Ag Expert: Growing corn for green fuel could ignite Gulf of Mexico dead zone

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Growing corn in the Midwest for green fuel could increase pollution downriver and contribute to a “dead zone” that forms each summer in the Gulf of Mexico, a national agriculture expert said Tuesday.

“We're in a dilemma in this country,” Gary Mast, of the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Tuesday. “We want food. We want fuel. We want it to be produced environmentally soundly.”

The problem is that corn needs more nitrogen fertilizer than other crops. More corn means more nitrogen fertilizer. Runoff carrying the fertilizer fuels the growth of microscopic organisms that then die, fall to the bottom and decompose, using up the oxygen there.

Mast is a Department of Agriculture representative on a national task force created in late 1997 to find ways to reduce the runoff of nutrients. He said farmers have put in 2.3 million acres of buffer zones to absorb farmland runoff before it gets to waterways.

He added that 1.4. million acres of wetlands have been added to the Mississippi River basin, including at least part of 30 states.

It doesn't compensate for all of the additional acres in corn, he said in an interview, but “I think we've made progress.”

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