Down in the Dead Zone

Reprint from Newsweek Magazine, October 18,1999

By Peter Annin 

Fishermen call it the "DEAD ZONE," a barren patch in the Gulf of Mexico where their nets come up empty and their lines never record a strike. It moves around, waxes or wanes with the seasons, but always returns. In fact, the dead zone is growing -- currently 7,723 square miles, an area the size of New Jersey that's "void of baitfish, void of anything," says Johnny Glover, a former Louisiana state representative who runs a fleet of charter sport-fishing boats out of Cocodrie, La. A decline in blackened redfish and shrimp jambalaya from Louisiana would be bad enough. But a study released by the Clinton administration earlier this year says the chief source of the dead zone if far upriver on the Mississippi, on the cornfields of Illinois and the hog farms of Iowa. Fixing it could mean tinkering with the ecology of the most productive farmland in the world. "This is not just a Gulf of Mexico issue," says Nancy Rabalais of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium. "It's a global issue."

That's just what Midwestern farmers say, warning of higher food prices, both in the United States and worldwide, if the reportâs preliminary recommendations are ever implemented. The most controversial calls for a 20 percent cutback in the use of nitrogen fertilizers, which run off into streams and rivers and are carried to the gulf by the Mississippi. Nitrogen does the same thing in the ocean that it does on croplands -- it boosts plant growth. In the gulf it causes immense algae blooms. When the algae die, sink and decay, they steal oxygen from the water -- choking off the marine ecosystem, in a phenomenon called hypoxia. Shrimp and fish can flee the suffocated area, but less-mobile animals -- snails, crabs and the like -- just die. The gulf's algae aren't just killing sea life -- they're provoking a new civil war between the North's farmers and the South's fishermen.

It's amazing how much of America's breadbasket has been implicated. The Mississippi is, of course, the largest river system in North America, draining 31 states from Montana to Pennsylvania to North Carolina. The basin is home to more than half of America's farms, producing $98 billion worth of agricultural products annually. That's why environmental restrictions to shrink the dead zone will affect most of the Midwest's farmers, who are still suffering through the toughest times since the agricultural crisis of the '80s, when thousands of heavily indebted farmers went bankrupt.

Though the report's recommendations won't be formally released by scientist until Oct. 20 [1999], the farm lobby has already attached them as narrowly focused science, from biased experts who hastily jumped to conclusions. The lobby argues that the historic channeling and diking of the Mississippi, as well as the loss of thousands of acres of Gulf Coast wetlands, may be as much to blame for the dead zone as farm runoff. Some critics also maintain there's not enough research on nitrogen fertilizer to make judgments.

Those contentions point to what alarms farmers most in the report: the recommendations to return 5 million acres of farmland to wetlands -- which would filter water runoff from farm fields -- and impose the 20 percent fertilizer reduction. Global competition and pressures from large corporate farming operations have already cut sharply into profit margins for the family farmer. Many farmers worry that fertilizer limits could not only wipe them out, but also obliterate rural communities already teetering on the edge. "Theyâre talking about implementing regulations that will likely cost farmers billions of dollars," says Terry Francl, senior economist with the American Farm Bureau, comparing its potential economic impact to the Dust Bowl drought of the 1930s. "This could be the final thing that makes many of the small towns disappear."

But not every farmer opposes tough environmental measures. Tony Thompson, 43, a fifth-generation farmer in Windom, Minn., worlds 1,850 picturesque acres of corn and soybeans. For years, Thompsonâs been using ecological farming methods, like planting buffer strips bordering his fields and using fertilizer and herbicides strategically -- and sparingly. He also has an organic-crop business, and harvest wildflowers and prairie-grass seeds on 200 acres of virgin prairie that has never been plowed. Birds thrive on his property, and he has unusually low field ö runoff rates compared with the average American farmer. "We farmers are often applying more nitrogen than we need," he says. "We can reduce nitrogen without suffering yield loss, and we need to figure out how to encourage farmers to use these programs." Making that transition will cost money. Thompson and other farmers don't see that happening without government help.

If fact, reducing fertilizer use may be the most difficulty recommendation to translate into policy. Government officials admit that they have no plans -- or resources -- to enforce such restriction on a widespread basis. "We in no way are thinking about implementing any mandatory fertilizer reductions on all farms in the Mississippi River Basin," says one Washington official.

What's more likely, sources say, is a mix of carrots and sticks. Some agricultural operations, like giant hog farms, may be forced to improve their manure-control operations (another nitrogen source), while many corn farmers may be required to only plant prairie buffer strips between fields and streams. Others may be enticed into taking bottomlands out of production through tax incentives or a beefed-up Conservation Reserve Program, which has been paying farmers not to plant for years. "The kinds of policies weâre looking at," on administration source says, "would give financial incentives to farmers who take these lands out of production." "We can't ask farmers to do more," agrees Scott Faber, of the American Rivers organization, which backs the new report's conclusions, "without giving them the financial assistance to help them do better."

In other worlds, itâs going to take lots of money to bring the dead zone back to life. The gulfâs troublesome patch is often compared to the pollution problems that plagued Lake Erie in the '70s and Chesapeake Bay in the '80s and '90s -- and each on those bodies of water took billions of dollars and more than a decade to clean up. Scientists say reducing hypoxia in the gulf will require an even more ambitious effort. "This problem has taken decades to create, "says Chuck Fox of the Environmental Protection Agency. "And it's gong to take decades to solve."

Meanwhile, the fishermen do the best they can. Because the dead zone usually lies close to the ocean floor -- and it's moving -- they often can't tell when they're right on top of it, even if they can see the "marine snow" or algae blooms that cause it. Where the fishermen try to fish are the edges of the dead zone, which teem with red snapper, shrimp and flounder that have swum toward the oxygen-rich waters. "When you find the perimeter, you can hit the jackpot!" says Glover, the charter fleet owner. But the captains who run his eight boats have had to go farther and farther out to sea to catch anything "The key is to not wait until this takes over the whole gulf," he says. Glover knows politics, and he says the shrimpers and other fishermen of the Gulf Coast feel out-gunner by the powerful agriculture lobby on this issue. "We're farmers of the sea," he says, "but we don't get privileged treatment like the farmers up the river." That may no longer hold so true, as the federal government, ecologists -- and even a few land farmers -- join in the fight to defuse this growing crisis in the gulf.