General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Gulf of Mexico Is About to Experience a "Dead Zone" the Size of Connecticut
http://m.motherjones.com/environment/2016/06/gulf-mexico-braces-monsterous-dead-zoneThe Gulf of Mexico Is About to Experience a "Dead Zone" the Size of Connecticut
Midwestern farm fertilizer runnoff is expected to create a massive algae bloom and a biological desert to follow it.
TOM PHILPOTT JUN. 17, 2016 6:00 AM
A NOAA vizualization of where the nitrogen comes from that fuels the annual dead zone. NOAA
The Gulf of Mexico teems with biodiversity and contains some of the globe's most productive fisheries. Yet starting in the early 1970s, large swaths of the Gulf began to experience annual dead zones in the late summer and early fall. This year's will likely be nearly a third larger than normal, about the size of Connecticut, according to a recent report from the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium and Louisiana State University.
This year's dead zone will likely be nearly a third larger than normal.
The problem is tied to industrial-scale meat production. To churn out huge amounts chicken, beef, and pork, the meat industry relies on corn as cheap feed. The US grows about a third of the globe's corn, the great bulk of it in the Midwest, on land that drains into the Mississippi River. Every year, fertilizer runoff from Midwestern farms leaches into the Mississippi and makes its way to the Gulf of Mexico.
Intended to feed the nation's vast corn crop, this renegade nitrogen instead feeds vast aquatic algae blooms in the early summer. When the algae blooms die and decay, they tie up oxygen from the water underneath. As a result, as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Organization puts it, "habitats that would normally be teeming with life become, essentially, biological deserts."
Triana
(22,666 posts)I can't believe anything would/could live in that water again in our lifetimes.
lpbk2713
(42,757 posts)I guess I'll have to give up on seafood and shellfish.
I can't trust the labeling for point of origin.
Scientific
(314 posts)Last edited Sat Jun 18, 2016, 08:56 AM - Edit history (1)
Despite the regular attacks on organic agriculture that are featured on these pages, it is the answer. Do not trust the insidious industry propaganda that shows up here so regularly attacking clean growing systems
Scientific
(314 posts)The same GMO-fertilizer-pesticide-herbicide-fungicide chemical corporate conglomerates that are assassinating the Gulf of Mexico are backing a steady barrage of Internet attacks on clean, sustainable organic farms and clean, organic food.
So if you see some BS internet posting alleging that, for example, organic milk costs $8 or so for a half gallon, realize you are either being lied* to, or the poster is shopping at the Beverly Hills Diamond-Studded Caviar-Snack Donald Trump Convenience Store. They are just trying to kill off clean farms and clean food so they can continue to foul the Gulf of Mexico, and otherwise pollute the planet and the people so they can profit, profit, profit. It's Republican Ethics up the collective WAZOO.
This diabolic strategy is analogous to the US Chamber of Commerce and Big Oil, Big Coal, and Big Utility Corporate Sugar Daddies attacking clean, solar power so they can continue to foul the planet and rake in the Big Bucks.
* (USDA National Retail Dairy Report for this week specifies that the national average price is $4.20 for a half gallon of organic milk https://www.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/dybretail.pdf )
Doremus
(7,261 posts)The corn that we feed livestock, which they typically wouldn't eat in nature, could feed the world's hungry masses ... instead of being force-fed to animals which then get eaten by humans.
Just skip it and eat the damn corn, and help save the environment, reduce animal suffering and greenhouse gases. Another win-win.
But much more radical than oceanic dead zones, global warming and bypass surgery ... by far.
ReRe
(10,597 posts)."Why do they hate us?"
Volaris
(10,270 posts)It's the absence of profits that they hate, and if they have to kill you to get MOAR PROFITZ then that's not done out of spite or anger.
'They would cut your throat for an extra nickel. They're not mad at you, they just want the Extra Nickel.'
That system has to change.
ReRe
(10,597 posts)... the people's worst enemy. They may not hate us, but it sure comes off making us feel that way. It leaves us feeling demoralized, and while we're wallowing in our misery they figure out how to transfer the money from our pockets into theirs.
Volaris
(10,270 posts)We will never matter to them. We MUST matter to those charged by us with our basic socio-economic protection from their vagaries (our elected body politic). THAT body MUST be answerable to us and not them...it would seem the only way to do that is to make them dependant on us for campaign cash, so Public Funding of elections, no more checks from the donor class.
