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TechnoratiWASHINGTON - This year's dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is likely to be the largest on record and growing U.S. corn production is a primary cause of the worsening conditions, federal and state scientists said Tuesday.
The research team predicts that the dead zone - a stretch of water without enough oxygen to support marine life - could cover some 8,800 square miles this summer, an area roughly the size of the state of New Jersey.
The forecast was announced today by scientists with the U.S. National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium and Louisiana State University, LSU, who predicted the dead zone would be the largest since official monitoring began in 1985.
The dead zone forms annually off the coasts of Louisiana and Texas, fed by nutrient heavy water from the Mississippi River.
The country's largest river drains some 40 percent of the United States, including much of its agricultural heartland and its corn belt.
From as far north as Minnesota, runoff water laden with fertilizer nutrients nitrogen and phosphorous flows into river and into the Gulf, stimulating an overgrowth of algae. When the algae die, they sink to the bottom and decompose, depleting oxygen levels in the water and choking out marine life.
"The strong link between nutrients and the dead zone indicates that excess nutrients from the Mississippi River watershed during the spring are the primary human-influenced factor behind the expansion of the dead zone," said Rob Magnien, director of the NOAA Center for Sponsored Coastal Ocean Research.
Last year's dead zone reached some 7,900 square miles, but the record came in 2002, when the area totalled nearly 8,500 square miles.
Record corn harvests throughout the Midwest are clearly adding to the problem, according to Eugene Turner, a scientist with LSU, and leader of the research team.
U.S. farmers are planting "an awful lot of corn and soybeans," he told reporters, adding that both crops leach nitrogen easily into soil and groundwater.
Corn production in the United States has shot up dramatically in recent years, driven by demand for corn-based ethanol. The U.S. Agriculture Department estimates some 87 million acres of corn were planted this year.
"The nitrogen is undoubtedly coming down in larger amounts because there's more planting of corn this year than there has been in a very long time," Turner said.
Some 817,000 tons of nitrogen, roughly 35-45 percent above normal, seeped into the Gulf between April and June, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, USGS.
Added to the mix is a record amount of phosphorous flowing into the Gulf.
The USGS reported that 85,000 tons of phosphorous entered the Gulf from April through June, some 85 percent above normal levels.
Turner said his team is uncertain what impact last month's record floods in the Midwest will have on the dead zone.
Although researchers can't quantify the effects yet, he added, it is likely that the zone will expand from as a large pulse of floodwater coming down the Mississippi enters the Gulf.
"We just don't quite know yet what the full effect will be," Turner said.
Crews are heading out into the Gulf on Sunday to begin this year's official dead zone measuring.
"We expect a final [figure] to be available about a week or two from now," Magnien told reporters on a press telebriefing.
Turner warned that the economic impact of the dead zone would again ripple through the Gulf's lucrative commercial and recreational fishing industries.
"The fish and shrimp have left this area and it is inconceivable that you could have that much change on the bottom and not change the fisheries in some way," Turner said. "This area is about 25-30 percent of U.S. fisheries - it is a pretty big fishery that is under threat."
Changing conditions to prevent the annual dead zone won't be easy, he added. "It is not just a matter of turning the switch today."
"It is going to have to come from changes in land use," Turner said. "We will have to reduce the amount of nitrogen coming off the watershed."
He suggested farmers move away from perennial crops that leave the land barren and susceptible to flooding, but warned that reductions in nutrient runoff will not yield instant results. Nitrogen is stored in the soil and can continue leaching for many years.
The report comes as some 250 corn growers from more than 20 states are convening in Washington, DC this week for the biannual Corn Congress meeting of the National Corn Growers Association.
Ron Litterer, NCGA president and a grower from Iowa, said, "We especially find it important to set aside time for farmers to meet with their representatives and senators and tell them what's important for growers back home."
In February, NCGA corn growers, conservation organizations and companies throughout the agriculture supply chain teamed up to launch a first-of-its-kind working group to help establish sustainable outcomes for agriculture.
