Spotting the Vine that Ate the South in Ohio

Imagine a weed that grows a foot per day and has the power to swallow a whole house, spread through fields and even reach the tips of power lines.

The weed is called kudzu and in recent years, it has crept into Ohio. It has the potential to kill entire forests by depriving trees of sunlight and weighing down their branches.

During the Great Depression, farmers in the South were paid $8 ($256 today) per acre to grow kudzu for soil conservation. It was called the “miracle vine,” but soon became known as “the vine that ate the south.”

  Map of the distribution of kudzu in the U.S. in 2011.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service, kudzu covers about eight million acres of land in the U.S. The weed has spread to 15 counties in Ohio, mostly in the southeast, but has been found as far north as Summit and Cuyahoga counties, AgFax said.

Kudzu costs the United States $500 million per year in damage to forests, according to Eat the Weeds. It also lures the kudzu bug, a damaging species that feeds on kudzu and any crops the weed grows around.

A program, run by the Ohio State University Extension, is targeting kudzu and trying to make Ohioans aware of the problem.

“Kudzu is in scattered spots in Ohio,” said Kathy Smith, director of the Ohio Woodland Stewards Program. “We’re hoping to raise awareness of kudzu specifically and of invasive species in general.”

The program recently released a poster and smartphone app to help control the weed. Ohioans can use the poster to recognize the weed and then report it with the program’s free Great Lakes Early Detection Network (GLEDN) app.

For a free copy of the poster, contact the Ohio Woodland Stewards Program at ohiowoods@osu.edu. The app can be downloaded here.

Have you spotted kudzu on your farm?

Budgets Help Farmers Manage Operations

For farmers trying to decide what financial-planning resources to use to be the most profitable, the Ohio State University’s (OSU) Department of Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics offers budgets to give farmers a place to start.

“Without some form of budgeting and some method to track an enterprise’s progress, farmers will have difficulty determining their most profitable enterprises and determine if they’ve met their goals for the farm,” said Barry Ward, production business management leader, OSU Extension.

Farmers can use enterprise budgets to evaluate options before resources are committed, estimate the amount of rent that can be paid for land or machinery, determine break even yields or prices and calculate potential returns on an investment. They also provide critical input for whole-farm planning, including the potential income for a particular farm, the size of farm needed to earn a potential return and anticipated cash flows throughout the year.

“One of the real benefits of using enterprise budgets is that they help farmers to not forget expenses that should be included in the planning or budgeting process,” said Dianne Shoemaker, OSU Extension state diary financial management specialist. “The budgets don’t just look at cash expenses such as seed, fertilizer, sprays and fuel, but they also take into consideration the overhead costs such as charges for land, labor, management, machinery and equipment.

The Ohio State University Extension offers the following 2012 enterprise budgets: 

• Corn production 
• Soybean production
• Wheat production
• Corn silage production
• Alfalfa hay production
• Alfalfa haylage production
• Cow - Calf
• Market Steer
• Market Steer
• Yearling Market Steer
• Yearling Market Steer
• Market Heifer Budget

Farmers can find the 2012 enterprise budgets at http://aede.osu.edu/programs/farmmanagement/budgets.

Do you or a farmer you know use enterprise budgets? Have they proven helpful in the past? Would you recommend them?

Photo obtained from: www.ocj.com.