Add to all that the fact that the world’s breadbasket, the United States, is starting to use more and more of its agriculture production for fuel. Subsidized ethanol and biodiesel plants are buying up corn and soybeans at record levels, with a blatant disregard for cost.
All this caused corn production in the United States to surge 25% last year. But corn can’t grow in the United States without lots of fertilizer.
After half a century of overfarming and record-high corn and agriculture prices, farmers are now fertilizing their fields in record amounts. Last year, farmers in the United States increased their fertilizer use by 9.9%, almost twice as much as anywhere else in the world.
All that fertilizer doesn’t go into the ground, though. A lot of it simply runs off into the local rivers and streams. From there it flows into the Ohio and Missouri Rivers, and eventually flows into the Mississippi River.
The Mississippi eventually deposits the fertilizer run-off into the Gulf of Mexico. All of that toxic run-off is creating the Gulf of Mexico dead zone.
Within the zone, there are no shrimp, crab, crabs, fish or any other meaningful signs of life. Last year, the dead zone continued its expansion. It’s now larger than the state of New Jersey.
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