Community | May 06, 2010 | 5 comments

Corn industry brazenly turns Gulf disaster into marketing opportunity

source: http://www.grist.org/article/2010-05-04-for-the-creators-of-the-dead-zone-the-gulf-calamity-...

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JanforGore

http://www.grist.org/article/2010-05-04-for-the-creators-of-the-dead-...

If being bombarded with oil from below and chemical dispersants from above weren't enough, the Gulf of Mexico also has to endure marketing rhetoric from a long-time tormentor: the corn industry.

Industrial corn production is indisputably linked to the massive hypoxic "dead zone" that emerges in the Gulf every year. According to a 2008 peer-reviewed paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, "Nitrogen leaching from fertilized corn fields to the Mississippi-Atchafalaya River system is a primary cause of the bottom-water hypoxia that develops on the continental shelf of the northern Gulf of Mexico each summer." And as corn production ramps up to satisfy government ethanol mandates, the amount of nitrogen flowing into the Gulf will likely increase by between 10 and 34 percent by 2022, the report states. That surging nitrogen load will make it "nearly impossible" to slow the growth of the already New Jersey-sized dead zone, the report concludes.

Meanwhile, how the Gulf's two ecological calamities--the spill and the dead zone--will interact is anyone's guess. Early indications are not encouraging, reports the Minnesota Post.

So you might expect the corn shills to maintain a respectful silence as BP's oil disaster unfolds. Instead, the corn industry is ludicrously presenting itself as the Gulf's salvation.

From the Nebraska Corn Board:

As those along the Gulf Coast work tirelessly to manage a disaster due to an offshore oil drilling accident, this tragic situation provides even greater impetus for others to move the ball forward on renewable fuels.

Um, Gulf? It's the Corn Board calling. The guys who brought you the dead zone, pictured above, claim they have the answer to your troubles.

NASAA Corn Board functionary added: "Those green fields [in the Midwest] are a tremendous reminder of the potential and promise of renewable fuels like corn ethanol, and will stand in stark contrast to the images we'll see from the Gulf ... It is renewable, very safe for the environment and does not have the lingering and environmentally damaging impact of oil."

(How can a "renewable fuel" command up such titantic amounts of nitrogen synthesized from natural gas and mined phosphorous -- so much of which ends up in the Gulf?)

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5 comments // Corn industry brazenly turns Gulf disaster into marketing opportunity

  • Wetdog
    • 0
      Wetdog  

    • The biggest problem with an oil spill is that oil does not mix with water. Ethanol does. Ethanol is a major ingredient of dispersants to minimize the damage of the petroleum because it will allow the water to mix with the petroleum.

      Ethanol is very sate and non toxic. You can drink ethanol everyday with no ill effects. Hundreds of millions of people do. If you drink a beer, you are drinking ethanol.

      Fertilizer run off is a result of using fertilizers made with petroleum. It has nothing to do with ethanol. The end result of producing ethanol from corn is DDG, high protein animal feed. The result of feeding DDG to animals is poop. When animal waste is composted, the result is methane(natural gas) and compost(natural fertilizer). There is no run off from compost---it is dirt, the richest in nutrients, highest quality dirt you can have.

      We can use corn to feed to our animals for meat, eggs and dairy products, we do anyway. If we make ethanol from the corn, we still have the DDG to feed our animals(and it is much better quality feed)---and we can power our vehicles at the same time. If we compost the waste from our animals, we get energy in the form of natural gas(methane) AND we have no need for petroleum based fertilizer that runs off and causes algal blooms creating "dead zones".

      Using ethanol works with nature in every step of the natural process. We take CO2 out of the atmosphere, we create food, energy, and fertilizer. And since we are doing everything in a natural and organic way, we can continue to do it forever with no ill effects.

      If we continue to use petroleum, we create a dead zones on the earth(strip mines---tar sands), in the air, and in the waters.

      Put the blame where it belongs. Petroleum creates dead zones. One day, the whole earth will be a dead zone if we continue to use petroleum and coal.

    • 3 years ago
  • stevehochman
    • 0
      stevehochman  

    • Sickening...thank you for putting this out...the other end of it (I am told) is that corn ethanol is not a sustainable process - diverting food stock to oil stock, but I think there was another big knock against corn ethanol...do you know what it is?

    • 3 years ago
  • JanforGore
    • 0
      JanforGore  
    • stevehochman:

      Well, it is a part of the current industrial agriculture fossil fuel driven method currently employed and as such is not a sustainable substitute regarding decreasing Co 2 emissions, and the corn used to make it is causing deforestation which also contributes to climate change. It is also water intensive and corn and oil companies are actually in league in as far as using it to mix with gasoline. It is also tied to subsidies which then go to grow corn ( more than likely genetically modified thus making profits for Monsanto as well) for biofuel, when small farmers are struggling and failing because they can't compete.

    • 3 years ago
  • Wetdog
    • 0
      Wetdog  
    • JanforGore:

      It is the farmers who grow the corn. Not corporations.

      Ethanol is not just made from corn. It is also made from sorghum or any other type of grain or seed, sugar cane, sugar beets, potatoes, agave cactus, even wood.

      Look at photographs of WW2. During WW2, the US built a plant in Wisconsin that produced 100 million gal/yr of ethanol from wood logging and milling waste. The ethanol was used as the raw material to make butadeine, artificial rubber. All of the tires, gaskets, and anything else rubber based was made with ethanol that came from wood in Wisconsin on all of those WW2 ships, airplanes, tanks, trucks, jeeps, etc.

    • 3 years ago
  • JanforGore

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