Country Humor 
By Jack S. Bray

Green is good, unfortunately

From green sprigs in the yard to the first mosquitoes, the signs of spring are here. Before long, the surest harbinger of all will interrupt late sleepers on a Saturday morning as America’s 50 million or so lawnmowers chew into the turf across the country.

For most Americans, the home lawn is a modest swatch of green. But when you add all those front, side and back yards to the nation’s golf courses, city parks and town squares, a surprising thing happens. All together, some 40 million acres of these United States are covered with lawns, making turf grass a major crop—and the country’s largest irrigated crop.

With all the fertilizer and pest-control chemicals used on lawn grasses, that has a hefty impact on the nation’s environment, not to mention the economy. But is the impact all bad?

According to research reported by Christina Milesi, now at NASA, Americans squirt as much as 238 gallons per person per day onto lawns during the growing season. But those lush lawns also turn out to be a “sink” for carbon dioxide, one of the leading greenhouse gases. The effect is even more striking when grass clippings are left to decompose in place, boosting more growth by providing nitrogen—which is partially offset by the 800 million gallons or so of gasoline burned in lawnmowers.

“The 2 percent of the U.S. land surface that is covered in lawns could account for 5 percent of the carbon dioxide” absorbed by all plants, Milesi wrote in a tome called Environmental Management.

However, homeowners do not have as much economic incentive as farmers to conserve water, fertilizer and pesticides. “…for a single homeowner, lawn care is usually not a big part of the budget, so there’s a temptation to always do a little more,” Milesi added.

Outdoor watering accounts for more than half of municipal water consumption in many cities, and homeowners often apply fertilizers and pesticides to their lawns at many times the recommended rates.

I hoped to learn something different when I began reading Environmental Management. I was looking for evidence that too much water, too much fertilizer and too much mowing of home lawns were the main causes of economic chaos and social unrest in the world today. I was going to show the report to my wife next time she suggested the yard needs mowing.

But it turns out, if the grass is always greener on my neighbor’s side of the fence, he may be a better citizen than I am.
Sometimes, I read too much.

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