The group's initial focus will be creating a sustainability index to analyze and report use of land, water, energy, greenhouse gas emissions and crop production inputs in four key commodity crops corn, cotton, soybeans and wheat.
For World Wildlife Fund, Jason Clay said at the launch, "Continued improvements in efficient land use will be critical if we're going to meet the ever-growing demand for food and fiber without putting more pressure on our environmental resources."
Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2008
28 Comments so far
Show AllRe kman2, sorry if you've lost your bloom to the sun. Traditionally farmers wore long sleeved cotton shirts and broad straw hats. I do. Sure there are unrealistic proposals on leftwing blogs, but organic can feed the world better than megatechnic alternatives. Farmers around here have gotten comparable yields, 180 bu/acre. The largest gains come on drought years, after the transition phase, Rodale found.
Actually they've found rotational grazing to be less labor intensive, since the livestock harvest their own feed and spread their own manure. It's basically draft power.
They say the new organic no-till uses only a fifth or so of the energy of regular organic, which, in Barry Commoner's 1970s midwest study had only about 40% the energy use of conventional. If you have a fifth or a fourth of 40% or whatever it really is you're ready for high oil prices.
Farmers are making money now, but the farm input industrial complex is quickly taking the lions share (because it can) and pricing us out of world markets (except for the weak dollar). Farmers know they're doomed. They forsee a major depression soon.
Recent higher farm income is much better than having everybody spend borrowed money. That is, the Steagall amendment of the WWII era which maintained parity farm prices was very successful, versus the current stimulus package (spending the borrowed money). But will it last?
As of 2006, judging from cost of production data on organic and chemical farming at Iowa State University, organic is becomng more profitable, even without premiums. The surge in fuel and input costs is propelling organic way way up into the black relative to chemical intensive farming. Organic research in Iowa (for 8 years or so) and elsewhere confirms this.
But can Monsanto and Cargill and ADM types destroy it, or take it over?
And yes, there are people problems. A few years ago Organic Valley brand said they had grown from 7 to 700 members in a couple of decades. But they need another 700 in five years to keep up with demand. Demand has grown 20% per year for a long time, and that 20% is getting bigger! But again, skyrocketing farm input costs will make organic much much cheaper relative to conventional farming, compared to the past.
In 1962 the Committee for Economic Development called for getting rid of "excess resources (mainly labor)," lowering price floors (to increase dumping and) to run one third of US farmers off the land in five years (to drive down labor costs in the cities). They called for programs to get rural youth to move away. Still, there are a lot of folks who want to farm but haven't had the opportunity.
The 1980s farm crisis followed the 1970s boom. The 1920s farm crisis and 1930s national Great Depression followed the 1910-1914 boom. We need to get smart with the National Family Farm Coalition, and "leftwing blogs" need to get on board, with price floors, supply management, strategic reserves and price ceilings, not false hopes about subsidy reform.
there's a typo in the article. it says farmers must switch away from perennial crops. it should be TO perennial crops, especially hemp, switchgrass, etc.
ironically, if they harvested the algae and turned it to bio-fuel they might save some of the gulf....
This article is refreshing. None of the reports that I'd encountered about the Pacific Ocean dead zone, off Washington and Oregon mentioned agricultural runoff at all.
The substances that cause the chemical and biological oxygen demand in water bodies don't just disappear when they flow out of local waters. Certainly the industrial and agricultural activities all along the West Coast, and those located on the drainage basins of the Sacramento - San Jouaqin, Columbia, and Fraser river systems contribute to the Pacific dead zone.
This has nothing to do with ideology. It has everything to do with economic and social systems that don't require people to be responsible for the effects of their activities. Especially with respect to those persons protected by the legal structure of corporations.
Organizing a business as a corporation doesn't eliminate negative impacts of any or all business activities. And in the case of impacts on the commons - such as the oceans - we all end up paying instead.
