Ethanol push's effects hurt Texas, Louisiana seafood industry
By Tony Cox Bloomberg News Jul. 26, 2007
The crop that's bringing prosperity to farmers is making it harder for commercial fishermen in Louisiana to make a living.
This spring, U.S. farmers planted the most acreage with corn since 1944, after demand for ethanol pushed the grain's price to a 10-year high in February. Scientists blame farm waste flowing into the Mississippi River basin for creating a pocket along the Louisiana coast where shrimp and other sea life can't survive.
The Gulf of Mexico's so-called "Dead Zone" is expected to be a record 8,543 square miles this year and stretch into waters off Texas, said Nancy Rabalais, chief scientist for a study team at the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium. Researchers are measuring the zone this week from boats.
"This is an area the size of New Jersey or potentially bigger where nothing can live," said Matt Rota, a program director at the Gulf Restoration Network, a coalition of environmental and civic groups. "If this were happening in the middle of the country, people would be outraged."
Corn fuels the zone because it requires more nitrogen-based fertilizer than crops such as soybeans, said Eugene Turner, a Louisiana State University oceanographer. Nitrogen and other nutrients eventually reach the Gulf, feeding microscopic organisms that deplete oxygen levels as they die and decompose on the sea floor. Shrimp and fish suffocate unless they escape.
Ethanol, made mostly from corn in the U.S., is the focus of President Bush's plan to reduce reliance on imported oil.
The Dead Zone is an annual phenomenon that lasts several months and usually peaks around late July. The area has about doubled in size since scientists began studying it in 1985.
The zone could be catastrophic for the northern Gulf of Mexico's $2.6-billion-a-year fishing industry, Rota said.
Louisiana has the largest catches in the U.S. of shrimp, oysters and crawfish, according to state figures.
Landings of brown shrimp in Louisiana and Texas declined steadily after peaking at 103.4 million pounds in 1990, sliding as the Dead Zone expanded, according to a 2001 study.
It found that the larger the zone, the smaller the shrimp catch.
Rota likened the situation to the Gulf oil and gas boom, in which pipelines and other equipment cutting through the coast allowed saltwater to destroy wetlands.
"We've been basically a sacrifice zone for the nation," Rota said.
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