Word: cropped
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...STORY of herbicide use in Vietnam is still incomplete-crop destruction by chemical spraying is still being used as a war tactic by the U.S. this year. However, the U.S. government has announced that no new chemicals are presently being bought, so that only existing stocks are being used; presumably, herbicide use will finally end soon. But the military use of herbicides in Vietnam is not new, and its lasting effects will be felt long after a change in American war policy...
Herbicide use for crop destruction has continued this year in contrast tomangrove and hardwood forest destruction, which have been ordered stopped. The HAC estimated 2,000 square kilometers of cropland were sprayed, which amounts to five per cent of the cropland in South Vietnam. From the HAC report again: "It has been authoritatively estimated that this entailed the destruction of enough food to feed approximately 600,000 persons for a year. Our observations in Vietnam lead us to believe that precautions to avoid destroying the crops of indigenous civilian populations have been a failure and that nearly...
...herbicides have been used in Vietnam in large quantities. They are called Orange, White, and Blue, names derived from the color of paint identifying the drums during shipping from the United States to Vietnam. Orange and White are primarily used to clear forest land, while Blue is used for crop destruction. Orange has been the most extensively used, accounting for about sixty per cent of the herbicide-treated land. Its usage was stopped by the Department of Defense in April 1970 after laboratory tests showed one of its ingredients, 2,4,5-T, to cause gross physical defects in animals...
Blue is used for crop destruction primarily, acting very effectively against grasses and rice. Blue contains derivatives of arsenic compounds, and the HAC is now working out laboratory tests which should be able to detect traces of these compounds in human hair; that way, the interaction of the herbicides with the human food chain should be clarified, and some of the long-lasting effects of the herbicides may become known...
...herbicides in Vietnam to destroy crops has the secondary effect of creating refugees-displacing the people whose lives depended on the crops as a food source. Most of the crop destruction has been in the Central Highlands, where the population is largely Montagnard tribesmen, an ethnic minority in Vietnam. The crop spraying has a catastrophic impact on the Montagnard people; the story that follows tells of the Song Re valley in Quang Nai province, a highland valley Meselson's group looked at closely...