Scientific
(314 posts)This is what it looked like two years ago. It's going to be WAY BIGGER this year.
Chuuku Davis
(565 posts)I want my ribeyes and ribs
Scientific
(314 posts)One leads to the other.
On the other hand, you might want to look into organic, grass-fed beef, raised via a system which brings health to the land.
Cattle naturally feed on grasses, not on GMO-glyphosate-pesticide-mineral fertilized corn - which brings death to the land and also the Gulf of Mexico.
Scientific
(314 posts)Call it Super Scuzz, Inc.
Scientific
(314 posts)The farmers are not so much to blame, but rather the conglomeratess which devise these Chemical Systems that fertilize vast swaths of DEATH itself
Scientific
(314 posts)Make no mistake.
Lancero
(3,003 posts)The 'dead zone' issue popping up back in the early 70's, while agricultural GMOs didn't come about until the early 80s.
The plant that the article says is to blame didn't have a GMO variant introduced until 1995, 25 years after the dead zone issue started.
Huh... Wonder if someone can explain just how GMO's caused this despite them not existing when the issue first started. Nah, that'd be to hard - They'll so go 'something some, you're a shill' instead.
GMOs aren't the cause of this no matter how much some people will try making a link - The timelines simply don't match up for it.
Rex
(65,616 posts)Lancero
(3,003 posts)And corn - The crop that the article says is to blame - didn't have a gmo variant introduced until the mid 90s.
25 years without GMO corn, and somehow GMOs STILL caused this issue?
The timelines for this simply don't add up.
Scientific
(314 posts)Same corporate conglomerates, same idiotic mechanical thinking, still using the same fertilizers on GMO corn for feed and biofuels, still creating EVEN MORE MASSIVE DEAD ZONES.
Commercial synthetic fertilizers for GMO crops and GMO corn feedlots are the driving wheel of this massive tragic clusterwank, but GMOs are a huge part of the problem and must bear a share of the blame. GMOs and their corporate overlords keep the Death Cycle rolling.
Lancero
(3,003 posts)We had these issues in the past before GMOs, and it was caused by what? Fertilizer runoff, from corn crops, causing extremely high levels of nitrogen in water.
It's not so much 'synthetic' fertilizer being the issue either - the technology behind those predate the Dead Zones by decades too. Nitrogen based fertilizers are created using the Haber-Bosch Process which was created in 1909, while phosphate based fertalizers use the Odda Process created in 1927. While synthetic fertilizers ARE used more then natural ones, switching over to natural/organic nitrogen/phosphate based fertalizers wouldn't help - We'd STILL be having high fertilizer runoff that would cause a nitrogen imbalance.
Attacking GMOs or synthetic fertilizers is a easy thing to do in this case, since it's a nice way to ignore the REAL cause of the issue here - Our ever growing demand for corn.
You get rid of GMO corn? This issue predated GMO's by 25 years. You've switched back to 'natural' corn seeds, and you're still having to grow just as much as before. You've done nothing to resolve the issue.
You get rid of synthetic fertilizers and switch to natural and organic ones? You're still going to be having fertilizer runoff that causes the nitrogen imbalance that causes these Dead Zones - The algae doesn't care if the Nitrogen is 'natural' or 'synthetic', it's going to be using it either way.
The only way this issue gets solved is if our demand for corn goes down. Less corn being grown = less fertilizers (Be they synthetic, natural, or organic) = less runoff.
Scientific
(314 posts)This article by Elizabeth Kucinich is from 2013, but it is helpful in setting out how the GMO corporate crops - corn in particular - are KILLING our Gulf of Mexico -- as well as creating DEAD ZONES in many other places.
"At least 400 dead zones have been identified in coastal oceans around the world. One of the biggest is in the Gulf of Mexico."
You can be sure that if there were 400 ZOMBIE ZONES created by the GMO-Chemical-Industrial Ag Conglomerates in 2013, there are many more than that now.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elizabeth-kucinich/the-killing-fields-indust_b_3678515.html
onethatcares
(16,167 posts)or the use of chemical fertilzer, high in nitrogen, that isn't being asorbed into the ground any longer
and is running down the rivers into the GOM.
The GMO corn is but a neccessity to feed the herds of cattle due to lack of grassland.
Sheesh, I'm but a worn out old carpenter and can see we're getting screwed from all angles when it comes
to eating a healthy diet. Grow what you can, learn simpler ways, can what you can.
flvegan
(64,407 posts)If only there were things we could do that would end the need for that. If only.