So let's make them pay. Yep, the corporate entities, including the directors, managers, and shareholders, should have to pay for the effects of all that they've lobbied for over the years: war in Iraq, lax environmental standards, foreign coups. Let's face it, national budgets are huge, and we need strong leadership from the captains of industry and other great financial successes in order to rectify these problems.
Shame the rich. There's a relationship between their wealth and your poverty.
Organic can require less energy per acre, but no one on the leftwing blogs ever tackles the real problems with organic on a large scale: the yields will be much less/acre and there will be a tremendous increase in labor needed to operate the farms. That's just the reality of it.
We're not talking about some old ex-hippie's organic garden to feed a few people here, we're talking about what it takes to convert the entire Midwest to organic. It just isn't going to happen any time soon.
If you left wingers want to do hard farm labor for a living, go right ahead my friends. Go right ahead because I am NOT. I've already done my time in the fields. Most of you have no clue what that's really like. We're not talking about a weekend garden and I can assure you can forget about your skin not wrinkling in the sun.....because it will no matter how many SPF's you use.
Good thing that 50 years ago, our ancestors were not saying, "Hey, I wont be alive in 50 years , fug em, I got mine!" What is that?
Since GW came to be (p)resident, America has been treated like a fire sale- going out of business, mad rush to consume!
That visual image of the line between the dead ocean and the living one reminds me of how American "elites" perceive social problems. As if a "gated community" could protect a person from encroaching doom.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=corn+and+health
I would ask what Lucitanian asked on this. Is there any way to harness the nutrients and all to harvest the algae for energy production? the Gulf Coast there, already a center for petroleum production, could it become a center for a new wave of energy production from the energy stored in the nutrients???
I too think corn production in this country is problematic, and the gulf "dead zone" is part of that ecological disaster. I'm just wondering if there is a way to mitigate it that could also help solve our energy problems.
Judging from research on organic vs chemical farming at the Rodale Institute (Search: Rodale, organic, drought) these impacts can be reduced using organic methods. Organic methods led to increased retention of water, carbon and nitrogen, as well as more diverse soil microbes and more microbial activity.
Many of these problems are related to low, below cost corn market prices. Over 26 years, 1981-2006, U.S. farmers lost nearly 70 billion dollars in the market. America lost billions on below cost exports of corn and other commodities, losing massively in order to dump on foreign farmers, and foreign countries where most of the world's poor live, all for the benefit of the output (and input) sides of the agribusiness complex. A few farmers turned to ethanol production investments to reduce this risk, competing against giant ADM.
Low corn prices have subsidized the removal of livestock from farms and their concentration in giant unsustainable feedlots and animal factories. Tyson and Smithfield each got benefits of over 2.5 billion dollars 1997-2005 according to research at Tuft's University, which is much larger than the government subsidies everyone is talking about, even much larger than those to rice co-ops (groups of farmers).
In North Carolina during Hurricane Floyd and in the Floods of 1993 and 2008 livestock factory liquified manure "lagoons" were washed out and added to problems like the dead zone.
Losing livestock, their main value added, small and moderate sized farmers in the U.S. and world wide have gone broke. Farmers have plowed up soil protective pastures and removed soil protective small grains and forages from their crop rotations because of the loss of livestock. Pastures were often kept on hilly fields and in hilly regions. Hilly pastures were often never plowed or sprayed. With small grain losses, farmers lost legume crops (planted with small grains like wheat, oats, etc. and grazed or harvested for hay the following year) that take nitrogen from the air much more sustainably. Anhydrous ammonia, the main nitrogen replacement, hardens the soil and kills microorganisms, increasing runoff and stuff in the runoff.
