As if being bombarded with oil from below and chemical dispersants
from above weren’t enough, the Gulf of Mexico also has to endure
marketing rhetoric from a long-time tormentor: the corn industry.

Industrial corn production is indisputably linked to the massive
hypoxic “dead zone” that emerges in the Gulf every year. According to a 2008 peer-reviewed paper in
the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, “Nitrogen leaching
from fertilized corn fields to the Mississippi-Atchafalaya River system
is a primary cause of the bottom-water hypoxia that develops on the
continental shelf of the northern Gulf of Mexico each summer.” And as
corn production ramps up to satisfy government ethanol mandates, the
amount of nitrogen flowing into the Gulf will likely increase by between
10 and 34 percent by 2022, the report states. That surging nitrogen
load will make it “nearly impossible” to slow the growth of the already
New Jersey-sized dead
zone, the report concludes.

Meanwhile, how the Gulf’s two ecological calamities–the spill and
the dead zone–will interact is anyone’s guess. Early indications are
not encouraging, reports
the
Minnesota Post.

So you might expect the corn shills to maintain a respectful silence
as
BP’s oil disaster unfolds. Instead, the corn industry is ludicrously
presenting itself as the Gulf’s salvation.

From the Nebraska
Corn Board:

As those along the Gulf Coast work tirelessly to manage a disaster
due to an offshore oil drilling accident, this tragic situation provides
even greater impetus for others to move the ball forward on renewable
fuels.