Cropland Runoff Expanding Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone

Agricultural erosion along the Mississippi River has helped create the third-largest-ever dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, according to a report released Monday by the Environmental Working Group, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization.

The Mississippi River basin drains 40 percent of the continental United States, and it carries 1.7 billion tons of eroded soil to the Gulf of Mexico each year, said Matt Roda, water resources program director for the New Orleans-based Gulf Restoration Network.

Fertilizer runoff and manure lead to nitrogen- and phosphorous-polluted runoff reaching the Gulf of Mexico's waters. This pollution, said Roda, help create algae blooms that rob water of oxygen, killing fish in the dead zone that forms annually at the mouth of the river.

"This massive area--the size of New Jersey--is a prime example of how uncontrolled runoff has an impact not only on the sustainability of our farmland but on one of our nation's most productive fisheries," he added.

Under the 1985 Farm Bill, U.S. farmers receiving federal commodity and disaster payments must control soil erosion on thr less than one-third of cropland deemed most susceptible to erosion, said Michelle Perez, lead author of "Trouble Downstream: Upgrading Conservation Compliance." Perez added that these provisions should be updated in the 2007 Farm Bill to include all susceptible cropland areas and address nutrient runoff pollution issues; more funding for voluntary cost-share programs and stricter enforcement and targeting of conservations programs are key, she said.

"Over the last five-year Farm Bill, farmers came to [the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service] asking for $18 billion worth of help to solve environmental problems in their operations... Congress was only able to find $6 billion to help those farmers," Perez said.

More than 1.3 million acres of cropland in Arkansas, for example, are considered susceptible to erosion. Only 161,000 of those acres, though, are considered highly erodable and thus subject to conservation compliance.

Erodible cropland throughout the state is eligible for voluntary, incentive-based programs but such programs are "oversubscribed", said Kalven Trice, state conservationist with the Natural Resources Conservation Serice. "We have more folks applying for the conservation programs than the dollars that we get here in the state," he said.

As larger amounts of corn are grown to produce ethanol, improved conservation programs are becoming especially significant, said Susan Heathcote, chairman of the Mississippi River Water Quality Collaborative, a group of 23 clean-water advocacy organizations.

"This year, farmers in the U.S. planted the largest corn crop in 63 years, with corn acreage up 19 percent over last year," she said. "Expanding and strengthening conservation compliance is one way to help reduce the additional soil erosion and nitrogen and phosphorous pollution that will come from all these new corn fields."

Source: Arkansas Democrat Gazette