As hay fever sufferers grow in Japan, the country is looking to plant no-pollen trees

Filed 1mo ago · Via Mongabay · The Buffoon Desk

THIS STORY IS SCORED

Waltz (Tschikovsky Op. 40)

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: UNCTAD · CC BY-SA 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Japan is moving to fell hundreds of thousands of hectares of sugi and hinoki trees, the same conifers the country planted en masse after World War II to rebuild its housing stock, after discovering their pollen now afflicts more than 40% of the population each spring.

The government's Ministry of Agriculture says it is already cutting 50,000 hectares a year and aims to reduce the oldest sugi stands by 20% by 2033, while ramping up timber production from 12 million to 16 million cubic meters. The hay fever season, meanwhile, is getting longer and more severe as warming shifts pollen timing earlier.

The economic toll is estimated at 245 billion yen a day during peak season, a bill that traces directly back to a mid-century planting decision made for cheap, fast timber rather than public health.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Nothing captures the long tail of infrastructure planning quite like a nation spending eighty years recovering from its own reforestation plan. The lesson here isn't subtle: solve today's shortage with a fast-growing monoculture and someone two generations later gets to file the paperwork on 750,000 hectares of regret.

Source: Read the original at Mongabay → Scored: Waltz (Tschikovsky Op. 40) · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0