Note that LOW prices cause farmers to plant fence row to fence row, while high prices, which do the same short term, in time bring up livestock prices and put land back into pastures and forages (as giant livestock factories lose their hidden protective subsidization with below cost grain). If farmers could make more money feeding their own livestock versus factories feeding below cost grains, and if demand for grass-fed meat, poultry, eggs and milk grew sufficiently, "fair trade" grain prices wouldn't cause the damage their causing now. National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC dot org) calls for BOTH price floors with international supply management (with the Africa Group), to protect against low farm prices, chronic poverty, livestock concentration and starvation AND strategic reserves with price ceilings, to protect against high price surges, which also cause short term starvation, since high food prices immediately follow low below zero "free trade" prices, and there is no time for the "fair trade" prices to bring recovery to chronic poverty nations as the new "fair trade" wealth of high farm prices circulates through their economies, and economic multiplier effects kick in.
With higher fuel costs driving up the cost of off farm fertilizers and pesticides, under conditions where a few corporations dominate the input industry (also output), organic farming has rapidly gained in profitability. Iowa State University had cost of production information in 2006 where organic corn was cheaper, even without premium prices, (but it wasn't done in a directly comparable way). That's the wave of the future.
By the way, into the 1970s it was "a bushel of wheat for a barrel of oil." Now "skyrocketing" wheat prices are still below $10 per bushel, BUT the also "skyrocketing" oil prices have reached 15 FOLD HIGHER, over $140 per barrel. (Let me know when you hear that wheat has reached $140 per bushel!)
Organic grass-fed meat, poultry milk and eggs are a key to turning this around, and they're much healthier for you.
On dcbeltway's corn bashing: please also take note of the errors in the city movie Corn King, online at NFFC dot org.
Remember, subsidies are compensations for the massive losses, and often haven't brought farmers up to zero vs. full costs, so they mainly subsidize the processors and livestock factories for which the gains do not compensate for losses. Also (bbr-001) subsidies don't economically cause low prices (ie. for ethanol, other processors, exporters and animal factories) or surpluses. They just keep some farmers from complaining. It's the lack of price floors that is the culprit there, except during occasional prices spikes, like we're having now (late 2006-2008). See NFFC dot org on this.
Please, give some credit to the American Corn Growers Association (working with Global Farmer) on these issues, not the National Corn Growers Association, which has mobilized farmers to lobby for processors and the input complex and promoted dumping at below cost on the poor farmers of the world, helping to create the massive starvation problems in their countries over the past 55 years.
Finally, look at figures from the floods of 1993 to predict the impact of the floods of 2008. That was a July flood, however, not a June flood.
lizard-yes, phosphorus has nothing to do with fossil fuels, but nitrogen is made from natural gas. N has recently tripled in price; P has quadrupled. These are the best reasons for farmers to use less, but corn prices are high enough to still use a lot. I am using less than ever and my corn lots great so far. Conservation Reserve Programs need to be refined to further target river and stream buffer strips and the most highly erodible areas of fields. Too often whole fields are enrolled in CRP, when only part is necessary.
It may not seem obvious, but there is a link between ethanol and the dead zone. It works this way:
- The demand for ethanol (along with subsidies for it) has pushed the price of corn up.
- With corn prices rising, farmers are more inclined to plant fencerow to fencerow, and to plant dangerously close to creeks, streams, rivers, without buffer zones of wetlands or tall prairie grasses with deep roots that might soak up runoff.
- With the high price of corn, farmers are also less likely to leave fields fallow, in spite of some incentives (we hear of insurance companies and celebrities buying land and taking subsidies for not planting crops--some of these stories are true).
- Farmers also tend to fertilize (organic farmers make up a very small percent of farming in the US). Many farmers claim they only apply enough, and that it's absorbed by/broken down in the soil. Not all of it is.
- The chemicals that should be filtered out in wetlands and buffer zones find their way down the watershed to the Mississippi, to the Gulf.
Anyone claiming that the oil companies are selling this story as propaganda simply doesn't understand how agriculture has changed over the last century, and how we've lost wetlands and damaged the watershed. Ethanol prices do affect dead zones in the Gulf, even if you buy your gas in Oregon (outside the Mississippi watershed).
