Short, To the Point, Too Good to Pass Up

Has anyone heard about this 'dead zone' in the Gulf of Mexico that covers 8500 square kilometers (~3300 square miles) off of the coast of Texas and Louisiana?
For the latest article in Spanish, read here: http://mx.noticias.yahoo.com/zona-muerta-golfo-méxico-décadas-224500153.html
For the latest article in English, read here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110718141618.htm

And for those who want my expert summary, here it is:
Apparently this 'dead zone has been monitored for the past 25 years. It occurs in the spring and summer of every year and averages 5800 square miles. This year, it is predicted to grow as large as 9400 square miles. The dead zone occurs because of a state of hypoxia, which is a state of extremely low oxygen levels. The reason for the extremely low nitrogen levels? - a drastic increase in the levels of nitrogen, which results in algal blooms which extract the majority of the oxygen from the water, leaving little to none for any other living organisms. The increase in nitrogen levels in this part of the Gulf of Mexico has been attributed to the high levels of fertilizer runoff from the large farms in the Mid East of the United States, which empty into the Mississippi river and eventually into the Gulf of Mexico.
I remember reading about this phenomenon once in an Ecology class in college. At that time (too long ago for most of you to remember), we were learning about atrophic lakes and streams, that, because of the fertilizer runoff from use of chemical fertilizers, cleared forests for cattle pasture (trees soak up nutrients from the soil - without them, these elements run off into the nearest water sources), and manure runoff from cattle grazing, were slowly diminishing in size because of the rapid growth of oxygen absorbing plants in those rivers and lakes.
So what discussions does this topic bring about?
Well, according to a 2009 Environmental Protection Agency (a government agency) article (http://www.epa.gov/agriculture/ag101/demographics.html), of the over 285 million people living in the United States, only 1% claim farming as their occupation. Compare this to just 100 years ago, when over 30% of the US labor force was comprised of farmers. And yet, without giving y'all any specific numbers, despite the drastic decrease in the percentage of farmers, there has been an increase in the US population and obviously an increase in the production of food. How has this miracle occurred? Ah, the beauty of modern science (ahem, Monsanto) and clever (I mean really rich) big farm industries (Archer Daniel Midland, to name one). Thanks to government subsidized farmers who are given chemical fertilizer and pesticides, and human-replacing machines at cheap prices, we now have the ability to harvest massive quantities of food with very little human resource input. What does this mean for the earth? Apparently not much to many people in Somalia and the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa who are now living in an officially declared famine (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/20/somalia-childrens-famine-media). Apparently not much for the small to mid-level Mexican farmers, who thanks to the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA) cannot compete with the large US subsidized farms and so have lost their livelihoods (I'm talking about the sale of corn, a staple in the Mexican diet, and for millennia grown locally in Latin America, now being imported to those countries because it can be sold CHEAPER). Apparently not much for the rest of the world, who is seeing some of the highest food prices the world has seen. Apparently not much for the fisherman off the coasts of Texas and Louisiana, who thanks to the nitrogen runoff coming from the Mississippi river (and a little oil spill in the same Gulf) cannot get a catch from an area the size of Delaware and Rhode Island. Apparently not much for the fish and crustacean species who used to make that patch of sea their home. Apparently not much for the small U.S. farmers who cannot pay their debts and are jailed for wind-blown genetically modified seeds that fall into their land). And (I would say finally here, but I'm sure I've left out some thankful recipients of big-farm) apparently not much for the 700,000 to 1.6 million homeless men, women and children living in the streets of one of the world's wealthiest countries, who, if those big farms would actually just let some people work the land instead of super cool machines, would not be so homeless...

So, where does that leave us? I guess we should just start capitalizing off the algal blooms in the Gulf of Mexico. I have seen amazing jewelry made out of dried and heated algae here in San Cristobal.


Ooooooor... Go to a local farmer's market. Buy some organic food. Make a really nutritious meal for you, your family, and your friends. In so doing, support small farmers in the United States. Support fish in the Gulf of Mexico. Support indigenous peasants in Mexico. Support fisherman in the southern United States. Support homeless people who will be employed to use their hand to work the land. Support yourselves by eating something that is nutritious. Support the rest of the world by reducing the power that an inflated, government supported farming industry has to control the world price of food.

Yes. I know organic food is expensive. But for those that have the money, buy it. Your consumer purchasing power affects what the market sells. And for those who don't have the money to buy organic food (and for those people that do have the money as well), march, sing, protest and petition your local government, and state legislators and state senators to support local, organic farming. There is no reason a cheesburger at McDonalds should be cheaper than a head of lettuce.

And I close.