Excess fertilizer washed from Midwestern fields is slowly poisoning the Gulf of Mexico

[Judi Lynn]

As rainfall events become more intense and frequent, fertilizers applied to Midwestern farmland washes away, contaminating waterways near and far.
By Ignacio Calderon, USA TODAY Network Agricultural Data Fellow, Investigate Midwest 7 hours ago

Located in the heart of America’s breadbasket, Champaign County, Illinois, helps feed the nation’s demand for corn and soybeans while fueling one of the more insidious impacts of climate change – fertilizer runoff.

Every year, farmers apply tons of nitrogen fertilizer to the vast swaths of crops that blanket Champaign’s flat landscape.

As rain carries unused fertilizer into the nearby Spoon River, it spurs toxic algae growth downstream.

The excess nutrients flow with the waters from the Spoon into a series of larger rivers until dumping into the Gulf of Mexico, fueling a massive dead zone where no life can survive.

The environmental devastation – increasing blooms and a consistently growing dead zone – has been well documented for decades.

More:
https://investigatemidwest.org/2021/11/30/excess-fertilizer-washed-from-midwestern-fields-is-slowly-poisoning-the-gulf-of-mexico/

[Duppers]

1. We're killing the planet's life.

It will recover after we're gone tho.

There's only a small probability we "wise up" first.

[mopinko]

2. and a lot of topsoil w it. we need to do farming better.

huglekultur could fix this in a win-win-win fashion, but i seem to be one of the few humans who know anything about it.