I hate corn.
1) Corn growers caused the biofuel crisis looking for more profits.
2) Cattle is fed corn not grass making them and us sick.
3) High fructose corn syrup is making us sick and causing disease
4) Michael Pollan's book "The Omnivores Dilema" goes into the fact corn is in most of our food...yuck.
5) Subsidized Corn is costing tax payers too much money and farmers are no longer growing real food as a result.
6) And corn pollutes the environment.
7) GM corn is dangerous to our health.
Feel free to add to the list.
Another underreported story:
I live near the Gulf of Mexico and it is amazing that everytime I go to buy shrimp, it is labeled that it is from a southeastern Asian country. In addition, when I go to the beach the Gulf water is brown. I'm curious where New Orleans restaurants get their seafood from.
Would it be too much to ask the corn producers and all of the pesticide-herbicide users to take at least one trip down to visit the dead zone? Now thats what I would call eco-tourism. At the very least, there should be a law requiring the Monsanto/ADM sales forces to show a video about the dead zone, to every potential customer.
not a chance it would ever happen, but a girl has to have her dreams... yes indeed. this is the mildest among them.
Craig: fossil fuels are carbon chains. Nitrogen and phosphorus have nothing to do with it.
Plenum at 4:05 pm, nice point. Besides your reference to Jared Diamond, see also Daniel Quinn's "Ishmael" which is almost a philosophical companion to Diamond's more technical/factual "Guns, Germs and Steel."
I'm new to this site. Liked Pegg's article. Seems to me that we can't get bogged down in any one issue or solution as "the" focus. There are so many. Successfully navigating the coming era of hardship and enhanced natural selection, about which I'm not optimistic, is going to require addressing so many issues on so many fronts that it's hard to decide what to put at the top of the list.
So I'll pick this: "Getting the United States to live and act in the world according to the principles that we were taught in elementary school to admire as examples of civic virtue." The Golden Rule, in a phrase, unfortunately thought to as Liberal Balderdash I'm afraid. But we have to start there. "Us, tomorrow" has to become the focus instead of "me, now" or we are assuredly doomed.
America is going to be less and less important in the world in the years to come, and bankrupting ourselves trying to keep the imagined old Pax Americana propped up is not a recipe for success.
Corn-based ethanol as a motor fuel is snake oil and moonshine for sure.
Take away the subsidies, the gasoline ethanol content mandate, and the ridiculous tariff on Brazilian sugarcane ethanol (all are things that maintain high prices and/or waste taxpayers' money), and the corn ethanol industry goes poof!
It's the desire for oil itself that is at the root of the problem. Eliminate its use entirely, as soon as possible. Every link in the chain of fossil fuel usage, from exploration to putting the finished product in your car and burning it, is harmful to the environment.
Mendo Chuck July 17th, 2008 12:10 pm:
You're right, America leads the way in all things but seeing ahead and anticipating the consequences of its actions.
ezeflyer, why can't a vote for Cynthia McKinney be a vote for restoration of the Mississippi Delta?
The current dead zone at the Mississippi Delta the size of New Jersey is only one of the many disastrous side-effects of Friedmanite "laissez-faire" capitalism, feverishly embraced by both wings of the capitalist party in Washington. Epidemics of preventable diseases are another, and the lack of a respectable livelihood for farmers is another. The rules are set for the farmers: To afford college tuition for your children, you have to buy synthetic fertilizers and max out your crop yields. As long as you agree to buy every petro-chemical/mechanical product of capitalism, the farm credit bureau will extend credit for you to buy them, and when the going gets tough, you will get relief legislation in Washington. But remember - only if you exhibit no reservations about the capitalist's role in farm production. God Bless the Capitalist States of America!
Nothing, really changes under a Capitalist system until it becomes institutionally profitable, or under any power-based social system until it is life-threatening - and even then change is not assured.
