Ban the Beetles

A strong military is of necessity a diverse force—a combination of different kinds of troops with a wide variety of skills.  Most Americans are unaware of the existence of one of our most effective fighting groups—a numerous and unique force (although the extent of their exploits remains a subject of both rumor and debate).  Our story starts almost 200 years ago.

 

The success of the Lewis and Clarke Expedition triggered decades of exploration—the United States owned vast territories full of... well, the country didn't really know what the hell was out there.  Multiple expeditions were sent west to draw maps, to meet the Native Americans, to locate landmarks, and (most important) to discover if rivers were navigable and where their headwaters were located.

 

The 1820 westward expedition was sent to discover the headwaters of the River Platte, and was particularly successful.  Rivers were mapped, Pikes Peak was discovered and climbed, and the vast herds of buffalo were documented in detail.

 

This was the expedition that extensively explored the Midwest plains—indeed the leader of the expedition called this land the American Desert, a phrase that stuck.  Even the Native Americans of the area felt safe with the explorers, as the land was absolutely unsuitable for farming—at least with the technology of the time.  Ironically, today this is the heartland of American farming, and in part, helps feed the world.

 

Like most of the expeditions of the time, a naturalist and a botanist accompanied the surveyors and explorers, to document the new fauna and flora that were discovered.  One of the discoveries was the Leptinotarse Decemlineata, or Colorado Beetle.  Thomas Say, the expedition naturalist discovered this distinctive beetle eating nightshade plants.  The beetle is about half an inch long and bright yellow, with five brown stripes on its body (giving it the nickname, the ten-striped spearman—one of several).

 

When the expedition members returned, they were fairly sure that the land they had explored would stay isolated and unpopulated, as it seemed unsuitable for habitation.  However, technology changed rapidly after the Civil War:  railroads, windmills, and barbed wire helped make the plain states into profitable farm lands.  One invention in particular had a major role in turning the prairies into farms:  a new kind of plow.

 

The problem was that the traditional iron plow was useless on the dense roots of the sod that made up the plains.  The iron plow could be sharpened easily, but within minutes, the dense sod would dull the blade, making plowing impossible.  While a steel blade would hold an edge much longer, a steel plow would be impossibly expensive.  Besides, at the time, everyone knew that steel poisoned the top soil, making any plants that managed to grow hazardous to eat.  (Isn't it amazing how often the things we all know turn out to be wrong?)

 

The solution turned out to be the "singing plow"—the marriage of an iron plow with bolt-on steel blades that could be sharpened at night, and then used again the next day.  As the sharp blade cut through the dense matted roots of the sod, it vibrated, making a musical note, giving it the new nickname. 

 

With new technology, farmers poured into the Midwest all the way to the edge of the Rockies, bringing new plants with them.  The Colorado beetle quickly discovered a new food, a cousin of the nightshade it was already devouring: the potato.  It was simply amazing how fast this beetle could strip the leaves off a potato plant.

 

It was also astounding how fast the beetle—now called simply the potato bug—spread eastward.  Within fifteen years, the voracious pest made it from Colorado to Pennsylvania, and ten years later, the 'tater bug' was present in the Americas wherever potatoes were grown.

 

European farmers, still reeling from the potato blight that had destroyed the potato harvest from 1845 to 1852, pushed their governments to enact laws forbidding the importation of American potatoes.  American potatoes stayed out of Europe—for the most part—until the 20th century, when World War I made importation necessary.  Whether the potato bug was introduced into Europe by the shipment of food, or simply hitchhiked on the ships, cargoes, or trucks transported to the European war is still being debated, but the pest quickly spread across the farmlands of Europe and Asia.

 

In Europe , after World War II, the bug was particularly devastating to agriculture, and in East Germany, after the Russians cut the country off from the rest of Europe, the potato bug became the major threat to one of the chief agriculture crops of a nation already struggling to feed its people.

 

East Germany began distributing pamphlets to farmers to be on the lookout for the pest.  Several farmers publicly testified about American bombers flying low over their fields, and invariably, the next day their fields were infested by the Colorado Potato Beetle.  East Germany claimed that America was 'bombing' its fields with the pest in order to destroy the economy of the socialist workers paradise.

 

School children were taken to the fields daily and told to pick the beetles off the plants in a patriotic effort to defeat the Amikafer (Yankee Beetles).  This was difficult to do, since the underside of every leaf had to be checked, and a single beetle can lay up to 800 eggs.  East Germany even complained to the United Nations that the Americans were engaged in agricultural warfare.

 

It might have been true.  The CIA certainly burned sugar cane fields in Cuba, and the US sprayed Agent Orange in Vietnam, and experimented with dropping bomb laden bats in Japan during World War II.  (You can read about this here.)  But, it would be hard to keep silent the huge number of Air Force personnel that mounting such a project would require.  And I have no idea how you could gather enough of the pests to make an effective payload.  Do we have secret bug bombers hidden in Area 51?

 

This wasn’t the first time that a country had considered drafting the potato beetle for military purposes.  The French had considered using them against the Germans in the World War I, and Germany and England each had proposed using them against the other during World War II, with the Germans going so far as to actually breed the insects and to experiment with dropping them.  As far as we know, however, neither country ever actually used them.

 

Now, 75 years later, there is still no proof that the United States was responsible for the Cold War infestation of Eastern Germany.  There are a couple of other explanations: one is that there was a shortage of pesticides in the satellite countries that made up the Soviet Union and what few were available were used in Russia.  The potato bug has proven remarkably effective against most forms of natural pesticides (remember that the original food supply of the beetle were varieties of nightshade, a naturally toxic plant).

 

Another possible explanation goes back to the experiments the Germans had conducted during World War II.  Captured documents show that the Germans painted the beetles to make them easier to locate and recover, and then airdropped 54,000 of the beetles on a German field.  Soldiers recovered fewer than 150 of the bugs,''!  ("Bug painter"—what a job description!)

 

Today, the bug is still a pest anywhere potatoes are grown.  For a while, the bug was controlled by DDT, but the potato beetle (as befits an enemy whose ancestors lived by dining on deadly nightshade) has proven remarkably adaptive to pesticide use.

 

Russia is currently the country most seriously affected by the potato beetle.  Is it just a coincidence that this is happening as the "Cold War" is heating up again?  Or have we called the "tater bugs" back to active duty, dropping them from those stealth helicopters now?