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.

Once upon time, people in the southern United States enjoyed kudzu its beauty. Kudzu is a climbing woody vine native Asia. It produces big green leaves and sweet-smelling purple .

The Japanese brought it to the United States eighteen seventy-six-. It grew well in the warm, wet of the southeastern states. People planted kudzu around their to hide things like fences.

In the nineteen , during the Great Depression, the government put people to planting kudzu for soil protection. Between nineteen thirty-five and nineteen fifties, the government even paid farmers to plant . The kudzu also provided cattle feed.

kudzu kills other growth as it spreads. Finally, in fifties, the Agriculture Department no longer suggested it as cover crop. Then, in nineteen seventy, officials declared it weed. Today it is known as "the plant that the South."

Kudzu now covers an estimated three million of land. Over time, much of whatever was nearby .

People are always looking for better ways to the invasive plant. Since last year, the public works in Chattanooga, Tennessee, has been using goats.

This by Randy Mitchell tells the story of the kudzu-eating :

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It was the end of August in Tennessee's town

The weather had been hot and humid, summer a hangin� �*%round��

The vines had been growing long steady all season long

I knew it was time me to write another kudzu song

That stuff is everywhere even choking out a railroad bridge

But now kudzu eating goats out on Missionary Ridge

The tunnels to where it was a danger to try to through

They tried poison and herbicides and chopped it where it grew

But nothing seems to work very and the city was at wits end

They discovered goats like kudzu and would eat all up and

The 3.4 acres would be clear and free of up to the tunnel's ledge

Cause now there's kudzu goats out on Missionary Ridge

Yet even kudzu has . Artisans form the twisting vines into baskets. Others use in food, clothing and herbal medicines.

And that's the Special English Agriculture Report, written by Jerilyn Watson. I'm Ember.

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