Frankly, I don't see much hope.
Read the author Jared Diamond.
Things do not look good at all
OIL
HAS ZERO TO DO WITH IT
ELECTRIC CARS powered by SOLAR, WIND TURBINES, WAY TO GO.
CORN USES SO MUCH 'GASOLINE 'IN THE PRODUCTION OF IT, AND SO MUCH WATER
IT A HUGE CARBON FOOTPRINT get off the corn
aka 'crack' get off the addiction
get with ELECTRIC CARS w/ zero electricity coming from COAL FIRED, OR NUK RCTOR..
NO CORN
NO PALM OIL EITHER
ONLY IDIOTS PUSH THAT STUFF
OR THE EVIL CORN LOBBYISTS
Unfortunately, a vote for McKinney is a vote for McKKKain.
Seems to me that it's pretty arrogant of us to think that we can put all these chemicals and toxins into the environment with no consequences. Are we really that stupid as a species that we would destroy our habitat completely, and not even try to change our evil ways?
One thing that really stands out to me, and I can't remember where I read it, but it was an explanation of why the Saudis extract their oil with reckless abandon is that by the time all their oil is gone, the people making all the money from it will be dead. Therefore, they don't care about the future consequences because it won't affect them. I think that mindset carries over into many more aspects of Capitalism and Greed. These big polluting companies don't care about the pollution because by the time it becomes a problem, these 'executives' will be dead. Grab as much as you can now, cuz it's not going to last forever.
I don't think that many of the executives of these multi-nationals care one little bit about how the earth will be 50 years from now due to their criminal behavior. They won't be here to experience it so who care!?!
I have to agree with Clark Kent. The surge in demand for corn would not be contributing to the mississippi dead zone if the methods for growing said corn were sustainable and not based off fossil fuels.
Why cannot one capture the run-off, harvest the Algae, produce OIL, and recycle the nitrates?
http://www.oilgae.com/algae/oil/yield/yield.html
Right on, Finnegan-- My bio-ethanol is locally produced in Oregon and isn't shipped 10,000 miles like oil from the middle east. I believe these latest "food-vs-fuel" PR blasts from the oil industry are proof that the oil industry is noticing the successes of bioethanol in the marketplace.
Better yet, put your money where your mouth is. Money is the only true power. Buy local, sustainable. When Americans invest in sustainable farming the way they did in organics, believe me, the monied interests will notice.
www.localharvest.org
www.eatwild.com
Let's see.. we see nothing here about the link between conventional oil and commercial fertilizers causing the dead zone, and then we blame bioethanol production for the increase in corn farming. Sounds like oil industry propaganda/P.R. to me.
Over half the corn grown in the U.S. goes to cattle feed and high fructose corn syrup to make burgers and Cokes/Pepsis to maintain our high standards of heart disease and obesity.
Bioethanol only uses about one-sixth of the total crop.
So, why not blame burgers and Cokes/Pepsis instead of bioethanol, which is at least contributing the benefit of reduced dependence on foreign oil? Just because fast food is an older use of corn, doesn't mean we should ignore it when considering the relative merits of the different uses of corn.
Just to be clear, I think feeding the hungry should be priority one, making bioethanol priority two, composting the corn back to the earth priority three and unhealthy fast-food diets should be the lowest possible priority for using corn.
Also, since corn can be used for BOTH bioethanol and cattle feed by feeding the bioethanol byproduct ("distiller's grains") to cattle, there's really no need to go without heart-attack burgers and obesity-cola, if we really want them. We can supply the life-giving corn tortillas to South America while still enjoying our death-giving fast food here in the U.S.
Once again America is leading the way in earths destruction. As long as we have a government that continues to keep it's head in the sand things like this will just continue to happen.
Do you want real change than change yourself . . . Vote third party. Any party that you feel you would like. Green, Libertarian, Independent, or the one I like best, "None of the Above." When you lead the leaders will follow.