Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[mdnagel@verizon.net]

One more plug against modern agriculture...  At the end of the article 
there's mention of cellulosic ethanol, this is just another disaster in the 
waiting!  (I'd read where some company is trying to genetically create trees 
with less lingin just for biofuel production).


-Mark Nagel
Everett, WA


Source: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/07/06-5

Published on Tuesday, July 6, 2010 by the San Francisco Chronicle
Dead Zone in Gulf Linked to Ethanol Production

by Carolyn Lochhead, Chronicle Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - While the BP oil spill has been labeled the worst environmental 
catastrophe in recent U.S. history, a biofuel is contributing to a Gulf of 
Mexico "dead zone" the size of New Jersey that scientists say could be every 
bit as harmful to the gulf. 

Each year, nitrogen used to fertilize corn, about a third of which is made 
into ethanol, leaches from Midwest croplands into the Mississippi River and 
out into the gulf, where the fertilizer feeds giant algae blooms. As the 
algae dies, it settles to the ocean floor and decays, consuming oxygen and 
suffocating marine life.

Known as hypoxia, the oxygen depletion kills shrimp, crabs, worms and 
anything else that cannot escape. The dead zone has doubled since the 1980s 
and is expected this year to grow as large as 8,500 square miles and hug the 
Gulf Coast from Alabama to Texas.

As to which is worse, the oil spill or the hypoxia, "it's a really tough 
call," said Nathaniel Ostrom, a zoologist at Michigan State University. 
"There's no real answer to that question."

Some scientists fear the oil spill will worsen the dead zone, because when 
oil decomposes, it also consumes oxygen. New government estimates on Thursday 
indicated that the BP oil spill had gushed as much as 141 million gallons 
since an oil-rig explosion and well blowout on April 20 that killed 11 
workers.
Corn is biggest culprit

The gulf dead zone is the second-largest in the world, after one in the 
Baltic Sea. Scientists say the biggest culprit is industrial-scale corn 
production. Corn growers are heavy users of both nitrogen and pesticides. 
Vast monocultures of corn and soybeans, both subsidized by the federal 
government, have displaced diversified farms and grasslands throughout the 
Mississippi Basin.

"The subsidies are driving farmers toward more corn," said Gene Turner, a 
zoologist at Louisiana State University. "More nitrate comes off corn fields 
than it does off of any other crop by far. And nitrogen is driving the 
formation of the dead zone."

The dead zone, he said, is "a symptom of the homogenization of the landscape. 
We just have a few crops on what used to have all kinds of different 
vegetation."

In 2007, Congress passed a renewable fuels standard that requires ethanol 
production to triple in the next 12 years. The Department of Agriculture has 
just rolled out a plan to meet that goal, including building ethanol 
refineries in every state. The Environmental Protection Agency will decide 
soon whether to increase the amount of ethanol in gasoline blends from 10 
percent to 15 percent.

A 2008 National Research Council report warned of a "considerable" increase 
in damage to the gulf if ethanol production is increased.
Pet cause of Congress

One of the authors of that report, agricultural economist Otto Doering at 
Purdue University, said that a 50 percent boost in the ethanol blend in 
gasoline will significantly raise corn prices, driving farmers to pull land 
out of conservation and pastureland and into corn production. They are also 
likely to add more nitrogen fertilizers to boost yields.

Corn ethanol has been heavily subsidized since the Arab oil embargo in the 
1970s. Viewed by the corn industry as a lucrative market, ethanol is a 
perennial favorite in Congress.

Ethanol consumes two-thirds of all federal subsidies for renewable fuels, 
said Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, an advocacy 
group, leaving solar, wind and the rest to fight over the remaining third. 
Corn ethanol cost taxpayers $17 billion from 2005 to 2009, his group 
estimates.

"This is another industry that's entirely a creature of the government, even 
more so than corn growing per se," Cook said. "The production of ethanol 
wouldn't happen at all without government subsidies and protection."

The National Corn Growers Association ran a media blitz in Washington last 
week to press for the renewal of the 51-cents-a-gallon tax credit for 
ethanol. With pictures of the BP oil spill looming in the background, the 
Corn Growers' video announces, "Ethanol: Now is the time."
Conservation plan hurt

The ethanol boom over the past decade has lured farmers to withdraw millions 
of acres from the Conservation Reserve Program, which pays farms not to plant 
fragile land. Much of this land has been returned to native prairie grasses, 
at taxpayer expense. Millions more acres are up for renewal over the next few 
years.

"There's been a very large-scale conversion of these CRP lands to biofuel 
production," Ostrom said. Those soils have accumulated carbon from the 
atmosphere and stored it, becoming "a pretty significant sink for atmospheric 
CO2," he said. "If we suddenly start farming those soils, we basically 
release all of the carbon that's been sequestered for decades, and that may 
more than offset any carbon benefit of switching to biofuels."

To meet its goal of tripling ethanol production, Congress called for more 
cellulosic ethanol, which is made from wood, crop waste, perennial grasses 
such as switchgrass, and even native prairie grasses. Perennial grasses are 
considered far less damaging to the environment than corn because they 
require less fertilizer and their roots remain in the ground, helping to 
stabilize the soil and reduce runoff.

But commercial production of cellulosic ethanol remains a pipe dream. It 
would require large subsidies to dislodge corn ethanol.

There is no experience with commercial production of switchgrass. Purdue's 
Doering said it will require fertilizer and is likely to be planted on 
conservation lands and pasture instead of displacing corn.

Joan Nassauer, a professor at the University of Michigan who has studied how 
alternative agricultural policies could alleviate the dead zone, said 
cellulosic ethanol could work.

"It might be one of those win-wins, but it's not in production yet," she 
said. "What we've got now all over the Corn Belt is corn, and that's 
definitely not a win-win."