Final answer:
The Kentucky bluegrass cultivar responsible for starting the sod industry is not specified, but the industry's origins lie with European grass genotypes used in the 19th century. The introduction of these grasses facilitated the construction of sod homes on the frontier. Intensive agricultural practices and soil depletion issues were prevalent around the same time, particularly among Southern sharecroppers.
Step-by-step explanation:
The Kentucky bluegrass cultivar that was primarily responsible for starting the sod industry is not explicitly named in historical documentation. Instead, the sod industry has its roots in agricultural practices linked to the introduction of various European genotypes as forage crops during the 19th century. The sod that played a crucial role for settlers, known as sod houses or "soddies," was a frontier home constructed using dirt and thick-rooted prairie grass. These sod homes were symbolic of the settlers' ingenuity and resourcefulness in utilizing the available resources to create an inexpensive, though damp, dwelling.
In the broader context, farmers, and particularly sharecroppers in the Deep South around 1890, had to maximize land use to escape cycles of debt. However, intensive agriculture resulted in environmental degradation through soil erosion, depletion of topsoil, and pollution of rivers with silt and fertilizer, indicating an unsustainable model of land use that eventually began affecting the productivity of Southern farms.