Corn-Ethanol Mandate Policy Killing Gulf Fisheries

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Louisiana's spring shrimp season is officially open, but what should be a time to celebrate the annual kickoff of a key driver of the coastal economy is now overshadowed by a looming threat to the Gulf of Mexico's fragile ecosystem. The "dead zone" -- a Connecticut-sized area of low oxygen water that kills off marine life -- continues to grow in size due to U.S. ethanol policy and is threatening this year's harvest and the coastal economy.

The key factor contributing to the size and duration of this "dead zone" begins hundreds of miles away in the Corn Belt. There, the aggressive expansion of a U.S. biofuel policy called the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) in 2007 incentivized the rapid escalation of corn planted for fuel production. This push for a domestically produced "green" fuel came at a time of increased reliance on foreign oil imports and heightened demand for gasoline. Yet, the U.S. energy landscape has since drastically improved due to a domestic oil and gas production boom and improvements in vehicle efficiency technologies.

Despite this, the Renewable Fuel Standard continues to require that increasing amounts of biofuels be blended into the nation's gasoline supply. As more than 80 percent of the mandate continues to be met by corn ethanol, farms across the Midwest have converted an additional 13.5 million acres to grow corn -- a particularly resource-intensive crop. For instance, while corn was planted on 23 percent of U.S. cropland in 2009, it received 40 percent of the fertilizer used across the nation. As the corn crop expands to meet the requirements of the RFS, it demands a greater amount of fertilizer, which then runs off into the Mississippi River and ultimately makes its way into the Gulf of Mexico. The end result is catastrophic.

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